PRESCHOOLERS
Three and four-year-old children are often called preschoolers. Preschool children are making developmental strides and express an interest in the world around them. They want to touch, taste, smell, hear, and test things for themselves. They are eager to learn. They learn by experiencing and by doing. Preschoolers learn from their play. They are busy developing skills, using language, and struggling to gain inner control.
Preschoolers want to establish themselves as separate from their parents. They are more independent than toddlers. They can express their needs since they have greater command of language.
Fears often develop during the preschool years. Common fears include new places and experiences and separation from parents and other important people. You can expect the preschool child to test you over and over again, to use profanity and other forbidden words, and to act very silly. Preschoolers may still have trouble getting along with other children, and sharing may still be difficult. Because of their developing imaginations and rich fantasy lives, they may have trouble telling fantasy from reality. They may also talk about imaginary friends. Preschoolers need clear and
simple rules so that they know the boundaries of acceptable behavior.
Understanding their growth and development will help you guide preschoolers through this stage. This fact sheet lists some of the characteristics of preschoolers. These characteristics are listed for three main areas: physical (body), social (getting along with others) and emotional (feelings), and intellectual (thinking and language) development. Remember that all preschoolers are different and reach the various stages at different times.
PHYSICAL DEVELOPMENT
THREE-YEAR-OLD CHILDREN
- They walk on tip toes.
- They stand on one foot.
- They jump horizontally.
- They ride a tricycle.
- They build towers of 6-9 blocks.
- They catch a ball.
- They smear or daub paint. They draw or paint in vertical, horizontal, and circular motions.
- They can handle small objects (such as puzzles, pegboards, and parquetry sets).
- They grow about 3 inches taller in a year.
FOUR-YEAR-OLD CHILDREN
- They have more small muscle control. They can make representational pictures (for example, pictures of houses, people, and flowers).
- They run on tip toes.
- They hop on one foot.
- They gallop.
- They begin to skip.
- They throw a ball overhand.
- They pump themselves on a swing.
- They like unzipping, unsnapping, and unbuttoning clothes.
- They dress themselves.
- They can cut on a line with scissors.
- They like lacing their own shoes (but not tying).
- They can make designs and write crude letters.
- They are very active and aggressive in their play.
SOCIAL AND EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT
THREE-YEAR-OLD CHILDREN
- They enjoy dramatic play with other children.
- They begin to learn to share.
- They need to know clear and consistent rules and what the consequences for breaking them are.
- Their emotions are usually extreme and short-lived. They need to be encouraged to express their feelings with words.
FOUR-YEAR-OLD CHILDREN
- They have very active imaginations.
- They sometimes have imaginary friends.
- They can be aggressive but want friends and enjoy being with other children.
- They tend to brag and be bossy.
- They are learning to take turns and to share. Games and other activities can help preschoolers learn about taking turns.
- They enjoy pretending to be important adults (mother, father, doctor, nurse, police officer, mail carrier, etc.).
- They need to feel important and worthwhile.
- They need opportunities to feel more freedom and independence.
- They appreciate praise for their achievements.
INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
THREE-YEAR-OLD CHILDREN
- They can communicate their needs, ideas, and questions.
- Their attention span is a little longer so they can participate in group activities.
- Preschool children learn best by doing. They need a variety of activities. They need indoor and outdoor space. They need a balance between active and quiet play.
FOUR-YEAR-OLD CHILDREN
- They are very talkative.
- They enjoy serious discussions.
- They ask lots of questions, including "how" and "why" questions.
- Their language includes silly words and profanity.
- Their classification skills and reasoning ability are developing.
- They should understand some basic concepts such as number, size, weight, color, texture, distance, time, and position.
ACTIVITIES TO TRY
THREE-YEAR-OLD CHILDREN
- Preschoolers need time to climb, jump, and ride tricycles.
- Let them play with blocks of different sizes and shapes.
- Have them play with toys that have small parts (such as pegboards and puzzles).
- Teach them to dress and undress themselves.
- Have them help with household chores such as setting and clearing the table and watering plants.
- Provide housekeeping toys.
- Encourage them to count household objects as you perform household tasks (for example, count the spoons, cups, etc. as you set the table).
- Read stories to them.
- Sing songs and have them make up their own songs.
- Encourage them to dance and move to music.
- Answer their "how" and "why" questions honestly. Look for answers to preschoolers' questions in reference books with them.
- Provide paint, crayons, chalk, colored pens, collage materials, and play dough for preschoolers to use.
FOUR-YEAR-OLD CHILDREN
- Take preschoolers outside to play.
- Let them test their sense of balance by walking on a straight line, a curved line, and a low balance beam.
- Provide activities in which preschoolers sort objects (such as buttons or seeds) according to their characteristics.
- Ask them to make up stories or make up the ending for a story.
- Help them mix paint to make new colors.
- Visit places in the community that are of interest to them (for example, the fire station or the library during a story or music hour).
- Help them set up play stores, farms, or villages.
- Help them plant seeds and take care of them.
- Provide a box of dress-up clothes for a play corner. (See how the children play with these clothes. They may imitate people they know. You can learn a lot about children by watching them play.)
- Make paper bag puppets. Then have a puppet show with the children. Children often express their feelings through this type of play.
- Play simple board games with them.
(Reprinted with permission from the National Network for Child Care - NNCC.
Malley, C. (1991). *Preschooler development*. (Family Day Care Facts
series). Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts).
Monday, January 5, 2009
PRESCHOOL: Academics or Play?
Discussions about academics in early childhood programs often oversimplify the debate as a choice between academics or play in preschool and kindergarten.
In truth, all high-quality early childhood programs are academic, but in a professional and appropriate way. Research shows that young children learn best through manipulation of materials and hands-on experiences, planned by knowledgeable teachers. To parents, this learning may look like play, but it is play with purpose.
A good teacher creates a learning environment. She organizes materials so that children use them to figure things out, practice skills, and learn new concepts. Children get time to explore those materials, so that through repetition and success they develop the confidence to try more complex activities. Most important, the teacher is always ready to teach.
Much of the misunderstanding in this debate between play and academics stems from the definition of 'teaching' for young children. Many people see a teacher only as an instructor, imparting concepts and skills to patiently listening young children.
Good preschools and kindergartens know that three-, four- and five-year-olds are wigglers and doers. To help children stay with tasks and learn important concepts and skills, teachers work with, instead of against, their individual developmental styles. A good teacher watches as a child explores materials. He asks open-ended questions that stimulate the child's thinking: "What do you think would happen if you tried...?" She helps develop vocabulary by describing what the child in doing: "I see you used lots of colors - red, green, blue and brown."
To nurture reading and writing skills, teachers read many stories each day with children. Through these stories, children learn many of the conventions of written language, use picture clues, and play with the sounds of language. Teachers help children learn to recognize their own names and encourage them to write their names and other words. Teachers embed literacy activities in meaningful experiences: writing letters to friends, reading the classroom helper chart, and labeling the classroom.
Good preschools and kindergartens also implant math and science in children's activities. Counting and one-to-one correspondence are learned in daily routines of attendance and setting the table for snacks. Geometry is explored in block building. Vocabulary and concepts of measurement are taught at the sand and water table. Scientific observation is developed through projects about weather, seasonal changes, and plant and animal life.
In high-quality preschools and kindergartens, academic learning is playful and exploratory. Children contribute their own ideas, use their own problem-solving strategies, and pursue their own interests. Teachers skillfully weave in academic goals and objectives as they build on what children can do, and challenge them to try new things. Children are not left to their own devices, nor is their development left to chance.
Quality teachers know that high standards are important, but they also know the nature of learning at this age, and how academics are most effectively and appropriately incorporated into preschool and kindergarten. Using play to build success does not mean the curriculum is not academic. It means it is what's best for three-, four- and five-year-old children.
(Excerpted from "Rigorous Academics in Preschool and Kindergarten?" by Gaye Gronlund - an article in the NAEYC journal, Young Children)
In truth, all high-quality early childhood programs are academic, but in a professional and appropriate way. Research shows that young children learn best through manipulation of materials and hands-on experiences, planned by knowledgeable teachers. To parents, this learning may look like play, but it is play with purpose.
A good teacher creates a learning environment. She organizes materials so that children use them to figure things out, practice skills, and learn new concepts. Children get time to explore those materials, so that through repetition and success they develop the confidence to try more complex activities. Most important, the teacher is always ready to teach.
Much of the misunderstanding in this debate between play and academics stems from the definition of 'teaching' for young children. Many people see a teacher only as an instructor, imparting concepts and skills to patiently listening young children.
Good preschools and kindergartens know that three-, four- and five-year-olds are wigglers and doers. To help children stay with tasks and learn important concepts and skills, teachers work with, instead of against, their individual developmental styles. A good teacher watches as a child explores materials. He asks open-ended questions that stimulate the child's thinking: "What do you think would happen if you tried...?" She helps develop vocabulary by describing what the child in doing: "I see you used lots of colors - red, green, blue and brown."
To nurture reading and writing skills, teachers read many stories each day with children. Through these stories, children learn many of the conventions of written language, use picture clues, and play with the sounds of language. Teachers help children learn to recognize their own names and encourage them to write their names and other words. Teachers embed literacy activities in meaningful experiences: writing letters to friends, reading the classroom helper chart, and labeling the classroom.
Good preschools and kindergartens also implant math and science in children's activities. Counting and one-to-one correspondence are learned in daily routines of attendance and setting the table for snacks. Geometry is explored in block building. Vocabulary and concepts of measurement are taught at the sand and water table. Scientific observation is developed through projects about weather, seasonal changes, and plant and animal life.
In high-quality preschools and kindergartens, academic learning is playful and exploratory. Children contribute their own ideas, use their own problem-solving strategies, and pursue their own interests. Teachers skillfully weave in academic goals and objectives as they build on what children can do, and challenge them to try new things. Children are not left to their own devices, nor is their development left to chance.
Quality teachers know that high standards are important, but they also know the nature of learning at this age, and how academics are most effectively and appropriately incorporated into preschool and kindergarten. Using play to build success does not mean the curriculum is not academic. It means it is what's best for three-, four- and five-year-old children.
(Excerpted from "Rigorous Academics in Preschool and Kindergarten?" by Gaye Gronlund - an article in the NAEYC journal, Young Children)
UNDERSTANDING PRESCHOOL CHILD DEVELOPMENT
What is a preschooler?
Depending on how you look at him or her a preschooler can be defined or understood in many different ways. Here are some ways to help you relate to and improve your relationship with your preschool age child.
Physical Development:
The preschool child is a whirlwind of activity. They are active explorers of the world around them. In addition, they are more confident about using their bodies. They run smoothly, at moderate speeds, jump, climb and perform other "gross motor" activities fairly well.
"Fine motor" skills, i.e., using scissors, drawing, painting, and pasting are coming along but have not yet reached the level of skill of an older 5 to 7 year old child.
Cognitive Development:
Preschoolers can be described, in terms of their cognition, as "little explorer's." They are seeking to understand how the world operates and functions. They role-play mom and dad to determine gender differences and they take things apart to see how things work.
Preschoolers can remember events from day to day; they can take what they have learned from yesterday and begin to see how it applies to today and even anticipate tomorrow. They still cannot separate fantasy from reality and still live in a fairy tale, pre-operational world. Attention span is approximately 8 to 15 minutes on a good day.
