Value Bookshop’s Reading Notes

Think of your preschooler’s mind as a sponge, just waiting to expand as your child learns. While structured learning doesn’t start until Kindergarten, the years leading up to this are just as important for your child’s mental development. Neural pathways are still forming in the brain and the more you challenge your child intellectually right now, the more of these pathways in the brain will form – making it easier for him to learn for the rest of his life.

Now is the best time to introduce your child to learning. You have the chance to ensure that this is a positive experience for your child. Wouldn’t you want him to associate learning with something that is fun and exciting? By working with your child now you can make sure that learning new things becomes something he looks forward to and you can also create good study or learning habits right from the start. Not only will this help him throughout his school years, but you will be raising a person that’s inquisitive and curious about the world around him.

The next question is of course what can you do to challenge your preschoolers mind? Your everyday life is full of learning opportunities; you’ll just have to open your eyes to the endless possibilities. Start by reading to your child each day. Curl up on the couch together with a couple of good age-appropriate books and read them to your child. Stop from time to time and talk about the story, the characters within it and the illustrations in the book. Start with simple questions like what is this character’s name, or what happened to the girl in the story. As your child becomes used to engaging in the story this way, encourage him to form his own opinion about what is happening. Also ask him what he thinks will happen next and why.

Ask your child to help you prepare dinner or lunch. Count out ingredients together and have your child guess what you may be making with noodles, sauce and hamburger meat. Explain why ingredients change color or texture when you cook them. You can even introduce simple math by adding one apple to two other apples etc. Engage your child in conversations about what is going on in his life as you cook. You’ll be surprised how much you can learn about what happened at daycare or preschool or on a play date just by asking your child.

Take your child along on your weekly trip to the grocery store and quiz him on shapes and colors. You can also talk about the different fruits and vegetables in the produce section, where they grown and how you eat them. You can even talk about the different countries that a particular fruit is traditionally grown in, such as bananas come from South America, or kiwis from Australia and New Zealand.

Set some time aside each week to draw, color or make some sort of craft together. This doesn’t have to be anything too difficult. Even the simplest things like a few crayons and a piece of blank paper can turn into a lesson in color theory or into your child’s first writing lesson. Remember to keep it simple and fun. Draw a letter and ask your child to copy what you just did. Give lots of praise for the effort. Use alphabet cereal or noodles to spell your child’s name on a piece of construction paper.

We are surrounded by colors, shapes, numbers and letters. They are on cereal boxes, street signs and billboards. Just keep an eye out for them and use them to challenge your preschooler’s mind. Every day brings new learning opportunities for your child.

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Are you ready to challenge your preschooler’s mind even more? Take a look at www.kidsactivitycalendar.com for Alphabet Fun for your preschooler. The alphabet audios, coloring sheets and other activities are a great way to prepare your little one for kindergarten. Find out more at www.kidsactivitycalendar.com

Do you have a child that you know is very smart but seem to have problems when it comes to formal learning? Medically you know there is nothing wrong. So, what is going on?

I asked a dear friend of mine who has spent many years in childhood education to share her experience with us. I believe all parents should OPEN THEIR EARS AND HEARTS to her message as usually, parents are contributors to their child’s learning problem. My friend’s name is Poh Lin and she currently teaches from her home. She is especially good at working with children who are not motivated to learn. Parents usually turn to her whenever other “tuition” options can’t solve their child’s learning problem. I will give you more of her profile when she finally decides to write one for me

Below is her answer to this question of mine:
“Based on your experience, what kind of learning problems do you encounter?”

ANSWER:
I believe that home, environment and parental influence play an important part. What I am sharing here is my own personal experiences.

Generally, children with learning problems fall into these 3 categories: (Please note we are referring to normal, healthy young children. Medically, there is nothing wrong with them.)

• Age Factor or Readiness
  Nowadays parents are pushing their young children to school as early as 2 years old and to tuition centres or language centres as young as 3 years. They claim that they can do wonders and miracles to these innocent children who are still sucking thumbs, wearing diapers or still drinking milk from the bottles. No doubt, I agree exposure is important but you can do as much wonders at home spending quality time with your own children eg: playing, talking, reading, taking the child out to the park, just spending time… etc….. Every child progress at a different rate and every child will learn when they are ready.
• Short Attention Span
  This is getting common nowadays. Examples of short attention span for normal children: can’t sit still for long, fidgety, restless, easily bored, lack of focus, unmotivated, can only handle one short story at a time or a short activity at a time. One of the main factor I commonly observed is that children as young as babies are put in front of the “square box” (TV) while the maid or babysitter or mommy is busy. Most young children are kept entertained by the “square box” nowadays.
  They have no problem in retelling all the stories or movies they’ve watched from the TV or from the cinemas. They have no problem re-enacting as Transformer, Spiderman or as Gabriella from High School Musical or Barbie, but if you ask them to sit for one hour to do reading and writing, believe me it’s a HUGE challenge for some of these children. Some of these children even have problem sitting down for storytelling.

