Importance of play for babies & children Australian Government Department of Education and Training. (2019). Belonging, being and becoming: The early years learning framework for Australia. Australian Government Department of Education, Skills and Employment. Retrieved 12 April 2022 from Cole-Hamilton, I. (2011). Fleer, M. (2021). Ginsburg, K.R. (2007). Lester, S., & Russell, W. (2010). Lui, C., Solis, S.L., Jensen, H., Hopkins, E.J., Neale, D., Zosh, J.M., Hirsh-Pasek, K., & Whitebread, D. (2017). Murray, J. (2018). Sewell, C., Smale, J., & Smith, K. (2019). Whitebread, D., Neale, D., Jensen, H., Liu, C., Solis, S.L., Hopkins, E., Hirsh-Pasek, K., & Zosh, J.M. (2017). Woods, A. (2017).
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. 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. As children get older, she said, some of their playing continues to be free play, in which a child goes out into the world as a discoverer and an explorer, and some is “constrained tinkering,” which she compared to bowling with bumpers.
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. The importance of active learning Active learning means fully involving children in the learning process. Promoting learning through play Play is a very significant part of what life means to children at this stage of their development. Encouraging children's creativity and imagination It's important that we help young learners develop beyond mere language abilities. Developing children's social skills Developing social skills is also very important at this learning stage.
How to start teaching kids English at home By Jo Blackmore, LearnEnglish Kids team How do I start teaching my kids English at home? Many parents would like to teach their children English at home, but don’t know how to start. It doesn’t matter if your own English is not perfect. Establishing a routine Establish a routine for your English time at home. Try to do certain activities at the same time every day. Playing games Children learn naturally when they are having fun. You can find free downloadable flashcards on a wide range of topics on our website. There are many other types of games you can play with your children to help them practise English. Action games – for example Simon says, Charades, What’s the time Mr Wolf? Using everyday situations The advantage of teaching English at home is that you can use everyday situations and real objects from around the house to practise the language naturally and in context. Using stories Younger children love books with bright colours and attractive illustrations. Using songs Teaching grammar
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. Through play children learn and practice many basic social skills. They develop a sense of self, learn to interact with other children, how to make friends, how to lie and how to role-play. The classic study of how play develops in children was carried out by Mildred Parten in the late 1920s at the Institute of Child Development in Minnesota. She closely observed children between the ages of 2 and 5 years and categorised the types of play. Parten collected data by systematically sampling the children’s behaviour. The thing to notice is that the first four types of play don’t involve much interaction with others, while the last two do. Unoccupied play: the child is relatively stationary and appears to be performing random movements with no apparent purpose. » This is part of a series on 10 crucial child psychology studies. Reference
Getting the right balance between adult-led and child-initiated learning | Op... 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. Adult-led activities are based on our own professional understanding of what we should teach young children and what experiences they should have. Through adult-led activities we can introduce children to new ideas, provide opportunities for them to develop their skills and ensure that they experience all areas of learning in the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS). During adult-led learning we can feel that we are in control of the teaching we are providing. It is only through doing this and practising the skills that they have learned that children will be able to take ownership of their learning and be able to apply it in different situations. These ratios are of course flexible, depending on practitioner judgement and the individual needs of each child. Practical ideas More from Optimus Find out more
Playthings | Heuristic play 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. Toddlers have an urge to handle things: to gather, fill, dump, stack, knock down, select and manipulate in other ways. Household or kitchen utensils offer this kind of activity as every parent knows, and can occupy a child for surprising stretches of time. In their book, People under Three, Elinor Goldschmied and Sonia Jackson coined the term heuristic play, to explain how to provide a more structured opportunity for this kind of activity. Heuristic play with objects is not a novel idea. To provide for heuristic play, practitioners collect natural materials like fir cones, conkers, seashells, and pebbles, as well as ribbons, short lengths of chain, and ‘found’ objects like curtain rings, jar lids, sturdy cardboard tubes, the circles from inside sellotape, and empty cotton reels.
Public Media for Northern CA There was a direct correlation between the children who’d heard a lot of parent talk and how prepared they were to learn once they arrived at school. Hart and Risley wrote, “With few exceptions, the more parents talked to their children, the faster the children’s vocabularies [grew] and the higher the children’s IQ test scores at age 3 and later.” For Suskind, a lightbulb went on. “The truth is, much of what you see in children born into poverty is analogous to children born deaf,” Suskind said. Bringing Parents On Board In Suskind’s new book, "Thirty Million Words," she explains the research behind the word gap in detail, along with her research-based initiative of the same name, aimed at boosting children’s brains in the first three years of their lives. Suskind’s vision was not just to give parents a directive -- you need to talk more to your child. Many parents believe that because they didn’t do well in school themselves, they have no business “teaching” their babies anything.
How can young children best learn languages? The British Council's Tracey Chapelton explains how parents of young children can lay the foundations for success. Children's brains are highly active Your child is unique, but what all children have in common is natural curiosity and an innate ability to learn. Kuhl states that babies and young children are geniuses at acquiring a second language. 'Babies', she says, 'can discriminate all the sounds of all languages... and that's remarkable because you and I can't do that. By exposing children to other languages at an early age, you are giving them the opportunity to tap into their natural ability to hear and distinguish the sounds of other languages, and their capacity to make sense of what they are hearing. Children make language-learning look easy Communication is something that children do to help them achieve something else, and they are blissfully unaware of the enormous amount of learning taking place. Children's emotional environment is important for learning
Does being bilingual make you smarter? Language teacher and researcher Miguel Angel Muñoz explains the latest research on how being bilingual affects your brain, ahead of a British Council seminar in Cardiff on whether learning a foreign language makes you smarter. You can watch the live-streamed seminar on Tuesday, 3 June. More than half the world's population uses two or more languages every day It is hard to estimate the exact number of bilingual people in the world, as there is a lack of reliable statistics . But in 2012, a Eurobarometer survey established that 'just over half of Europeans (54%)' are bilingual, and other studies hypothesise that more than half of the world’s population is bilingual. So what about you? Being bilingual isn't black-and-white To answer that question, first we need to establish what being bilingual means. I, for example, am -- or used to be -- proficient in German, but I have not used my German regularly for a very long time. What are the costs of being bilingual? Don’t worry. 1. 2. 3.
How young children learn English as another language By Opal Dunn, educational consultant and author Introduction Young children are natural language acquirers; they are self-motivated to pick up language without conscious learning, unlike adolescents and adults. They have the ability to imitate pronunciation and work out the rules for themselves. Read the notes below about young children learning English as another language. The advantages of beginning early Young children are still using their individual, innate language-learning strategies to acquire their home language and soon find they can also use these strategies to pick up English. Stages in picking up English Spoken language comes naturally before reading and writing. Silent period When babies learn their home language, there is a ‘silent period’, when they look and listen and communicate through facial expression or gestures before they begin to speak. During this time parents should not force children to take part in spoken dialogue by making them repeat words. Understanding