Social Development:
Preschool age children are beginning to learn how to interact with their peers. At 3 and 4 years of age they engage in parallel play. Parallel play consists of children, in a group, playing with the same toys, but not with each other. They play "side-by-side" versus cooperatively together.
At 5 and 6 years of age children begin to play cooperative, e.g., throwing a ball to each other and rolling cars back and forth. At this age gender identity is also forming and children become curious about sexual differences. As friendships develop they become concerned with having "best" friends. Expressive arts, that develop gross and fine motor skills, are beneficial.
Emotional/Self Development:
At this age, preschoolers will be "like" all kinds of people from mom and dad, to the garbage man, to the policeman. The purpose behind this type of play is to understand the role of adults in their life.
Preschoolers want to please adults. They need frequent approval and reassurance from primary caregivers. They like to be observed when playing and wants parent's full attention. They may become fearful when separated from parents or caregivers but are generally easily consoled and adjust to new environments within a few minutes.
Language Development:
Language development is tied into cognitive development but is such a major part of the preschool age child, that it is addressed as a separate category.
Developmentally, three-year-old children can use complete sentences and is constantly asking questions. They can speak about 900 words and can communicate their basic needs, such as "I'm hungry" or "My foot hurts."
Four-year-old children can use complete and compound sentences. They will speak approximately 1,500 words. They like to sing, tell tall tales, brag, and will often exaggerate and call other children names.
Five-year-old children speak over 2,000 words and love to tell and listen to stories. They can focus for longer periods of time and often asks thoughtful questions.
In addition, 3-5 year old children can only understand simple, clear commands and have difficulty following multi-step directives, such as: "Clean your room."
Depending on how you look at him or her a preschooler can be defined or understood in many different ways. Here are some ways to help you relate to and improve your relationship with your preschool age child.
Physical Development:
The preschool child is a whirlwind of activity. They are active explorers of the world around them. In addition, they are more confident about using their bodies. They run smoothly, at moderate speeds, jump, climb and perform other "gross motor" activities fairly well.
"Fine motor" skills, i.e., using scissors, drawing, painting, and pasting are coming along but have not yet reached the level of skill of an older 5 to 7 year old child.
Cognitive Development:
Preschoolers can be described, in terms of their cognition, as "little explorer's." They are seeking to understand how the world operates and functions. They role-play mom and dad to determine gender differences and they take things apart to see how things work.
Preschoolers can remember events from day to day; they can take what they have learned from yesterday and begin to see how it applies to today and even anticipate tomorrow. They still cannot separate fantasy from reality and still live in a fairy tale, pre-operational world. Attention span is approximately 8 to 15 minutes on a good day.
Social Development:
Preschool age children are beginning to learn how to interact with their peers. At 3 and 4 years of age they engage in parallel play. Parallel play consists of children, in a group, playing with the same toys, but not with each other. They play "side-by-side" versus cooperatively together.
At 5 and 6 years of age children begin to play cooperative, e.g., throwing a ball to each other and rolling cars back and forth. At this age gender identity is also forming and children become curious about sexual differences. As friendships develop they become concerned with having "best" friends. Expressive arts, that develop gross and fine motor skills, are beneficial.
Emotional/Self Development:
At this age, preschoolers will be "like" all kinds of people from mom and dad, to the garbage man, to the policeman. The purpose behind this type of play is to understand the role of adults in their life.
Preschoolers want to please adults. They need frequent approval and reassurance from primary caregivers. They like to be observed when playing and wants parent's full attention. They may become fearful when separated from parents or caregivers but are generally easily consoled and adjust to new environments within a few minutes.
Language Development:
Language development is tied into cognitive development but is such a major part of the preschool age child, that it is addressed as a separate category.
Developmentally, three-year-old children can use complete sentences and is constantly asking questions. They can speak about 900 words and can communicate their basic needs, such as "I'm hungry" or "My foot hurts."
Four-year-old children can use complete and compound sentences. They will speak approximately 1,500 words. They like to sing, tell tall tales, brag, and will often exaggerate and call other children names.
Five-year-old children speak over 2,000 words and love to tell and listen to stories. They can focus for longer periods of time and often asks thoughtful questions.
In addition, 3-5 year old children can only understand simple, clear commands and have difficulty following multi-step directives, such as: "Clean your room."
Sunday, January 4, 2009
CHILDREN'S OUTDOOR PLAY & LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS: Returning to Natur
It is unfortunate that children can't design their outdoor play environments. Research on children's preferences shows that if children had the design skills to do so, their creations would be completely different from the areas called playgrounds that most adults design for them. Outdoor spaces designed by children would not only be fully naturalized with plants, trees, flowers, water, dirt, sand, mud, animals and insects, but also would be rich with a wide variety of play opportunities of every imaginable type. If children could design their outdoor play spaces, they would be rich developmentally appropriate learning environments where children would want to stay all day.
Playground Paradigm Paralysis
We are all creatures of our experience, and our common experiences usually shape the conventional wisdom, or paradigms, by which we operate. When most adults were children, playgrounds were asphalt areas with gross motor play equipment such as swings, jungle gyms and slides where they went for recess. Most adults see this as their model for a children's playground.
So when it comes time to plan and design a playground, the paradigm is to search through the catalogues of playground equipment, pick a piece or two that looks good to the adult and place it in an outdoor space which resembles their childhood memories of playgrounds. This is easy and doesn't take a whole lot of effort. Then once or twice a day, teachers let children go outside for a recess from their classroom activities to play on the equipment.
Today, fortunately, most playground equipment is becoming much safer than when adults grew up. National standards encourage the installation of safety fall surfaces and ADA is making the equipment more accessible. However, limiting outdoor playgrounds to gross motor activities and manufactured equipment falls way short of the potential of outdoor areas to be rich play and learning environments for children. This playground design paradigm paralysis also denies children their birthright to experience the entire natural outdoors which includes vegetation, animals, insects water and sand, not just the sun and air that manufactured playgrounds offer.
It is a well accepted principal in early childhood education that children learn best through free play and discovery. Children's free play is a complex concept that eludes precise definition, but children's play typically is pleasurable, self-motivated, imaginative, non-goal directed, spontaneous, active, and free of adult-imposed rules1. Quality play involves the whole child: gross motor, fine motor, senses, emotion, intellect, individual growth and social interaction.
Childhood of Imprisonment
The world once offered thousands of delights of free play to children. Children used to have access to the world at large, whether it was the sidewalks, streets, alleys, vacant lots and parks of the inner city or the fields, forests, streams and yards of suburbia and the rural countryside. Children could play, explore and interact with the natural world with little or no restriction or supervision.
The lives of children today are much more structured and supervised, with few opportunities for free play. Their physical boundaries have shrunk. A number of factors have led to this. Parents are afraid for their children's safety when they leave the house alone; many children are no longer free to roam their neighborhoods or even their own yards unless accompanied by adults. Some working families can't supervise their children after school, giving rise to latchkey children who stay indoors or attend supervised after-school activities. Furthermore, children's lives have become structured and scheduled by adults, who hold the mistaken belief that this sport or that lesson will make their children more successful as adults.
Children have little time for free play any more. And when children do have free time, it's often spent inside in front of the television or computers. For some children, that's because their neighborhood, apartment complex or house has no outdoor play spaces. With budgets for city and state governments slashed, public parks and outdoor playgrounds have deteriorated and been abandoned. Children's opportunities to interact in a naturalized outdoor setting is greatly diminished today.
Childhood and outdoor play are no longer synonymous. Today, many children live what one play authority has referred to as a childhood of imprisonment. Child care facility playgrounds are often the only outdoor activities that many young children experience anymore.
Our company first became interested in the opportunities that outdoor play offers children's development when, in 1993, we conducted extensive focus group research with children and parents for a children's center we were designing. We were fascinated when the research consistently showed that children had a strong preference to play outdoors in natural landscapes, and that parents generally supported this kind of play.
Biophilia: The Love of Outdoors
Two new disciplines, eco-psychology6 and evolutionary psychology, are now suggesting that humans are genetically programmed by evolution with an affinity for the natural outdoors. Evolutionary psychologists use the term biophilia to refer to this innate, hereditary emotional attraction of humans to nature and other living organisms. Biophilia is the biologically based human need to affiliate with nature and the genetic basis for human's positive responses to nature. Why? Researchers say that for more than 99 percent of human history, people lived in hunter-gatherer bands totally and intimately involved in nature. So in relative terms, urban societies have existed for scarcely more than a blink of time. Our original nature-based evolutionary genetic coding and instincts are still an essential part of us and continue to shape our behavior and responses to nature.
Well over 100 studies of outdoor experiences in the wilderness and natural areas show that natural outdoor environments produce positive physiological and psychological responses in humans, including reduced stress and a general feeling of well-being. It is also a clear-cut finding that people, and especially young children who have not yet adapted to the man-made world, consistently prefer the natural landscape to built environments. Children's instinctive feelings of continuity with nature are demonstrated by the attraction children have for fairy tales set in nature and populated with animal characters. Additional anecdotal evidence is that more children and adults visit zoos and aquariums than attend all major professional sports combined.
Biophobia: The Aversion to Nature
However, if this human natural attraction to nature is not given opportunities to be exercised and flourish during the early years of life, the opposite, biophobia, an aversion to nature, may develop. Biophobia ranges from discomfort in natural places to active scorn for whatever is not man-made, managed or air conditioned. Biophobia is also manifest in the tendency to regard nature as nothing more than a disposable resource.
Environmental Education
Environmental education needs to start at any early age with hands-on experience with nature. There is considerable evidence that concern for the environment is based on an affection for nature that only develops with autonomous, unmediated contact with it. In their early years, children's developmental tendency towards empathy with the natural world needs to be supported with free access to an area of limited size over an extended period of time. It is only by intimately knowing the wonder of nature's complexity in a particular place that leads to a full appreciation of the immense beauty of the planet as a whole. In todays society, environmental education requires that in schools, children have regular personal interaction with as diverse a natural setting as possible.
The Importance of Nature to Children
Studies have provided convincing evidence that the way people feel in pleasing natural environments improves recall of information, creative problem solving, and creativity. Early experiences with the natural world have been positively linked with the development of imagination and the sense of wonder. Wonder is important as it a motivator for life long learning. There is also strong evidence that young children respond more positively to experiences in the outdoors than adults as they have not yet adapted to unnatural, man-made, indoor environments.
The natural world is essential to the emotional health of children. Just as children need positive adult contact and a sense of connection to the wider human community, they also need positive contact with nature and the chance for solitude and the sense of wonder that nature offers. When children play in nature they are more likely to have positive feelings about each other and their surroundings.
Outdoor environments are also important to children's development of independence and autonomy. Outdoor space allows children to gradually experiment with increasing distance from their caretaker. While the development of greater independence from toddlerhood to middle childhood can happen within the confines of indoor spaces, safe space outdoors greatly adds to the ability of children to naturally experiment with independence and separation, and the adult's willingness to trust the child's competence which is essential for separation to happen. This is particularly important for children who live in small and crowded homes.
Children's Experience with the Natural World
Children's outdoor play is different from time spent indoors. The sensory experiences are different, and different standards of play apply. Activities which may be frowned on indoors can be safely tolerated outdoors. Children have greater freedom not only to run and shout, but also to interact with and manipulate the environment. Children are free to do 'messy' activities outdoors that won't be tolerated indoors.