  I have a student that I am currently teaching. A very typical story nowadays. She is the only child in the family. She is very bright and intelligent. She can express herself very well in English. I believe she will score distinction for her storytelling and very dramatic as well. She was sent to me because she can’t read and write that well. She was only five then. After working and observing her for a short period, I realized that her problem was this:

  First, she doesn’t have a “big” problem.
  Second, she is just like any other normal child who just likes to play and has lots of imagination.
  Third, she has many thoughts running at the same time in her mind.

  She enjoys art and craft. She loves TV shows, movies and music. That is her main form of entertainment. To her reading from storybooks and writing may not be as exciting as watching “The Bee or High School Musical or Happy Feet”. Now how do I compete with this?



• Temporary Shut Down of the Brain
  The child is normal and smart but is bored with the same routine e.g. too much drilling of the same thing. The same story of starting school at an early age, lack of creativity, lack of stimulation, too much of rote learning or drilling of letters, words etc… When this happens, the child just turned off his/her brain to whatever that is given to him/her. They will act like they don’t know how to read simple words or recognize letters, etc…. The brain is just bored and waiting for new ideas, something fresh and stimulating.
  Just to share with you one experience I had with this special child who is very, very smart. His mother sent him to me when he was about 4 years old. At that time, he was sent to many schools and language centres. His mother wanted the best for him. He was at this popular language centre and the problem was this — he could already read but they put him in a level whereby he was drilled to write pages and pages of letters. In the end, this child just shut off his brain and refused to learn. He started to not recognize the letters when asked by the teacher. To plainly put it, he started acting “dumb”. His mom got frustrated and panicky because she realized that her son is regressing instead of progressing. She came to me and asked for help. After observing and assessing him, I realised his problem and I told his mom that she had to trust me. Believe me, it is not easy to ask a typical Malaysian mother to let me play with her child while she is paying me. It was during the school holidays and I worked with this child everyday. Instead of giving him more work to do, I decided to do the opposite. I tried to create an environment where he can play and be happy in a learning environment. I tried to get to know him and to build a close bond between the teacher and student. I try to find out what he likes and what he thinks. After that I slowly and indirectly gave him some work to do in between his play. There is learning, there is teaching but the child doesn’t realize it. It’s all in a fun way! Everything worked out fine. This child is now in Primary 4. He is doing very well in his school and he is very vocal, expressive in his thoughts and ideas, he is smart and he reads and writes very well. His plus point is his creativity in his writing.

Well, I hope this little insight has been beneficial to you. May we learn from mistakes that have been made and strive to make decisions to help, instead of hinder our children’s learning.

I’m sure you’ve heard it before, that it is important to develop a baby’s brain. Gone are the days where parents branded babies as too young to learn anything. Now the opposite is true. Parents are taught that a child’s critical learning time are during their first few years. Therefore, it is no surprise that the question of “how do I make my baby smarter?” has become a popular discussion topic among parents.

So, what can you do to make your baby smarter?

1. Develop and strengthen the connection between your child’s right and left brain.
This will help to increase their brain’s function as a whole. Encourage cross pattern exercises such as walking, swimming and crawling. Cross pattern refers to coordinated movement of the right arm left leg, and left arm right leg. Even children who can already walk will benefit from crawling exercises. You could make it into a fun game such as crawling races or playing catch. Even brain injured children have shown improvements by doing crawling exercises.
If you have very young babies, do the cross pattern movements for them. Bring up both the right are and left leg and tap them together. Do the same for the left arm and right leg. Sing a nursery rhyme as you do so to add to the fun. Other baby exercises include repeated crossing of the arms and legs.

2. Massage your baby to harness the power of touch.
A study of Romanian orphans led to an understanding that just feeding and changing babies is not enough. Babies that are deprived of human touch experience a decrease in brain development. Therefore, set aside some time to bond with your baby through baby massages. Choose a time when baby is calm, relaxed and comfortable such as after a bath. Start your massage from the head and work down to the toes. If you are pressed for time, just do a quick feet massage. First gently massage both feet at the same time. Then massage alternate foot. Besides helping baby’s brain development, baby massage also helps relief colic symptoms, improves circulation and digestion, strengthens immunity and lessens tension and irritability.

