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"There are many ways big body play supports and enhances children’s learning. Younger children gain a lot of information about their bodies through big body play. For example, when a mother kisses or massages her baby’s body, her baby learns about where his body ends and the space around him begins. He also learns how different types of touch feel and the names for those feelings. When a toddler jumps into her dad’s lap, or she runs to hug a friend, she learns how to control and regulate her body movements. She also learns that she should adapt the intensity of her movements in relation to another person. For example, she might run to hug her friend with less force than she uses to jump into her dad’s lap. When children enjoy big body play they can also build both verbal and nonverbal communication skills. Through big body play, they learn to correctly interpret nonverbal gestures, like when my friend puts her hand up it means I should stop but if she smiles it means I can keep going. Children will apply this skill throughout their lives in different social situations. When children take turns jumping off a tree stump they practice taking turns. And, because most children enjoy the play so much, they learn how to compromise. They might let other children go first and be strongest so that the play can continue. Children are also calmer for longer periods of time following very rowdy play. Greater learning is likely during these calm, focused periods. " Read more: http://families.naeyc.org/learning-and-development/child-development/what-big-body-play-and-why-it-important
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"Lehrer began by quoting Picasso: “Every child is born an artist. The problems begin once we start to grow up.” Actually, Lehrer noted, the problems begin in a very specific time frame: the years covering third, fourth, and fifth grade. It’s during this period, he says, that many kids “conclude that they are not creative, and this is in large part because they start to realize that that their drawing is not quite as pretty as they would like, that they can put the brush in the wrong place, that their short stories don’t live up to their expectations—so they become self-conscious and self-aware, and then they shut themselves down.” Parents and teachers must intervene during this crucial window to ensure that children’s creativity doesn’t wither.
One such intervention: “We have to expand our notion of what productivity means,” said Lehrer. “Right now we are grooming our kids to think in a very particular way, which assumes that the right way to be thinking is to be attentive, to stare straight ahead—which is why we diagnose 20 percent of kids in many classrooms as having attention deficit disorders, when the research is actually more complicated.”
Read more:http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2012/05/are-we-wringing-the-creativity-out-of-kids/
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If you haven't already done so, it's absolutely imperative that you watch the video about Caine's Arcade embedded above.
"The story of 9-year old Caine Monroy, who built an adorably functioning arcade out of cardboard boxes inside of his father auto parts store in East Los Angeles, is virtually guaranteed to melt the icy facade of even the most jaded cynic into a sniffling puddle of joyous inspiration."
Update: "A scholarship fund has been set up to help Caine go to college and the Goldhirsh Foundation has pledged a $250,000 dollar-for-dollar matching donation for the newly established Caine's Arcade Foundation. For every dollar donated to the scholarship fund, the foundation will give another dollar toward supporting entrepreneurship among young children."
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"Involvement in the arts is associated with gains in math, reading, cognitive ability, critical thinking, and verbal skill. Arts learning can also improve motivation, concentration, confidence, and teamwork. A 2005 report by the Rand Corporation about the visual arts argues that the intrinsic pleasures and stimulation of the art experience do more than sweeten an individual's life -- according to the report, they "can connect people more deeply to the world and open them to new ways of seeing," creating the foundation to forge social bonds and community cohesion. And strong arts programming in schools helps close a gap that has left many a child behind: From Mozart for babies to tutus for toddlers to family trips to the museum, the children of affluent, aspiring parents generally get exposed to the arts whether or not public schools provide them. Low-income children, often, do not. "Arts education enables those children from a financially challenged background to have a more level playing field with children who have had those enrichment experiences,'' says Eric Cooper, president and founder of the National Urban Alliance for Effective Education."
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Integrating arts into the curriculum, especially for kids with brain injury or other disabilities, canproduce many amazing results.
"In both general education and special education populations, the arts have been found to:
-Reach students in ways that they are not otherwise being reached;
-Connect students to themselves and each other;
-Transform the environment for learning; -Provide learning opportunities for the adults in the lives of young people; -Provide new challenges for those students already considered successful; -Connect learning experiences to the world of real work; -Enable young people to have direct involvement with the arts and artists (through "artists-in-residence" programs); -andSupport extended engagement in the artistic process (Fiske, 1999). These benefits, however, are only reaped when teachers are provided the professional development and support to learn how to integrate and fully involve the arts in the classroom (Fiske, 1999). There are additional considerations for the role the arts play in influencing students' academic and social development. In a compendium of 64 educational studies, Critical Links (Deasy, 2002), several studies make the connection between the impact the arts have on academics for students with disabilities:
-Drama develops higher order language and literacy skills as students act out historical or literary figures, they immerse themselves in a theme and can explore and learn about it in a personal way.
-Music enhances language learning by teaching students about rhythm, pitch, and sound. Rhythm helps students learn rhymes and develop phonological awareness — components of reading. Repetitive songs help teach academic facts to be memorized (like the multiplication tables) and help make the learning experience easier and more enjoyable.
-Fine Art experiences develop literacy, numeracy, and writing skills. Drawing and painting reinforce motor skills and can also be a way of learning shapes, contrasts, boundaries, spatial relationships, size and other math concepts."
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Every day where we work, we see our young students struggling with the transition from home to school. They're all wonderful kids, but some can't share easily or listen in a group. (Here's an article recommended by Mrs.
"The child filling out the worksheet is engaged in a more one-dimensional task, but the child in the play-based program interacts meaningfully with peers, materials, and ideas.