Natural outdoor environments have three qualities that are unique and appealing to children as play environments - their unending diversity; the fact that they are not created by adults; and their feeling of timelessness - the landscapes, trees, rivers described in fairy tales and myths still exist today.
Children experience the natural environment differently than adults. Adults typically see nature as background for what they are doing. Children experience nature, not as background for events, but rather as a stimulator and experiential component of their activities. The world of nature is not a scene or even a landscape. Nature for the child is sheer sensory experience. Children judge the natural setting not by its aesthetics, but rather by how they can interact with the environment.
Children have a unique, direct and experiential way of knowing the natural world as a place of beauty, mystery and wonder. Children's special affinity for the natural environment is connected to the child's development and his or her way of knowing.
Plants, together with soil, sand, and water, provide settings that can be manipulated. You can build a trench in the sand and dirt or a rock dam over a stream, but there's not much you can do to a jungle gym except climb, hang, or fall off. Natural elements provide for open-ended play that emphasize unstructured creative exploration with diverse materials. The high levels of complexity and variety nature offers invites longer and more complex play. Because of their interactive properties, plants stimulate discovery, dramatic pretend play, and imagination. Plants speak to all of the senses, so it's not surprising that children are closely attuned to environments with vegetation. Plants, in a pleasant environment with a mix of sun, shade, color, texture, fragrance, and softness of enclosure also encourage a sense of peacefulness. Natural settings offer qualities of openness, diversity, manipulation, exploration, anonymity and wildness.
All the manufactured equipment and all the indoor instructional materials produced by the best educators in the world cannot substitute for the primary experience of hands-on engagement with nature. They cannot replace the sensory moment where a child's attention is captured by the phenomena and materials of nature: the dappled sparkle of sunlight through leaves, the sound and motion of plants in the wind, the sight of butterflies or a colony of ants, the imaginative worlds of a square yard of dirt or sand, the endless sensory experience of water, the infinite space in an iris flower.
Designing Outdoor Spaces for Children
The goal of designing children's outdoor environments is to use the landscape and vegetation as the play setting and nature as much as possible as the play materials. The natural environment needs to read as a children's place; as a world separate from adults that responds to a child's own sense of place and time.
Our company calls well designed outdoor children's play spaces discovery play gardens to differential them from the current design paradigm for children's playgrounds. Some authorities call them naturalized outdoor classrooms or naturalized playgrounds.
There is a sense of wildness about an discovery play garden. Conventional play design focuses on manufactured and tightly designed play equipment. Conversely in a discovery play garden, although there may be some conventional play equipment, many of the spaces are informal and naturalistic so they will stimulate high quality free play and discovery learning.
Children's idea of beauty is wild rather than ordered. A discovery play garden that plans for wildness, and provides openness, diversity, and opportunities for manipulation, exploration and experimentation, allows children to become totally immersed in play. Children's discovery play gardens are very different than landscaped areas designed for adults, who prefer manicured lawns and tidy, neat, orderly uncluttered landscapes. Discovery play gardens are much looser in design because children value unmanicured places and the adventure and mystery of hiding places and wild, spacious, uneven areas broken by clusters of plants.
Physical attractiveness and innovativeness are not what is important for quality outdoor play space design. Children need tools, open space, challenge and opportunities to control and manipulate the environment. Suransky calls this "history making power" - the power for the child to imprint themselves upon the landscape, endow the landscape with significance and experience their own actions as transforming the environment.
Outdoor play requires a lot of gear to make a go of it. Loose parts, sand, water, manipulatives, props and naturally found objects are essential tools for children's play. Loose parts have infinite play possibilities, and their total lack of structure and script allows children to make of them whatever their imaginations desire. Simon Nicholson first offered the theory of loose parts in children's play when he wrote in 1971, "In any environment, both the degree of inventiveness and creativity and the possibilities of discovery are directly proportional to the number and kind of variables in it."
Yhrough children's handling, manipulation and physical interaction with materials and the natural environment, they learn the rules and principles that make the world operate.
Outdoor play areas should flow from one area to the next, be as open-ended and simple as possible, encourage children to use their imaginations, have continuity and be perceived by the children as children's, not adult, spaces. They should be designed to stimulate children's senses and to nurture the child's curiosity, allow for interaction with other children, with adults and with the resources in the play space.
It is also desirable to integrate the outdoors with the indoor classroom with one sense of place and identity, so the transition between the two will be almost seamless. Design that allows children to go freely back and forth between inside and outside encourages children to experiment with autonomy from adults, both physically and symbolically. It also allows the outdoor space to become part of the classroom, rather than just a retreat from it.
Things children like in their outdoor environments include:
* water
* vegetation, including trees, bushes, flowers and long grasses,
* animals, creatures in ponds, and other living things
* sand, best if it can be mixed with water
* natural color, diversity and change
* places and features to sit in, on, under, lean against, and provide shelter
and shade
* different levels and nooks and crannies, places that offer privacy and views
* structures, equipment and materials that can be changed, actually or in their imaginations, including plentiful loose parts.
The structures and equipment do not all need to be manufactured. As much as possible, they should be made of natural materials such as logs, stumps and boulders and use the landscape in natural ways with berms and mounds.
Outdoor areas lend themselves to meeting children's individual needs. Natural environments allow for investigation and discovery by children with different learning styles.41 Using universal design principals, play areas and events can be designed as accessible to children with special needs without accessibility features being obvious.
Plants are vital. In fact, the identity of many of the play areas can be created through ecological theming with vegetation. For example, an interactive water play can be set in a bog or stream habitat. It is also important to incorporate ecological areas that utilize indigenous vegetation and settings so children can experience, learn about and develop an appreciation of their local environment.
Naturalized outdoor play spaces are rich learning environments for all age children. They contain a hidden curriculum that speaks to children through their special way of knowing nature. Every learning center and activity that can be created in the indoor classroom can be created in the outdoors. Specialized areas can even be designed to meet the developmental needs of infants and toddlers.
Cost
Discovery play gardens do not cost more to build than conventional playgrounds. Rather than spend most of the budget on conventional manufactured playground equipment, moneys are shifted to landscaping and creating play areas using natural materials. Discovery play gardens do, however, require specialized design skills to create a holistic and integrated child's world. To accomplish this, a much higher percentage of the budget must be allocated for professional design services than with a dominantly equipment-based playground.
Participatory Design
Participatory design - having children, teachers, parents and maintenance staff participate in the design process - is essential to the success of any discovery play garden. Children's input assures that they will feel it is a special place for them. Teachers input is needed so they will take ownership of the discovery play garden as an outdoor classroom and utilize it to support their curriculum goals. Parents need to be involved so they will be supportive of the concept and learn how the naturalized space and often messy play greatly supports their children's development. Maintenance staff need to participate to assure that they will support the space and provide the maintenance required. User participation in the design process also helps to assure that the design will be culturally respectful.
Discovery play gardens offer children chances to manipulate the environment and explore, to wonder and experiment, to pretend, to understand themselves, and to interact with nature, animals and interesting insects and with other children. They are environments that encourage children's rich and complex play and greatly expand the learning opportunities of just conventional playgrounds. Children's discovery play gardens are places where children can reclaim the magic that is their birthright - the ability to learn in a natural environment through exploration, discovery and the power of their own imaginations.
(An edited version of this article was published in the March/April 1998 issue of Early Childhood News magazine)
Playground Paradigm Paralysis
We are all creatures of our experience, and our common experiences usually shape the conventional wisdom, or paradigms, by which we operate. When most adults were children, playgrounds were asphalt areas with gross motor play equipment such as swings, jungle gyms and slides where they went for recess. Most adults see this as their model for a children's playground.
So when it comes time to plan and design a playground, the paradigm is to search through the catalogues of playground equipment, pick a piece or two that looks good to the adult and place it in an outdoor space which resembles their childhood memories of playgrounds. This is easy and doesn't take a whole lot of effort. Then once or twice a day, teachers let children go outside for a recess from their classroom activities to play on the equipment.
Today, fortunately, most playground equipment is becoming much safer than when adults grew up. National standards encourage the installation of safety fall surfaces and ADA is making the equipment more accessible. However, limiting outdoor playgrounds to gross motor activities and manufactured equipment falls way short of the potential of outdoor areas to be rich play and learning environments for children. This playground design paradigm paralysis also denies children their birthright to experience the entire natural outdoors which includes vegetation, animals, insects water and sand, not just the sun and air that manufactured playgrounds offer.
It is a well accepted principal in early childhood education that children learn best through free play and discovery. Children's free play is a complex concept that eludes precise definition, but children's play typically is pleasurable, self-motivated, imaginative, non-goal directed, spontaneous, active, and free of adult-imposed rules1. Quality play involves the whole child: gross motor, fine motor, senses, emotion, intellect, individual growth and social interaction.
Childhood of Imprisonment
The world once offered thousands of delights of free play to children. Children used to have access to the world at large, whether it was the sidewalks, streets, alleys, vacant lots and parks of the inner city or the fields, forests, streams and yards of suburbia and the rural countryside. Children could play, explore and interact with the natural world with little or no restriction or supervision.
The lives of children today are much more structured and supervised, with few opportunities for free play. Their physical boundaries have shrunk. A number of factors have led to this. Parents are afraid for their children's safety when they leave the house alone; many children are no longer free to roam their neighborhoods or even their own yards unless accompanied by adults. Some working families can't supervise their children after school, giving rise to latchkey children who stay indoors or attend supervised after-school activities. Furthermore, children's lives have become structured and scheduled by adults, who hold the mistaken belief that this sport or that lesson will make their children more successful as adults.
Children have little time for free play any more. And when children do have free time, it's often spent inside in front of the television or computers. For some children, that's because their neighborhood, apartment complex or house has no outdoor play spaces. With budgets for city and state governments slashed, public parks and outdoor playgrounds have deteriorated and been abandoned. Children's opportunities to interact in a naturalized outdoor setting is greatly diminished today.
Childhood and outdoor play are no longer synonymous. Today, many children live what one play authority has referred to as a childhood of imprisonment. Child care facility playgrounds are often the only outdoor activities that many young children experience anymore.
Our company first became interested in the opportunities that outdoor play offers children's development when, in 1993, we conducted extensive focus group research with children and parents for a children's center we were designing. We were fascinated when the research consistently showed that children had a strong preference to play outdoors in natural landscapes, and that parents generally supported this kind of play.
Biophilia: The Love of Outdoors
Two new disciplines, eco-psychology6 and evolutionary psychology, are now suggesting that humans are genetically programmed by evolution with an affinity for the natural outdoors. Evolutionary psychologists use the term biophilia to refer to this innate, hereditary emotional attraction of humans to nature and other living organisms. Biophilia is the biologically based human need to affiliate with nature and the genetic basis for human's positive responses to nature. Why? Researchers say that for more than 99 percent of human history, people lived in hunter-gatherer bands totally and intimately involved in nature. So in relative terms, urban societies have existed for scarcely more than a blink of time. Our original nature-based evolutionary genetic coding and instincts are still an essential part of us and continue to shape our behavior and responses to nature.
