Pooja Verma
I am a teacher.
The cognitive benefits of play: Effects on the learning brain. © 2008 - 2014, Gwen Dewar, Ph.D., all rights reserved Science supports many of our intuitions about the benefits of play. Playful behavior appears to have positive effects on the brain and on a child’s ability to learn. Deconstructing Role Play – Provide the Resources, Step Back and Watch Children’s Learning Flourish.
Hospital, vet’s surgery, post office, travel agent – themed role play areas are often seen as a must for an early years setting. They are often meticulously prepared to be aesthetically pleasing, covered in laminated words and pictures with the aim of enticing children in. But this is where I encountered a problem: in these areas, children are expected to come together to play out adult scenarios that are consistent with these themes.
Yet how many children have visited a travel agent to book a holiday recently, or operated on a pet dog in a vet’s surgery? For the majority of children, themed areas such as those described above are simply too alien for high-quality cooperative play to develop – which is why I found the children in my class would revert back to playing ‘mums and dads’ by mid-morning, rather than booking a holiday to Costa Rica, as the poster on the wall in the travel agent suggested! I decided action had to be taken; it was time to improve my role play corner. The benefits. The cognitive benefits of play: Effects on the learning brain. Low-cost play ideas: video.
Primary school shake-up to focus on ‘play-led’ learning. Children at primary schools would not study traditional subjects until as late as 10 years of age, under proposals being considered by policymakers. Instead, there would be a much greater emphasis on creative play during the early years of primary school, and broader areas of learning in later years. The reforms are based loosely on some of the features of top-performing education systems in countries such as Finland, as well as new research on how children learn. The proposals, drafted by the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA), represent some of the biggest proposed changes to teaching and learning at primary level in more than two decades. They also seek to give teachers more flexibility and autonomy over the amount of time dedicated to key areas of learning.
Educators, policymakers and parents discussed the proposals at a conference in Dublin Castle on Tuesday as part of a consultation phase which continues until the end of April. Exciting opportunity. Why Movement is Essential in Early Childhood. Play to Learn: Discussion. Why play-based learning? (free article) - Early Childhood Australia. Taking Playtime Seriously. So part of encouraging play is pulling back on how much programmed goal-directed learning we expect from very young children, to leave them time for the fun of exploration, curiosity and, well, fun. But another important part may be creating environments that foster children’s play and parents’ participation and attention. Dr. Hirsh-Pasek, who is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, cited its Learning Landscapes Initiative, which aims to set up learning opportunities in public places where people will encounter them.
One of these, the Urban Thinkscape project in Philadelphia, involves puzzle benches at bus stops, with puzzles designed to build STEM skills. Before the benches were installed, she said, parents waiting for buses were almost uniformly looking at their cellphones. “We put one up in a park,” she said. Importance of play for babies & children. How young children learn English through play.
As we release Learning Time with Timmy – our first app for early-years learners of English – Danitza Villarroel, a teacher on our Learning Time with Shaun and Timmy course in Chile, explains the importance of learning through play, and offers a few tips for teachers new to this age group. Teaching English to pre-school children can be daunting for teachers new to this age group. Young children have shorter attention spans than older children and adults, and they're still learning their mother tongue. But teaching these learners can be enormously rewarding once you've taken a few basic principles on board.
Play. Moodle. 6 Types of Play: How Children's Play Becomes More Social. Play is a serious business. The pioneering developmental psychologist Lev Vygotsky thought that, in the preschool years, play is the leading source of development. Getting the right balance between adult-led and child-initiated learning. As an early years practitioner you will know the importance of creating the right balance between adult-led and child-initiated learning. Help all children learn and develop with this guide. Moodle. Community Playthings.
Heuristic play is rooted in young children’s natural curiosity.
As babies grow, they move beyond being content to simply feel and ponder objects, to wanting to find out what can be done with them. The Power of Evening Routines. The word “structure” can evoke less than positive associations. It suggests constraints, which are never a good thing, right? Wrong. It turns out that everyone benefits from a certain amount of daily structure, so long as that structure is pleasant, productive, and meaningful. Whether it’s the most inventive minds in history, or those people who live in good health past 100, a daily routine or set of micro-routines is correlated with productivity, health, and longevity.
How do you speak 'Motherese'? News BBC News Navigation Sections Previous Next Media player Media playback is unsupported on your device. How baby brains develop. Early childhood development – it’s not rocket science, it’s neuroscience! - Kathy Brodie Early Years Training. I was introduced to Mine Conkbayir when she contacted me about neuroscience informing early years practice, which I think is such an exciting, and growing, area of study.
So I was very enthusiastic when she offered to do a guest post on this subject. Here she discusses how neuroscience can add another dimension to our understanding of child development: Like many individuals in this increasingly frantic world, I’m often busy juggling my responsibilities as a parent while I work and continue my studies – a very exciting journey as I try to achieve my PhD in early childhood education and neuroscience. Having been a lecturer across a range of child care and education qualifications for the past 14 years, I continue to be bewildered by the lack of consistently embedded teaching of neuroscience and early brain development across these qualifications. Being Multilingual: You speak with an accent. I don’t.
Accents are things that only other people have. They are, by extension, things that you don’t want to have. Accents are, in short, shortcomings. This is why, if someone tells you that “you speak with no accent”, you can be sure of two things: that you have received words of praise indeed; and that you speak with the same accent as that person. So the person is actually not only praising her own accent, she is also giving evidence that she has no idea she’s got one. We seldom hear people say “We speak with an accent” or “I speak with an accent” – unless we’re talking about our uses of foreign languages. So let’s check out your accent. FAQ: Raising Bilingual Children.
Why want bilingual children? There are many reasons, but the two most common are: 1) The parents speak different languages (say, an American woman and a Turkish man). 2) The parents speak the same language, but live in a community where most people speak something else (say, a Korean couple living in the USA). In the first case, both the mother and father may want to be able to use their own language when talking to their children.
This is the bilingual home situation. Deb Roy: The birth of a word. Let's Talk. What do babies need in order to learn and thrive? One thing they need is conversation — responsive, back-and-forth communication with their parents and caregivers. Why does my toddler love repetition? Paediatric speech and language therapist It may test your patience when your toddler demands 'Row, row, row your boat' for the 10th time.
But there's a good reason for her insistence. Toddlers love repetition because it helps them to learn, and because it's familiar and comforting. How can I help my child to start talking? (Video) Health visitor Sara Patience describes how you can help develop your child's language skills by talking and playing with her.
Multilingual Preschoolers. It’s amazing how young children learn to converse with others.