Programs centered around constructive, teacher-moderated play are very effective. For instance, one randomized, controlled trial had 4- and 5-year-olds engage in make-believe play with adults and found substantial and durable gains in the ability of children to show self-control and to delay gratification. Countless other studies support the association between dramatic play and self-regulation.
Through play, children learn to take turns, delay gratification, negotiate conflicts, solve problems, share goals, acquire flexibility, and live with disappointment. By allowing children to imagine walking in another person's shoes, imaginative play also seeds the development of empathy, a key ingredient for intellectual and social-emotional success.
The real "readiness" skills that make for an academically successful kindergartener or college student have as much to do with emotional intelligence as they do with academic preparation. Kindergartners need to know not just sight words and lower case letters, but how to search for meaning. The same is true of 18-year-olds."
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Parents need to be encouraging kids to be creative by avoiding using blocks to creativity at home and seek out different specific activities.
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Children's play is threatened, say experts who advise that kids – from toddlers to tweens – should be relearning how to play. Roughhousing and fantasy feed development. (This is why #play is SO important in my household.
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6abc.comParenting: 'Redshirting" in kindergarten?6abc.comJanuary 26, 2012 (WPVI) -- It's a growing trend among parents of young children: delaying a child's entry into kindergarten due to age, size, maturity, or ability.
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Norman private school aims for holistic approach to children's educationNewsOK.comThe private school affords children a family-like setting, with learning through creative play and interaction with the natural world, officials say.
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Since the last decade of the previous century, with the advent of Internet in a big way, societies all round the world have undergone a sea change. With the shifts in career preferences, education has largely become a life long.
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The best reason to make melody a part of your child's life, plus fun music games for kids of every age! Read how music therapy is helping kids with ADHD.
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Understanding Children's Writing Evolution
From scribbles to drawings to phrase and whole-sentence writing. Respect the process. Understand, nurture and encourage your child's gift in reading and writing. Know children's writing evolution.
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"I recently stumbled across a discussion on Twitter about the ways in which fiction and literature can promote the development of emotional intelligence, social skills and other touchy-feely forms of literacy."
"Are Games as Good as Literature – or Better?
Despite the similarity of being able to try on different social roles, experience rich simulations of reality, and explore the inner working of how others think, there are substantial differences between games and literature. The most obvious one being that one requires an internal creation of the action, while the other relies on an external representation.
To a certain extent, then, comparing these two is an apple vs. orange situation. They are different at a fundamental level, even though they both have the same goals and accomplish the same objectives. There is no study currently available that compare which parts of the brain are accessed during video game play and reading literature.
This is an area worthy of inquiry and further study. Speculatively, there could be differences between the activity of parts of the brain related to imagination that could be more or less at play for one medium or the other. If that is the case, it is likely that reading has a greater effect on stimulating these responses than game play does. That is entirely speculative though."
Read more: http://www.onlineuniversities.com/blog/2012/04/building-social-skills-and-literacy-through-gaming/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
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A 9 year old boy who built an elaborate cardboard arcade in his dad's used auto parts store is about to have the best day of his life.
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"Where can I get information that would tell me the generally accepted 'grade
level' for commonly-read elementary school books?" This question is often asked,
and the answers can be confusing. Yes, answers. There are lots of
different answers. I'll try to cover the common ones. The easiest way to find the reading level of a children's paperback book is
to turn it over. Many books include the reading level, in various forms. Some
books might say RL3 for reading level 3, or RL:5.9 for reading level 5.9. Less
specific designations might say 007-009 for ages 7 to 9, or 0812 for ages 8 to
12. These publishers designations are confusing, particularly when you pick up
one copy of a Roald Dahl book in the bookstore and see it designated as 0812,
and pick up another version of the very same book and see it designated as 0712.
And reading levels are generally only printed on the paperback versions of
books. Some educational publishers suggested reading levels are notoriously
high (reading level indicated is higher than content, vocabulary and length
would indicate, or even higher than the same book in mass market publication),
but you must also consider the use of the book: in school, the students not only
read the books, but study content, discuss grammar and style, plot construction,
and lots of other aspects of the book. And some mass market publication reading
levels (on the back cover of paperbacks) are notoriously low; the reading level
indicated is appropriate for the vocabulary and length, but the content is far
more mature. Details on a few of the most popular means for determining
"reading level": SHOW ORIGINAL to READ MORE"
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"Play can be the long-sought bridge back to that deep emotional bond between parent and child. Play, with all its exuberance and delighted togetherness, can ease the stress of parenting. Playful Parenting is a way to enter a child's world, on the child's terms, in order to foster closeness, confidence, and connection." -- Lawrence Cohen, Playful Parenting*
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Videos on "How does play-based learning support the development of self-regulation?", What can educators do to support students in developing self-regulation? and more.
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Let children be the animals they have the right to be By Marc Bekoff...
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You don't want any more plastic toys that make loud noise or make your kids look like zombies. We can help.
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RT @MovingSmartNow: "Ball Play is an early lesson in the art and science of unpredictability..." http://t.co/dItcWTg5 #ece #parents #play #letsmove...
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Dr. Richard Rende: For toddlers, play and learning go hand in handSouthCoastToday.comAre there new cutting-edge technology programs that are being integrated into the curriculum?
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When it comes to raising creative kids, I have a LOVE/HATE relationship with our public schools. My biggest complaint is in the creative thinking department.
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Play fosters essential skills among kids: self-control, communication, and cooperation. (RT @pbskids: Playtime is fun!
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