Well over 100 studies of outdoor experiences in the wilderness and natural areas show that natural outdoor environments produce positive physiological and psychological responses in humans, including reduced stress and a general feeling of well-being. It is also a clear-cut finding that people, and especially young children who have not yet adapted to the man-made world, consistently prefer the natural landscape to built environments. Children's instinctive feelings of continuity with nature are demonstrated by the attraction children have for fairy tales set in nature and populated with animal characters. Additional anecdotal evidence is that more children and adults visit zoos and aquariums than attend all major professional sports combined.
Biophobia: The Aversion to Nature
However, if this human natural attraction to nature is not given opportunities to be exercised and flourish during the early years of life, the opposite, biophobia, an aversion to nature, may develop. Biophobia ranges from discomfort in natural places to active scorn for whatever is not man-made, managed or air conditioned. Biophobia is also manifest in the tendency to regard nature as nothing more than a disposable resource.
Environmental Education
Environmental education needs to start at any early age with hands-on experience with nature. There is considerable evidence that concern for the environment is based on an affection for nature that only develops with autonomous, unmediated contact with it. In their early years, children's developmental tendency towards empathy with the natural world needs to be supported with free access to an area of limited size over an extended period of time. It is only by intimately knowing the wonder of nature's complexity in a particular place that leads to a full appreciation of the immense beauty of the planet as a whole. In todays society, environmental education requires that in schools, children have regular personal interaction with as diverse a natural setting as possible.
The Importance of Nature to Children
Studies have provided convincing evidence that the way people feel in pleasing natural environments improves recall of information, creative problem solving, and creativity. Early experiences with the natural world have been positively linked with the development of imagination and the sense of wonder. Wonder is important as it a motivator for life long learning. There is also strong evidence that young children respond more positively to experiences in the outdoors than adults as they have not yet adapted to unnatural, man-made, indoor environments.
The natural world is essential to the emotional health of children. Just as children need positive adult contact and a sense of connection to the wider human community, they also need positive contact with nature and the chance for solitude and the sense of wonder that nature offers. When children play in nature they are more likely to have positive feelings about each other and their surroundings.
Outdoor environments are also important to children's development of independence and autonomy. Outdoor space allows children to gradually experiment with increasing distance from their caretaker. While the development of greater independence from toddlerhood to middle childhood can happen within the confines of indoor spaces, safe space outdoors greatly adds to the ability of children to naturally experiment with independence and separation, and the adult's willingness to trust the child's competence which is essential for separation to happen. This is particularly important for children who live in small and crowded homes.
Children's Experience with the Natural World
Children's outdoor play is different from time spent indoors. The sensory experiences are different, and different standards of play apply. Activities which may be frowned on indoors can be safely tolerated outdoors. Children have greater freedom not only to run and shout, but also to interact with and manipulate the environment. Children are free to do 'messy' activities outdoors that won't be tolerated indoors.
Natural outdoor environments have three qualities that are unique and appealing to children as play environments - their unending diversity; the fact that they are not created by adults; and their feeling of timelessness - the landscapes, trees, rivers described in fairy tales and myths still exist today.
Children experience the natural environment differently than adults. Adults typically see nature as background for what they are doing. Children experience nature, not as background for events, but rather as a stimulator and experiential component of their activities. The world of nature is not a scene or even a landscape. Nature for the child is sheer sensory experience. Children judge the natural setting not by its aesthetics, but rather by how they can interact with the environment.
Children have a unique, direct and experiential way of knowing the natural world as a place of beauty, mystery and wonder. Children's special affinity for the natural environment is connected to the child's development and his or her way of knowing.
Plants, together with soil, sand, and water, provide settings that can be manipulated. You can build a trench in the sand and dirt or a rock dam over a stream, but there's not much you can do to a jungle gym except climb, hang, or fall off. Natural elements provide for open-ended play that emphasize unstructured creative exploration with diverse materials. The high levels of complexity and variety nature offers invites longer and more complex play. Because of their interactive properties, plants stimulate discovery, dramatic pretend play, and imagination. Plants speak to all of the senses, so it's not surprising that children are closely attuned to environments with vegetation. Plants, in a pleasant environment with a mix of sun, shade, color, texture, fragrance, and softness of enclosure also encourage a sense of peacefulness. Natural settings offer qualities of openness, diversity, manipulation, exploration, anonymity and wildness.
All the manufactured equipment and all the indoor instructional materials produced by the best educators in the world cannot substitute for the primary experience of hands-on engagement with nature. They cannot replace the sensory moment where a child's attention is captured by the phenomena and materials of nature: the dappled sparkle of sunlight through leaves, the sound and motion of plants in the wind, the sight of butterflies or a colony of ants, the imaginative worlds of a square yard of dirt or sand, the endless sensory experience of water, the infinite space in an iris flower.
Designing Outdoor Spaces for Children
The goal of designing children's outdoor environments is to use the landscape and vegetation as the play setting and nature as much as possible as the play materials. The natural environment needs to read as a children's place; as a world separate from adults that responds to a child's own sense of place and time.
Our company calls well designed outdoor children's play spaces discovery play gardens to differential them from the current design paradigm for children's playgrounds. Some authorities call them naturalized outdoor classrooms or naturalized playgrounds.
There is a sense of wildness about an discovery play garden. Conventional play design focuses on manufactured and tightly designed play equipment. Conversely in a discovery play garden, although there may be some conventional play equipment, many of the spaces are informal and naturalistic so they will stimulate high quality free play and discovery learning.
Children's idea of beauty is wild rather than ordered. A discovery play garden that plans for wildness, and provides openness, diversity, and opportunities for manipulation, exploration and experimentation, allows children to become totally immersed in play. Children's discovery play gardens are very different than landscaped areas designed for adults, who prefer manicured lawns and tidy, neat, orderly uncluttered landscapes. Discovery play gardens are much looser in design because children value unmanicured places and the adventure and mystery of hiding places and wild, spacious, uneven areas broken by clusters of plants.
Physical attractiveness and innovativeness are not what is important for quality outdoor play space design. Children need tools, open space, challenge and opportunities to control and manipulate the environment. Suransky calls this "history making power" - the power for the child to imprint themselves upon the landscape, endow the landscape with significance and experience their own actions as transforming the environment.
Outdoor play requires a lot of gear to make a go of it. Loose parts, sand, water, manipulatives, props and naturally found objects are essential tools for children's play. Loose parts have infinite play possibilities, and their total lack of structure and script allows children to make of them whatever their imaginations desire. Simon Nicholson first offered the theory of loose parts in children's play when he wrote in 1971, "In any environment, both the degree of inventiveness and creativity and the possibilities of discovery are directly proportional to the number and kind of variables in it."
Yhrough children's handling, manipulation and physical interaction with materials and the natural environment, they learn the rules and principles that make the world operate.
Outdoor play areas should flow from one area to the next, be as open-ended and simple as possible, encourage children to use their imaginations, have continuity and be perceived by the children as children's, not adult, spaces. They should be designed to stimulate children's senses and to nurture the child's curiosity, allow for interaction with other children, with adults and with the resources in the play space.
It is also desirable to integrate the outdoors with the indoor classroom with one sense of place and identity, so the transition between the two will be almost seamless. Design that allows children to go freely back and forth between inside and outside encourages children to experiment with autonomy from adults, both physically and symbolically. It also allows the outdoor space to become part of the classroom, rather than just a retreat from it.
Things children like in their outdoor environments include:
* water
* vegetation, including trees, bushes, flowers and long grasses,
* animals, creatures in ponds, and other living things
* sand, best if it can be mixed with water
* natural color, diversity and change
* places and features to sit in, on, under, lean against, and provide shelter
and shade
* different levels and nooks and crannies, places that offer privacy and views
* structures, equipment and materials that can be changed, actually or in their imaginations, including plentiful loose parts.
The structures and equipment do not all need to be manufactured. As much as possible, they should be made of natural materials such as logs, stumps and boulders and use the landscape in natural ways with berms and mounds.
Outdoor areas lend themselves to meeting children's individual needs. Natural environments allow for investigation and discovery by children with different learning styles.41 Using universal design principals, play areas and events can be designed as accessible to children with special needs without accessibility features being obvious.
Plants are vital. In fact, the identity of many of the play areas can be created through ecological theming with vegetation. For example, an interactive water play can be set in a bog or stream habitat. It is also important to incorporate ecological areas that utilize indigenous vegetation and settings so children can experience, learn about and develop an appreciation of their local environment.
Naturalized outdoor play spaces are rich learning environments for all age children. They contain a hidden curriculum that speaks to children through their special way of knowing nature. Every learning center and activity that can be created in the indoor classroom can be created in the outdoors. Specialized areas can even be designed to meet the developmental needs of infants and toddlers.
Cost
Discovery play gardens do not cost more to build than conventional playgrounds. Rather than spend most of the budget on conventional manufactured playground equipment, moneys are shifted to landscaping and creating play areas using natural materials. Discovery play gardens do, however, require specialized design skills to create a holistic and integrated child's world. To accomplish this, a much higher percentage of the budget must be allocated for professional design services than with a dominantly equipment-based playground.
Participatory Design
Participatory design - having children, teachers, parents and maintenance staff participate in the design process - is essential to the success of any discovery play garden. Children's input assures that they will feel it is a special place for them. Teachers input is needed so they will take ownership of the discovery play garden as an outdoor classroom and utilize it to support their curriculum goals. Parents need to be involved so they will be supportive of the concept and learn how the naturalized space and often messy play greatly supports their children's development. Maintenance staff need to participate to assure that they will support the space and provide the maintenance required. User participation in the design process also helps to assure that the design will be culturally respectful.
Discovery play gardens offer children chances to manipulate the environment and explore, to wonder and experiment, to pretend, to understand themselves, and to interact with nature, animals and interesting insects and with other children. They are environments that encourage children's rich and complex play and greatly expand the learning opportunities of just conventional playgrounds. Children's discovery play gardens are places where children can reclaim the magic that is their birthright - the ability to learn in a natural environment through exploration, discovery and the power of their own imaginations.
(An edited version of this article was published in the March/April 1998 issue of Early Childhood News magazine)
MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCES : Understanding Your Child's Learning Style
A Fairy Princess. A Race-car Driver. A Mommy. A Firefighter. A Ballerina. An Astronaut. These are just some of the answers you may get when you ask your child, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” You may think they are sweet to share with your family and friends, but your child’s response could be telling you something important about the way he or she learns and what type of ‘Multiple Intelligences’ he or she has.
So what are Multiple Intelligences anyway? Dr. Howard Gardner, professor of education at Harvard University, developed the theory of Multiple Intelligences in 1983 to help educators, psychologists and parenting experts better understand how children process and learn information.
Not only has the theory become a respected way of looking at learning, it has helped validate other experts’ work. Dr. Joseph Renzulli, professor and director of the National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented at the University of Connecticut, says he started his work with intelligence years before Gardner’s theory. But it was Gardner who brought widespread acceptance to the idea. That helped bring attention to The Renzulli Learning System, which utilizes the Intelligences. A great admirer of Gardner, Dr. Renzulli says, “The most important thing The Multiple Intelligences theory has done is called attention to the ways children express themselves.”
What Intelligences does your child possess? The following are descriptions of Gardner’s nine Multiple Intelligences, along with tips on how you can help your child stretch his or her areas of strength:
• Linguistic Intelligence (Word Smart). This child focuses in school, enjoys reading, has an extensive vocabulary, prefers English or Social Studies over math and science, learns a foreign language with ease, is a good speller and writer, likes rhymes and puns, and communicates his thoughts well.