3. Play music, sing and dance with your baby.
Music can enhance your baby’s spatial intelligence, mathematical ability, linguistic ability and emotional intelligence. Some parents opt for classical music. Children songs, nursery rhymes and lullabies are good too. It doesn’t matter if you are a lousy singer, sing anyway. You could even make up your own songs or modify the lyrics. Later when babies become toddlers, let them have a go at musical instruments. Make your own shakers or just let them play drum on a tin can. Teach them to clap to a rhythm or echo a simple tune. Scout around for a “music and movement” playgroup and join in the fun.

4. Constantly talk to you baby.
The fact that they can’t talk back yet doesn’t mean they aren’t listening and digesting the information. As you go about your daily activities, describe to baby what you are doing. Talk about the things you see and hear. If you are in the kitchen preparing a meal, imagine you are hosting a cooking show. If you run out of ideas on what to say, use the alphabets to guide you. For example, “A” could be for apple. Go into details that relate to apples such as the color of apples, how does it taste like, where can you find them, and what can you do with them. Maybe include a song about apples. .
Betty Hart and Todd Risley found in their study of 42 children that those who had heard more words early in their life later developed higher IQs and richer vocabularies. They also performed better in elementary school.

5. Read to your babies.
Don’t wait until they have stopped chewing books or tearing pages. Read through those stages and make it part of your daily routine. Babies have short attention spans so conduct short reading sessions but do it often. Don’t force learning to take place. Keep it fun and relaxed. Focus more on developing their love for books. Reading aloud to children helps to develop many pre-reading skills. When they are ready for formal lessons, watch them excel.

Baby brains are excellent learning machines. It is not difficult nor expensive to raise a smart baby. What it requires is your time, attention and commitment to interact and to provide a stimulating environment.

If you have a toddler who likes to tear paper, what do you do? First reaction would be “Noooooo!” Paper tearing is not something we parents see as beneficial but rather destructive. But you know what? It can be beneficial. If you have a young child who likes to tear paper, might as well make it into a lesson. But of course, the one important rule to drill into their heads would be to GET PERMISSION first. Only tear paper that is supplied by a parent.

So, what are the benefits of paper tearing?

• teach about size (big, small)
• teach counting (how many pieces can you tear)
• teach art (use the torn pieces of paper to make a collage)
• teach vocabulary (use descriptive word throughout the activity such as “tearing”, “ripping”, “big”, “small”)

I believe the actual act of tearing is also beneficial to their physical development as it refines small muscle movements. Bet you didn’t know tearing paper is actually a skill that will help them later when they learn how to cut with scissors. Another pre-cutting skill is crushing paper.

So the next time you see your baby/toddler tearing paper, look at it as an opportunity for growth and development. Channel and mold their so-called destructiveness into a more positive outcome.

Here is something you can do with all those pesky fliers you get in the mail. Cut them up, recreate your own handout and then integrate it into your children’s play.
A flier from McDonald found its way into my home and we cut it up to recreate our own menu. My daughter then opened her own McDonald restaurant. Sometimes it is difficult for children to create something on their own. Like this menu thing, my daughter would throw the idea out the door if she had to draw out the food. Plus at this stage (6 years old), she still hasn’t acquired the idea of how much things cost. So the flier in the mail helped the creative process.
If you have a younger child, you could use the pictures to teach categorization. The next time you go to the hypermarket for some shopping, just grab their picture flier — the one where they list out all the things they have on special offer. Cut out the pictures and have your child stick them into different groups - vegetables, fruits, electrical, clothes etc….

So next time you get swamped with fliers, don’t throw them out too fast. See if it could somehow contribute to your child’s learning.

Science lesson for K today was on the heart. I found this wonderful website called KidsHealth with valuable information to help teach about “the body”. They have pages on the following topics:

• Bone
• Brain
• Digestive System
• Ear
• Eye
• Hair
• Heart
• Kidneys
• Lungs
• Muscles
• Nails
• Nose
• Skin
• Teeth
• Tongue

What I like about it is their diagrams. They have a picture of the heart beating and with arrows to show how the blood flows. Plus, you can also see the valves opening and closing. Sure helps to have visual when you are teaching. They also have a video section.

You may feel the information may be too advanced for a kindergartner, so improvise as needed. But I think it’s okay to introduce words like aorta, pulmonary, circulation etc… Do it in the spirit of learning. Don’t make them feel like they have to memorize everything like for a test. You want your child to go away saying “Gee whiz, that was interesting!”

Hope you enjoy the site as much as I did.