Tip: Encourage him to discuss books he has read with you, play word or board games, prepare speeches or enroll in drama classes. Possible career paths: poet, journalist, teacher, or lawyer
• Logical-Mathematical Intelligence (Number/Reasoning Smart). This child is curious about how things work, loves numbers and math (especially if he can do it in his head), enjoys strategy games like chess, checkers, brain teasers or logic puzzles, likes experiments, is interested in natural history museums, and likes computers.
Tip: Encourage her to solve various kinds of puzzles, provide her with games like checkers, chess or backgammon, let her figure things out and encourage her to ask questions. Possible career paths: scientist, engineer, researcher, or accountant.
• Spatial Intelligence (Picture Smart). This child easily leans to read and understands charts and maps, daydreams often, is skilled at drawing, doodling and creating 3-D sculptures, enjoys movies, and likes taking things apart and putting them back together.
Tip: Provide opportunities to paint, color, design. Give him puzzles and 3-D activities like solving mazes, challenge his creativity, and encourage him to design buildings or clothing. Possible career paths: sculptor, mechanic, architect, or interior designer.
• Bodily-Kinesthetic Intelligence (Body Smart). This child excels in more than one sport, taps or moves when required to sit still, can mimic other’s body movements/gestures, likes to touch objects, enjoys physical activities and has excellent fine-motor coordination.
Tip: Encourage participation in school and extracurricular sports/teams. Provide blocks. Encourage fine-motor ability (teach her to build paper airplanes, create origami, or try knitting). Enroll her in dance class. Possible career paths: dancer, firefighter, surgeon, actor, or athlete.
• Musical Intelligence (Music Smart). This child can tell you when music is off-key and easily remember melodies. He has a pleasant singing voice, shows aptitude with musical instruments, speaks or moves in a rhythmical way, hums or whistles to himself, and may show sensitivity to surrounding noises.
Tip: Encourage him to play an instrument, write songs, join school bands or choirs, or study folk dancing from other countries. Possible career paths: musician, singer, or composer.
• Interpersonal Intelligence (People Smart). This child enjoys socializing with friends, is a natural leader, is caring, helps friends solve problems, is street-smart and understands feelings from facial expressions, gestures and voice.
Tip: Encourage collaborative activities with friends inside and outside of school, expose her to multi-cultural books and experiences, encourage dramatic activities and role playing, help her learn to negotiate and share. Possible career paths: counselor, therapist, politician, salesman, or teacher.
• Intrapersonal Intelligence (Self-Smart). This child shows a sense of independence, knows his abilities and weaknesses, and does well when left alone to play or study. He has a hobby or interest he doesn’t talk about much, is self-directed, has high self-esteem, and learns from failures and successes.
Tip: Help him set goals and realize the steps to get there, encourage independent projects and journal writing, help him find quiet places for reflection and appreciate his differences. Possible career paths: philosopher, professor, teacher, or researcher.
• Naturalist Intelligence (Nature Smart). This child talks about favorite pets or outdoor spots, enjoys nature preserves and the zoo, and has a strong connection to the outside world. She likes to play outdoors, collects bugs, flowers and leaves, and is interested in biology, astronomy, meteorology or zoology.
Tip: Take her to science museums, exhibits and zoos. Encourage her to create observation notebooks, ant farms, bug homes, and leaf collections. Involve her in the care of pets, wildlife, and gardens. Make binoculars and telescopes available to her. Possible career paths: animal activist, biologist, astronomer, or veterinarian.
• Existential Intelligence (Philosophically Smart). This child enjoys thinking and questions the way things are. He shows curiosity about life and death and shows a philosophical awareness and interest that seems beyond his years. He asks questions like, ‘Are we alone in the universe?’
Tip: Be patient with his questioning, as he may ask over and over again. Read books together that explore these topics and talk about them at an age-appropriate level. Possible career paths: philosopher, clergy, scientist, or writer.
Don’t worry if it looks like your child is only strong in 3-4 areas. That’s the way it should be. While children have the potential to be intelligent in all areas, they will most likely show dominance in some and weakness in others. Dr. Renzulli advises, “When we find our child’s preferred learning style, we should capitalize on it and give them many opportunities to express that in their work. But it is equally important to give them exposure to various kinds of styles.” In other words, your child may not realize what his preferred learning style is until he is exposed to it.
Perhaps your child will never attain Princess status, but she may write a novel about the royal life. And maybe your son won’t set foot on Mars, but rather, design the next generation of rockets. Whatever Intelligences your children have, be sure to watch for the cues along the way and encourage them to be whatever they want to be. In the meantime, let your kid have fun dreaming about the Indy 500, even if it gives you a few gray hairs in the process.
So what are Multiple Intelligences anyway? Dr. Howard Gardner, professor of education at Harvard University, developed the theory of Multiple Intelligences in 1983 to help educators, psychologists and parenting experts better understand how children process and learn information.
Not only has the theory become a respected way of looking at learning, it has helped validate other experts’ work. Dr. Joseph Renzulli, professor and director of the National Research Center on the Gifted and Talented at the University of Connecticut, says he started his work with intelligence years before Gardner’s theory. But it was Gardner who brought widespread acceptance to the idea. That helped bring attention to The Renzulli Learning System, which utilizes the Intelligences. A great admirer of Gardner, Dr. Renzulli says, “The most important thing The Multiple Intelligences theory has done is called attention to the ways children express themselves.”
What Intelligences does your child possess? The following are descriptions of Gardner’s nine Multiple Intelligences, along with tips on how you can help your child stretch his or her areas of strength:
• Linguistic Intelligence (Word Smart). This child focuses in school, enjoys reading, has an extensive vocabulary, prefers English or Social Studies over math and science, learns a foreign language with ease, is a good speller and writer, likes rhymes and puns, and communicates his thoughts well.
Tip: Encourage him to discuss books he has read with you, play word or board games, prepare speeches or enroll in drama classes. Possible career paths: poet, journalist, teacher, or lawyer
• Logical-Mathematical Intelligence (Number/Reasoning Smart). This child is curious about how things work, loves numbers and math (especially if he can do it in his head), enjoys strategy games like chess, checkers, brain teasers or logic puzzles, likes experiments, is interested in natural history museums, and likes computers.
Tip: Encourage her to solve various kinds of puzzles, provide her with games like checkers, chess or backgammon, let her figure things out and encourage her to ask questions. Possible career paths: scientist, engineer, researcher, or accountant.
• Spatial Intelligence (Picture Smart). This child easily leans to read and understands charts and maps, daydreams often, is skilled at drawing, doodling and creating 3-D sculptures, enjoys movies, and likes taking things apart and putting them back together.
Tip: Provide opportunities to paint, color, design. Give him puzzles and 3-D activities like solving mazes, challenge his creativity, and encourage him to design buildings or clothing. Possible career paths: sculptor, mechanic, architect, or interior designer.
• Bodily-Kinesthetic Intelligence (Body Smart). This child excels in more than one sport, taps or moves when required to sit still, can mimic other’s body movements/gestures, likes to touch objects, enjoys physical activities and has excellent fine-motor coordination.
Tip: Encourage participation in school and extracurricular sports/teams. Provide blocks. Encourage fine-motor ability (teach her to build paper airplanes, create origami, or try knitting). Enroll her in dance class. Possible career paths: dancer, firefighter, surgeon, actor, or athlete.
• Musical Intelligence (Music Smart). This child can tell you when music is off-key and easily remember melodies. He has a pleasant singing voice, shows aptitude with musical instruments, speaks or moves in a rhythmical way, hums or whistles to himself, and may show sensitivity to surrounding noises.
Tip: Encourage him to play an instrument, write songs, join school bands or choirs, or study folk dancing from other countries. Possible career paths: musician, singer, or composer.
• Interpersonal Intelligence (People Smart). This child enjoys socializing with friends, is a natural leader, is caring, helps friends solve problems, is street-smart and understands feelings from facial expressions, gestures and voice.
Tip: Encourage collaborative activities with friends inside and outside of school, expose her to multi-cultural books and experiences, encourage dramatic activities and role playing, help her learn to negotiate and share. Possible career paths: counselor, therapist, politician, salesman, or teacher.
• Intrapersonal Intelligence (Self-Smart). This child shows a sense of independence, knows his abilities and weaknesses, and does well when left alone to play or study. He has a hobby or interest he doesn’t talk about much, is self-directed, has high self-esteem, and learns from failures and successes.
Tip: Help him set goals and realize the steps to get there, encourage independent projects and journal writing, help him find quiet places for reflection and appreciate his differences. Possible career paths: philosopher, professor, teacher, or researcher.
• Naturalist Intelligence (Nature Smart). This child talks about favorite pets or outdoor spots, enjoys nature preserves and the zoo, and has a strong connection to the outside world. She likes to play outdoors, collects bugs, flowers and leaves, and is interested in biology, astronomy, meteorology or zoology.
Tip: Take her to science museums, exhibits and zoos. Encourage her to create observation notebooks, ant farms, bug homes, and leaf collections. Involve her in the care of pets, wildlife, and gardens. Make binoculars and telescopes available to her. Possible career paths: animal activist, biologist, astronomer, or veterinarian.
• Existential Intelligence (Philosophically Smart). This child enjoys thinking and questions the way things are. He shows curiosity about life and death and shows a philosophical awareness and interest that seems beyond his years. He asks questions like, ‘Are we alone in the universe?’
Tip: Be patient with his questioning, as he may ask over and over again. Read books together that explore these topics and talk about them at an age-appropriate level. Possible career paths: philosopher, clergy, scientist, or writer.
Don’t worry if it looks like your child is only strong in 3-4 areas. That’s the way it should be. While children have the potential to be intelligent in all areas, they will most likely show dominance in some and weakness in others. Dr. Renzulli advises, “When we find our child’s preferred learning style, we should capitalize on it and give them many opportunities to express that in their work. But it is equally important to give them exposure to various kinds of styles.” In other words, your child may not realize what his preferred learning style is until he is exposed to it.
Perhaps your child will never attain Princess status, but she may write a novel about the royal life. And maybe your son won’t set foot on Mars, but rather, design the next generation of rockets. Whatever Intelligences your children have, be sure to watch for the cues along the way and encourage them to be whatever they want to be. In the meantime, let your kid have fun dreaming about the Indy 500, even if it gives you a few gray hairs in the process.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
HELPING YOUR CHILD SUCCEED IN SCHOOL
If you think about it, although school is very important, it does not really take up very much of a child's time. In the United States, the school year averages 180 days; in other nations, the school year can last up to 240 days and students are often in school more hours per day than American students. Clearly, the hours and days that a child is not in school are important for learning, too. Here are some things that you can do to help your child to make the most of that time:
Childlike drawing of a child and a mother in a livingroom setting pointing at a bookcase.
Encourage Your Child to Read
Helping your child become a reader is the single most important thing that you can do to help the child to succeed in school—and in life. The importance of reading simply can't be overstated. Reading helps children in all school subjects. More important, it is the key to lifelong learning. Here are some tips on how to help your child become a reader.
* Start early. When your child is still a baby, reading aloud to him should become part of your daily routine. At first, read for no more than a few minutes at a time, several times a day. As your child grows older, you should be able to tell if he wants you to read for longer periods. As you read, talk with your child. Encourage him to ask questions and to talk about the story. Ask him to predict what will come next. When your child begins to read, ask him to read to you from books or magazines that he enjoys.
* Make sure that your home has lots of reading materials that are appropriate for your child. Keep books, magazines and newspapers in the house. Reading materials don't have to be new or expensive. You often can find good books and magazines for your child at yard or library sales. Ask family members and friends to consider giving your child books and magazine subscriptions as gifts for birthdays or other special occasions. Set aside quiet time for family reading. Some families even enjoy reading aloud to each other, with each family member choosing a book, story, poem or article to read to the others.
* Show that you value reading. Let your child see you reading for pleasure as well as for performing your routine activities as an adult—reading letters and recipes, directions and instructions, newspapers, computer screens and so forth. Go with her to the library and check out books for yourself. When your child sees that reading is important to you, she is likely to decide that it's important to her, too.
If you feel uncomfortable with your own reading ability or if you would like reading help for yourself or other family members, check with your local librarian or with your child's school about literacy programs in your community.
* Get help for your child if he has a reading problem. When a child is having reading difficulties, the reason might be simple to understand and deal with. For example, your child might have trouble seeing and need glasses or he may just need more help with reading skills. If you think that your child needs extra help, ask his teachers about special services, such as after—school or summer reading programs. Also ask teachers or your local librarian for names of community organizations and local literacy volunteer groups that offer tutoring services.
The good news is that no matter how long it takes, most children can learn to read. Parents, teachers and other professionals can work together to determine if a child has a learning disability or other problem and then provide the right help as soon as possible. When a child gets such help, chances are very good that she will develop the skills she needs to succeed in school and in life. Nothing is more important than your support for your child as she goes through school. Make sure she gets any extra help she needs as soon as possible and always encourage her and praise her efforts.
Talk with Your Child
Talking and listening play major roles in children's school success. It's through hearing parents and family members talk and through responding to that talk that young children begin to pick up the language skills they will need if they are to do well. For example, children who don't hear a lot of talk and who aren't encouraged to talk themselves often have problems learning to read, which can lead to other school problems. In addition, children who haven't learned to listen carefully often have trouble following directions and paying attention in class.
Think of talking with your child as being like a tennis game with words—instead of a ball—bouncing back and forth. Find time to talk any place, for example:
* As you walk with your child or ride with her in a car or on a bus, talk with her about what she's doing at school Ask her to tell you about a school assembly or a field trip. Point out and talk about things that you see as you walk—funny signs, new cars, interesting people.
* As you shop in a store, talk with your child about prices, differences in brands and how to pick out good vegetables and fruit. Give your child directions about where to find certain items, then have him go get them.
* As you fix dinner, ask your child to help you follow the steps in a recipe. Talk with him about what can happen if you miss a step or leave out an ingredient.
* As you fix a sink or repair a broken table, ask your child to hand you the tools that you name. Talk with her about each step you take to complete the repair. Tell her what you're doing and why you're doing it. Ask her for suggestions about how you should do something.
* As you watch TV together, talk with your child about the programs. If you're watching one of her favorite programs, encourage her to tell you about the background of the characters, which ones she likes and dislikes and who the actors are. Compare the program to a program that you liked when you were her age.
* As you read a book with your child, pause occasionally to talk to him about what's happening in the book. Help him to relate the events in the book to events in his life: "Look at that tall building! Didn't we see that when we were in Chicago?" Ask him to tell in his own words what the book was about. Ask him about new words in a book and help him to figure out what they mean.
It's also important for you to show your child that you're interested in what he has to say. Demonstrate for him how to be a good listener:
* When your child talks to you, stop what you're doing and pay attention. Look at him and ask questions to let him know that you've heard what he said: "So when are you going to help your granddad work on his car?"
* When your child tells you about something, occasionally repeat what he says to let him know that you're listening closely: "The school bus broke down twice!"
Monitor Homework
Let your child know that you think education is important and so homework has to be done. Here are some ways to help your child with homework:
* Have a special place for your child to study. The homework area doesn't have to be fancy. A desk in the bedroom is nice, but for many children, the kitchen table or a corner of the living room works just fine. The area should have good lighting and it should be fairly quiet. Provide supplies and identify resources. For starters, have available pencils, pens, erasers, writing paper and a dictionary. Other supplies that might be helpful include a stapler, paper clips, maps, a calculator, a pencil sharpener, tape, glue, paste, scissors, a ruler, a calculator, index cards, a thesaurus and an almanac. If possible, keep these items together in one place. If you can't provide your child with needed supplies, check with her teacher, school counselor or principal about possible sources of assistance.
* Set a regular time for homework. Having a regular time to do homework helps children to finish assignments. Of course, a good schedule depends in part on your child's age, as well as her specific needs. You'll need to work with a young child to develop a schedule. You should give your older child the responsibility for making up a schedule independently—although you'll want to make sure that it's a workable one. You may find it helpful to have her write out her schedule and put it in a place where you'll see it often, such as on the refrigerator.
* Remove distractions. Turn off the TV and discourage your child from making and receiving social telephone calls during homework time. (A call to a classmate about an assignment, however, may be helpful.) If you live in a small or noisy household, try having all family members take part in a quiet activity during homework time. You may need to take a noisy toddler outside or into another room to play. If distractions can't be avoided, your child may want to complete assignments in the local library.
* Don't expect or demand perfection. When your child asks you to look at what she's done—from skating a figure 8 to finishing a math assignment—show interest and praise her when she's done something well. If you have criticisms or suggestions, make them in a helpful way.
One final note: You may be reluctant to help your child with homework because you feel that you don't know the subject well enough or because you don't speak or read English as well as your child. But helping with homework doesn't mean doing the homework. It isn't about solving the problems for your child, it's about supporting him to do his best. You may not know enough about a subject such as calculus to help your child with a specific assignment, but you can help nonetheless by showing that you are interested, helping him get organized, providing a place the materials he needs to work, monitoring his work to see that he completes it and praising his efforts.
If distractions can't be avoided, your child may want to complete assignments in the local library.
Monitor TV Viewing and Video Game Playing
American children on average spend far more time watching TV or playing video games than they do completing homework or other school-related activities. Here are some suggestions for helping your child to use TV and video games wisely:
* Limit the time that you let your child watch TV. Too much television cuts into important activities in a child's life, such as reading, playing with friends and talking with family members.
* Model good TV viewing habits. Remember that children often imitate their parents' behavior. Children who live in homes in which parents and other family members watch a lot of TV are likely to spend their time in the same way. Children who live in homes in which parents and other family members have "quiet" time away from the TV when they read (either alone to each other), talk to each other, play games or engage in other activities tend to do the same.
* Watch TV with your child when you can. Talk with him about what you see. Answer his questions. Try to point out the things in TV programs that are like your child's everyday life.
* When you can't watch TV with your child, spot check to see what she's watching. Ask questions after the program ends. See what excites her and what troubles her. Find out what she has learned and remembered.
* Go to the library and find books that explore the themes of the TV shows that your child watches.
* Limit the amount of time your child spends playing video games. As with TV programs, be aware of the games he likes to play and discuss his choices with him.
Encourage Your Child to Use the Library
Libraries are places of learning and discovery for everyone. Helping your child find out about libraries will set him on the road to being an independent learner. Here are some suggestions for how to help:
* Introduce your child to the library as early as possible. Even when your child is a toddler, take him along on weekly trips to the library. If you work during the day or have other obligations, remember that many libraries are open in the evening.
* If your child can print his name, it is likely that your library will issue him a library card if you will also sign for him. See that your child gets his own library card as soon as possible so that he can check out his own books.
* When you take your child to the library, introduce yourself and your child to the librarian. Ask the librarian to show you around the library and tell you about the services it has to offer. For example, in addition to all kinds of books, your library most likely will have magazines of interest to both your child and to you. It will likely have newspapers from many different places. Most libraries also have tapes and CDs of books, music CDs and tapes, movies on video and on DVD and many more resources. Your library also might have books in languages other than English or programs to help adults improve their English reading skills.
Ask the librarian to tell your child about special programs that he might participate in, such as summer reading programs and book clubs and about services such as homework help.
Your child needs to learn how long she can keep materials and what the fine will be for materials that are returned late.
* Let your child know that she must follow the library's rules of behavior. Libraries want children to use their materials and services. However, they generally have rules such as the following that your child needs to know and obey:
o Library materials must be handled carefully.
o Materials that are borrowed must be returned on time. Your child needs to learn how long she can keep materials and what the fine will be for materials that are returned late.
o All library users need to be considerate of each other. Shouting, running and being disruptive are not appropriate library behaviors.
Help Your Child Learn to Use the Internet Properly and Effectively
The Internet/World Wide WEB—a network of computers that connects people and information all around the world—has become an important part of how we learn and of how we interact with others. For children to succeed today, they must be able to use the Internet. Here are some suggestions for helping your child learn to do so properly and effectively:
* Spend time online with your child. If you don't have a computer at home, ask your librarian if the library has computers that you and your child may use. Learn along with your child. If you're not familiar with computers or with the Internet, ask the librarian if and when someone is available at the library to help you and your child learn together to use them. If your child knows about computers, let her teach you. Ask her to explain what she is doing and why. Ask her to show you her favorite Web sites and to tell you what she likes about them. This will help her build self-confidence and pride in her abilities.
* Help your child to locate appropriate Internet Web sites. At the same time, make sure that she understands what you think are appropriate Web sites for her to visit. Point her in the direction of sites that can help her with homework or that relate to her interests.
Pay attention to any games she might download or copy from the Internet. Some games are violent or contain sexual or other content that is inappropriate for children. Resources such as GetNetWise (http://www.getnetwise.org/), a public service provided by Internet corporations and public interest groups and FamiliesConnect (http://www.ala.org/ICONN/familiesconnect.html), a service of the American Library Association, can help you to make good Web site choices and give you more information about Internet use.
You might consider using "filters" to block your child from accessing sites that may be inappropriate. These filters include software programs that you can install on your computer. In addition, many Internet service providers offer filters (often for free) that restrict the sites that children can visit. Of course, these filters are not always completely effective—and children can find ways around them. The best safeguard is your supervision and involvement.
* Monitor the amount of time that your child spends online. Internet surfing can be just as time consuming as watching TV. Don't let it take over your child's life. Have her place a clock near the computer and keep track of how much time she is spending online. Remember, many commercial online services charge for the amount of time the service is used. These charges can mount up quickly!
* Teach your child rules for using the Internet safely. Let him know that he should never do the following:
o tell anyone—including his friends—his computer password;
o use bad language or send cruel, threatening or untrue e-mail messages;
o give out any personal information, including his name or the names of family members, home address, phone number, age, school name; or
o arrange to meet a stranger that he has "talked" with in an online "chat room."
For more information about helping your child use the Internet, see the following publications, listed in the Resources section: The Librarian's Guide to Cyberspace for Parents and Kids, American Library Association; The Parents' Guide to the Information Superhighway, Children's Partnership.
Encourage Your Child to Be Responsible and to Work Independently
Taking responsibility and working independently are important qualities for school success. Here are some suggestions for helping your child to develop these qualities:
* Establish rules. Every home needs reasonable rules that children know and can depend on. Have your child help you to set rules, then make sure that you enforce the rules consistently.
* Make it clear to your child that he has to take responsibility for what he does, both at home and at school. For example, don't automatically defend your child if his teacher tells you that he is often late to class or is disruptive when he is in class. Ask for his side of the story. If a charge is true, let him take the consequences.
* Work with your child to develop a reasonable, consistent schedule of jobs to do around the house. List them on a calendar. Younger children can help set the table or put away their toys and clothes. Older children can help prepare meals and clean up afterwards.
* Show your child how to break a job down into small steps, then to do the job one step at a time. This works for everything—getting dressed, cleaning a room or doing a big homework assignment.
* Make your child responsible for getting ready to go to school each morning—getting up on time, making sure that he has everything he needs for the school day and so forth. If necessary, make a checklist to help him remember what he has to do.
* Monitor what your child does after school, in the evenings and on weekends. If you can't be there when your child gets home, give her the responsibility of checking in with you by phone to discuss her plans.
Encourage Active Learning
Children need active learning as well as quiet learning such as reading and doing homework. Active learning involves asking and answering questions, solving problems and exploring interests. Active learning also can take place when your child plays sports, spends time with friends, acts in a school play, plays a musical instrument or visits museums and bookstores.
To promote active learning, listen to your child's ideas and respond to them. Let him jump in with questions and opinions when you read books together. When you encourage this type of give-and-take at home, your child's participation and interest in school is likely to increase.
Childlike drawing of a child and a mother in a livingroom setting pointing at a bookcase.
Encourage Your Child to Read
Helping your child become a reader is the single most important thing that you can do to help the child to succeed in school—and in life. The importance of reading simply can't be overstated. Reading helps children in all school subjects. More important, it is the key to lifelong learning. Here are some tips on how to help your child become a reader.
* Start early. When your child is still a baby, reading aloud to him should become part of your daily routine. At first, read for no more than a few minutes at a time, several times a day. As your child grows older, you should be able to tell if he wants you to read for longer periods. As you read, talk with your child. Encourage him to ask questions and to talk about the story. Ask him to predict what will come next. When your child begins to read, ask him to read to you from books or magazines that he enjoys.
* Make sure that your home has lots of reading materials that are appropriate for your child. Keep books, magazines and newspapers in the house. Reading materials don't have to be new or expensive. You often can find good books and magazines for your child at yard or library sales. Ask family members and friends to consider giving your child books and magazine subscriptions as gifts for birthdays or other special occasions. Set aside quiet time for family reading. Some families even enjoy reading aloud to each other, with each family member choosing a book, story, poem or article to read to the others.
* Show that you value reading. Let your child see you reading for pleasure as well as for performing your routine activities as an adult—reading letters and recipes, directions and instructions, newspapers, computer screens and so forth. Go with her to the library and check out books for yourself. When your child sees that reading is important to you, she is likely to decide that it's important to her, too.
If you feel uncomfortable with your own reading ability or if you would like reading help for yourself or other family members, check with your local librarian or with your child's school about literacy programs in your community.
* Get help for your child if he has a reading problem. When a child is having reading difficulties, the reason might be simple to understand and deal with. For example, your child might have trouble seeing and need glasses or he may just need more help with reading skills. If you think that your child needs extra help, ask his teachers about special services, such as after—school or summer reading programs. Also ask teachers or your local librarian for names of community organizations and local literacy volunteer groups that offer tutoring services.
The good news is that no matter how long it takes, most children can learn to read. Parents, teachers and other professionals can work together to determine if a child has a learning disability or other problem and then provide the right help as soon as possible. When a child gets such help, chances are very good that she will develop the skills she needs to succeed in school and in life. Nothing is more important than your support for your child as she goes through school. Make sure she gets any extra help she needs as soon as possible and always encourage her and praise her efforts.
Talk with Your Child
Talking and listening play major roles in children's school success. It's through hearing parents and family members talk and through responding to that talk that young children begin to pick up the language skills they will need if they are to do well. For example, children who don't hear a lot of talk and who aren't encouraged to talk themselves often have problems learning to read, which can lead to other school problems. In addition, children who haven't learned to listen carefully often have trouble following directions and paying attention in class.
Think of talking with your child as being like a tennis game with words—instead of a ball—bouncing back and forth. Find time to talk any place, for example:
* As you walk with your child or ride with her in a car or on a bus, talk with her about what she's doing at school Ask her to tell you about a school assembly or a field trip. Point out and talk about things that you see as you walk—funny signs, new cars, interesting people.
* As you shop in a store, talk with your child about prices, differences in brands and how to pick out good vegetables and fruit. Give your child directions about where to find certain items, then have him go get them.
* As you fix dinner, ask your child to help you follow the steps in a recipe. Talk with him about what can happen if you miss a step or leave out an ingredient.
* As you fix a sink or repair a broken table, ask your child to hand you the tools that you name. Talk with her about each step you take to complete the repair. Tell her what you're doing and why you're doing it. Ask her for suggestions about how you should do something.
* As you watch TV together, talk with your child about the programs. If you're watching one of her favorite programs, encourage her to tell you about the background of the characters, which ones she likes and dislikes and who the actors are. Compare the program to a program that you liked when you were her age.
* As you read a book with your child, pause occasionally to talk to him about what's happening in the book. Help him to relate the events in the book to events in his life: "Look at that tall building! Didn't we see that when we were in Chicago?" Ask him to tell in his own words what the book was about. Ask him about new words in a book and help him to figure out what they mean.
It's also important for you to show your child that you're interested in what he has to say. Demonstrate for him how to be a good listener:
* When your child talks to you, stop what you're doing and pay attention. Look at him and ask questions to let him know that you've heard what he said: "So when are you going to help your granddad work on his car?"
* When your child tells you about something, occasionally repeat what he says to let him know that you're listening closely: "The school bus broke down twice!"
Monitor Homework
Let your child know that you think education is important and so homework has to be done. Here are some ways to help your child with homework:
* Have a special place for your child to study. The homework area doesn't have to be fancy. A desk in the bedroom is nice, but for many children, the kitchen table or a corner of the living room works just fine. The area should have good lighting and it should be fairly quiet. Provide supplies and identify resources. For starters, have available pencils, pens, erasers, writing paper and a dictionary. Other supplies that might be helpful include a stapler, paper clips, maps, a calculator, a pencil sharpener, tape, glue, paste, scissors, a ruler, a calculator, index cards, a thesaurus and an almanac. If possible, keep these items together in one place. If you can't provide your child with needed supplies, check with her teacher, school counselor or principal about possible sources of assistance.
* Set a regular time for homework. Having a regular time to do homework helps children to finish assignments. Of course, a good schedule depends in part on your child's age, as well as her specific needs. You'll need to work with a young child to develop a schedule. You should give your older child the responsibility for making up a schedule independently—although you'll want to make sure that it's a workable one. You may find it helpful to have her write out her schedule and put it in a place where you'll see it often, such as on the refrigerator.
* Remove distractions. Turn off the TV and discourage your child from making and receiving social telephone calls during homework time. (A call to a classmate about an assignment, however, may be helpful.) If you live in a small or noisy household, try having all family members take part in a quiet activity during homework time. You may need to take a noisy toddler outside or into another room to play. If distractions can't be avoided, your child may want to complete assignments in the local library.
* Don't expect or demand perfection. When your child asks you to look at what she's done—from skating a figure 8 to finishing a math assignment—show interest and praise her when she's done something well. If you have criticisms or suggestions, make them in a helpful way.
One final note: You may be reluctant to help your child with homework because you feel that you don't know the subject well enough or because you don't speak or read English as well as your child. But helping with homework doesn't mean doing the homework. It isn't about solving the problems for your child, it's about supporting him to do his best. You may not know enough about a subject such as calculus to help your child with a specific assignment, but you can help nonetheless by showing that you are interested, helping him get organized, providing a place the materials he needs to work, monitoring his work to see that he completes it and praising his efforts.
If distractions can't be avoided, your child may want to complete assignments in the local library.
Monitor TV Viewing and Video Game Playing
American children on average spend far more time watching TV or playing video games than they do completing homework or other school-related activities. Here are some suggestions for helping your child to use TV and video games wisely:
* Limit the time that you let your child watch TV. Too much television cuts into important activities in a child's life, such as reading, playing with friends and talking with family members.
* Model good TV viewing habits. Remember that children often imitate their parents' behavior. Children who live in homes in which parents and other family members watch a lot of TV are likely to spend their time in the same way. Children who live in homes in which parents and other family members have "quiet" time away from the TV when they read (either alone to each other), talk to each other, play games or engage in other activities tend to do the same.
* Watch TV with your child when you can. Talk with him about what you see. Answer his questions. Try to point out the things in TV programs that are like your child's everyday life.
* When you can't watch TV with your child, spot check to see what she's watching. Ask questions after the program ends. See what excites her and what troubles her. Find out what she has learned and remembered.
* Go to the library and find books that explore the themes of the TV shows that your child watches.
* Limit the amount of time your child spends playing video games. As with TV programs, be aware of the games he likes to play and discuss his choices with him.
Encourage Your Child to Use the Library
Libraries are places of learning and discovery for everyone. Helping your child find out about libraries will set him on the road to being an independent learner. Here are some suggestions for how to help:
* Introduce your child to the library as early as possible. Even when your child is a toddler, take him along on weekly trips to the library. If you work during the day or have other obligations, remember that many libraries are open in the evening.
* If your child can print his name, it is likely that your library will issue him a library card if you will also sign for him. See that your child gets his own library card as soon as possible so that he can check out his own books.
* When you take your child to the library, introduce yourself and your child to the librarian. Ask the librarian to show you around the library and tell you about the services it has to offer. For example, in addition to all kinds of books, your library most likely will have magazines of interest to both your child and to you. It will likely have newspapers from many different places. Most libraries also have tapes and CDs of books, music CDs and tapes, movies on video and on DVD and many more resources. Your library also might have books in languages other than English or programs to help adults improve their English reading skills.
Ask the librarian to tell your child about special programs that he might participate in, such as summer reading programs and book clubs and about services such as homework help.
Your child needs to learn how long she can keep materials and what the fine will be for materials that are returned late.
* Let your child know that she must follow the library's rules of behavior. Libraries want children to use their materials and services. However, they generally have rules such as the following that your child needs to know and obey:
o Library materials must be handled carefully.
o Materials that are borrowed must be returned on time. Your child needs to learn how long she can keep materials and what the fine will be for materials that are returned late.
o All library users need to be considerate of each other. Shouting, running and being disruptive are not appropriate library behaviors.
Help Your Child Learn to Use the Internet Properly and Effectively
The Internet/World Wide WEB—a network of computers that connects people and information all around the world—has become an important part of how we learn and of how we interact with others. For children to succeed today, they must be able to use the Internet. Here are some suggestions for helping your child learn to do so properly and effectively:
* Spend time online with your child. If you don't have a computer at home, ask your librarian if the library has computers that you and your child may use. Learn along with your child. If you're not familiar with computers or with the Internet, ask the librarian if and when someone is available at the library to help you and your child learn together to use them. If your child knows about computers, let her teach you. Ask her to explain what she is doing and why. Ask her to show you her favorite Web sites and to tell you what she likes about them. This will help her build self-confidence and pride in her abilities.
* Help your child to locate appropriate Internet Web sites. At the same time, make sure that she understands what you think are appropriate Web sites for her to visit. Point her in the direction of sites that can help her with homework or that relate to her interests.
Pay attention to any games she might download or copy from the Internet. Some games are violent or contain sexual or other content that is inappropriate for children. Resources such as GetNetWise (http://www.getnetwise.org/), a public service provided by Internet corporations and public interest groups and FamiliesConnect (http://www.ala.org/ICONN/familiesconnect.html), a service of the American Library Association, can help you to make good Web site choices and give you more information about Internet use.
You might consider using "filters" to block your child from accessing sites that may be inappropriate. These filters include software programs that you can install on your computer. In addition, many Internet service providers offer filters (often for free) that restrict the sites that children can visit. Of course, these filters are not always completely effective—and children can find ways around them. The best safeguard is your supervision and involvement.
* Monitor the amount of time that your child spends online. Internet surfing can be just as time consuming as watching TV. Don't let it take over your child's life. Have her place a clock near the computer and keep track of how much time she is spending online. Remember, many commercial online services charge for the amount of time the service is used. These charges can mount up quickly!
* Teach your child rules for using the Internet safely. Let him know that he should never do the following:
o tell anyone—including his friends—his computer password;
o use bad language or send cruel, threatening or untrue e-mail messages;
o give out any personal information, including his name or the names of family members, home address, phone number, age, school name; or
o arrange to meet a stranger that he has "talked" with in an online "chat room."
For more information about helping your child use the Internet, see the following publications, listed in the Resources section: The Librarian's Guide to Cyberspace for Parents and Kids, American Library Association; The Parents' Guide to the Information Superhighway, Children's Partnership.
Encourage Your Child to Be Responsible and to Work Independently
Taking responsibility and working independently are important qualities for school success. Here are some suggestions for helping your child to develop these qualities:
* Establish rules. Every home needs reasonable rules that children know and can depend on. Have your child help you to set rules, then make sure that you enforce the rules consistently.
* Make it clear to your child that he has to take responsibility for what he does, both at home and at school. For example, don't automatically defend your child if his teacher tells you that he is often late to class or is disruptive when he is in class. Ask for his side of the story. If a charge is true, let him take the consequences.
* Work with your child to develop a reasonable, consistent schedule of jobs to do around the house. List them on a calendar. Younger children can help set the table or put away their toys and clothes. Older children can help prepare meals and clean up afterwards.
* Show your child how to break a job down into small steps, then to do the job one step at a time. This works for everything—getting dressed, cleaning a room or doing a big homework assignment.
* Make your child responsible for getting ready to go to school each morning—getting up on time, making sure that he has everything he needs for the school day and so forth. If necessary, make a checklist to help him remember what he has to do.
* Monitor what your child does after school, in the evenings and on weekends. If you can't be there when your child gets home, give her the responsibility of checking in with you by phone to discuss her plans.
Encourage Active Learning
Children need active learning as well as quiet learning such as reading and doing homework. Active learning involves asking and answering questions, solving problems and exploring interests. Active learning also can take place when your child plays sports, spends time with friends, acts in a school play, plays a musical instrument or visits museums and bookstores.
To promote active learning, listen to your child's ideas and respond to them. Let him jump in with questions and opinions when you read books together. When you encourage this type of give-and-take at home, your child's participation and interest in school is likely to increase.
Sunday, December 21, 2008
2 + 2 = 5
If it was your son, would you care?
Have you looked into his eyes? My son's, I mean. The one who is having so much trouble in your math class.
I have. When I help him at night, I see the frustration in his eyes when he can't understand. I see him search my face, fearful of my disappointment, my criticism when he gets the problem wrong after I've explained it so many times.
I see in his eyes the desire to give up. Around his lips I see the sadness and creeping despair.
I watch the tension in his forehead as he tries so hard to understand. I watch his fingers turn white as he grips his pencil tight with the hope that this time -- this time -- the pencil won't betray him and will write the answers correctly on the page.
Do you look at him in the classroom when you teach him? Do you look in his eyes and see how the disappointment and frustration threaten to reach into his soul? To break his heart? Can you see his failure harden into the foundation of his character?
I ask you: Do you see how hard he tries? How much he wants to please? How his self-esteem is crumbling each time he can't remember seven times eight equals fifty six? He knows more painfully than you that he's tried to learn this five hundred and sixty times and still forgets.
I see how hard he tries. I see it all. When I sit with him at night I can barely continue with our homework session as I watch his freckled face struggle to remember four times six equals twenty-four and my heart breaks into as many pieces.
And so we try to joke and laugh. I tell him that people learn at different speeds and different times. I tell him about his older brother who didn't learn to read till he was eight and then, when it was his time, he learned to read in only three months and went straight to the top of his class that year.
I tell him that some babies get toilet trained at one year, and some at two, and some not till three or four but that you're not likely to see a sixteen-year-old in diapers. And he laughs. I see his eyes brighten a little. His forehead relax. And as he lets go of his tension he seems to focus more, to remember better.
But still it is not enough. And I find myself hating the multiplication tables for hurting my son. Division has become my enemy. Sixty four divided by eight is simply more than I can tolerate. Eighty one divided by nine is more than any nine-year-old should have to deal with.
And I sometimes blame you. Do you teach him well enough? Sometimes I'm angry that you've criticized and made him feel bad. But then I think that you are simply there to blame while I'm feeling so bad for my sweet little boy.
Do you know how sweet he is? My son.
Last night, we fought until he finally sat to do his math. Then we sat for an hour and a half going over three times three equals nine, nine divided by three is three. We put kidney beans on the table and made them into students in a class, candies for each student, shekels for the store, all the things that can be divided and multiplied, estimated and rounded. Sometimes we used a calculator, anything to help him see the numbers again and again. Finally his eyes turned red, his eyelids drooped and he said: "Ta, I'm too tired. Can I go to bed now?"
Dressed in his pajamas he came to kiss me good night. "Y'know Ta", he said, "I hate when I have to stop playing to do homework with you. But then, when we do it, I like it so much I don't want to stop."
Do you know how much my heart jumped with these words, how hard I prayed last night that you will give him a good grade on his math test this morning?
To tell you the truth I don't care if he does the problem right or wrong. It wouldn't bother me at all if just for today seven times eight equaled fifty-four or fifty-two or fifty-six or forty-eight. As far as I'm concerned two plus two doesn't have to equal four if it means that my son will feel good about himself, if he'll want to continue trying, if he'll begin to think of himself as smart and courageous and capable.
Is five plus five really ten? Could it not be twelve just once for the sake of my boy? For the sake of his well-being? Does math care if it is done correctly, or is it only you? Would the numbers take offense, or is it only your rigidity that forces five to be the impossible answer to two times two? Are these numbers worth a life? A future?
Do you ask yourself these questions when you grade his test?
If you looked in his eyes you would? If you loved him you would?
Because, you see, love is strong enough to allow five times zero to be five instead of zero just this once.
If it was your son, would you care?
I don't ask you to love my son as I do. Nor that you grade his papers unfairly. I want him to do his math correctly and to understand the importance of exactitude in all things and ways.
Only please, look into his eyes. While the numbers may not change, the way you teach him might. Though his answers may be flawed, you'll see that his heart is not. Though it may take time for him to learn, you'll see how very hard he tries. And when you grade him -- do it in such a way that only the numbers are judged and not the boy. Five plus five may always be ten, four times four is always sixteen, but just make sure that whatever he writes, my boy does not add up to zero in your eyes or his.
Have you looked into his eyes? My son's, I mean. The one who is having so much trouble in your math class.
I have. When I help him at night, I see the frustration in his eyes when he can't understand. I see him search my face, fearful of my disappointment, my criticism when he gets the problem wrong after I've explained it so many times.
I see in his eyes the desire to give up. Around his lips I see the sadness and creeping despair.
I watch the tension in his forehead as he tries so hard to understand. I watch his fingers turn white as he grips his pencil tight with the hope that this time -- this time -- the pencil won't betray him and will write the answers correctly on the page.
Do you look at him in the classroom when you teach him? Do you look in his eyes and see how the disappointment and frustration threaten to reach into his soul? To break his heart? Can you see his failure harden into the foundation of his character?
I ask you: Do you see how hard he tries? How much he wants to please? How his self-esteem is crumbling each time he can't remember seven times eight equals fifty six? He knows more painfully than you that he's tried to learn this five hundred and sixty times and still forgets.
I see how hard he tries. I see it all. When I sit with him at night I can barely continue with our homework session as I watch his freckled face struggle to remember four times six equals twenty-four and my heart breaks into as many pieces.
And so we try to joke and laugh. I tell him that people learn at different speeds and different times. I tell him about his older brother who didn't learn to read till he was eight and then, when it was his time, he learned to read in only three months and went straight to the top of his class that year.
I tell him that some babies get toilet trained at one year, and some at two, and some not till three or four but that you're not likely to see a sixteen-year-old in diapers. And he laughs. I see his eyes brighten a little. His forehead relax. And as he lets go of his tension he seems to focus more, to remember better.
But still it is not enough. And I find myself hating the multiplication tables for hurting my son. Division has become my enemy. Sixty four divided by eight is simply more than I can tolerate. Eighty one divided by nine is more than any nine-year-old should have to deal with.
And I sometimes blame you. Do you teach him well enough? Sometimes I'm angry that you've criticized and made him feel bad. But then I think that you are simply there to blame while I'm feeling so bad for my sweet little boy.
Do you know how sweet he is? My son.
Last night, we fought until he finally sat to do his math. Then we sat for an hour and a half going over three times three equals nine, nine divided by three is three. We put kidney beans on the table and made them into students in a class, candies for each student, shekels for the store, all the things that can be divided and multiplied, estimated and rounded. Sometimes we used a calculator, anything to help him see the numbers again and again. Finally his eyes turned red, his eyelids drooped and he said: "Ta, I'm too tired. Can I go to bed now?"
Dressed in his pajamas he came to kiss me good night. "Y'know Ta", he said, "I hate when I have to stop playing to do homework with you. But then, when we do it, I like it so much I don't want to stop."
Do you know how much my heart jumped with these words, how hard I prayed last night that you will give him a good grade on his math test this morning?
To tell you the truth I don't care if he does the problem right or wrong. It wouldn't bother me at all if just for today seven times eight equaled fifty-four or fifty-two or fifty-six or forty-eight. As far as I'm concerned two plus two doesn't have to equal four if it means that my son will feel good about himself, if he'll want to continue trying, if he'll begin to think of himself as smart and courageous and capable.
Is five plus five really ten? Could it not be twelve just once for the sake of my boy? For the sake of his well-being? Does math care if it is done correctly, or is it only you? Would the numbers take offense, or is it only your rigidity that forces five to be the impossible answer to two times two? Are these numbers worth a life? A future?
Do you ask yourself these questions when you grade his test?
If you looked in his eyes you would? If you loved him you would?
Because, you see, love is strong enough to allow five times zero to be five instead of zero just this once.
If it was your son, would you care?
I don't ask you to love my son as I do. Nor that you grade his papers unfairly. I want him to do his math correctly and to understand the importance of exactitude in all things and ways.
Only please, look into his eyes. While the numbers may not change, the way you teach him might. Though his answers may be flawed, you'll see that his heart is not. Though it may take time for him to learn, you'll see how very hard he tries. And when you grade him -- do it in such a way that only the numbers are judged and not the boy. Five plus five may always be ten, four times four is always sixteen, but just make sure that whatever he writes, my boy does not add up to zero in your eyes or his.
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