The Myths about Early Childhood Education
Hello! I see you're new here. Welcome to Babylicious! You might like to subscribe to my RSS feed to get regular updates on what's new at Babylicious. Thanks for visiting!
The reason why I embarked on right brain education was through the hope that I might help my children develop abilities that will facilitate their schooling years. I am glad to say that I have come a long way since that initial intention. My desire to see them continue their right brain education has gone beyond the petty reasons, such as simply having photographic memory or being able to speed read. Having learned more about the purpose of right brain education through Shichida‘s manuals, I am beginning to see his vision for helping to develop the genius potential without our children. If I once believed that right brain education was simply a “nice to have” but not essential, I now believe it forms a vital part of every child’s development.
There are a lot of criticisms about teaching young children and I understand many of the good intentions behind them. Now I would like to address some of the arguments that I have heard:
- they’re only children, let them enjoy their childhood;
- what’s the purpose of teaching a child to rote learn information if the child doesn’t understand the material;
- learning how to memorise information does not teach a child to think – we want children who are capable of thinking, not parroting.
I will answer these arguments from the point of view of right brain education (I’ll call it right brain education since that is the term we are all most familiar with).
Firstly, they’re only children, they should be enjoying their childhood. I completely agree with this sentiment, which is why I believe right brain education is the way to go. The conflict lies in the fact that we associate learning with stress and pressure. The reason why we make this connection is because much of the schooling systems we have been through are left brain oriented. The left brain learns best under stress, so what we remember is that learning was not fun at all, it was stressful.
Right brain education, on the other hand, is about educating a child with love in a fun and stress-free environment. The fundamental principle is that a child who feels stressed is unable to access the right brain. Therefore, a child who is learning through right brain methods is having fun and enjoying childhood. Many right brain activities are played as games. If a child does not enjoy the game, we stop.
What is the purpose of teaching a child to rote learn? I think the question might be due to the fact that right brain education involves the use of flashcards. The children are taught a lot of complex information, like the Periodic Table, which are information they don’t really understand. The purpose of flashcards is to train the image function of the right brain rather than for rote learning. The flashing of images in rapid succession helps to develop the image function. Although, that said, since the right brain has the capability for recalling information via photographic memory, the child inevitably learns these complex subjects as well.
Learning how to memorise information does not help a child learn to think. Indeed, Shichida agrees that information that is memorised with the left brain is pure rote learning – which is the way most of us memorise information. However, that which is absorbed by the right brain inspires imagination and creativity. With right brain education, we are not teaching children to memorise information that they can parrot back, we are helping them learn to absorb information rapidly so that they may use it creatively in the way that geniuses in our history have used information to change the world.
As I said in my earlier post about left brain/right brain and whole brain education – it is important not only to use the right brain well, but to be able to use the left and right brain cohesively – as a smoothly functioning unit. Being able to use the right brain excellently – that is what Savants do. Being able to use the left brain excellently – that is what many ordinary people do. Being able to use the right and left brains excellently – that is what geniuses do. As educators, it is our responsibility to help our children maximise their poentials. Within each child is the potential for genius. With whole brain education, we can raise children with the ability to utilise that potential and make a difference to the future.
Popularity: 1% [?]
Review: Time4Learning
With access to the internet, homeschooling has never been easier. Any parent looking to enrich their child’s educational experience can get access to a multitude of resources and programs online. They can be used as part of a homeschooling program, an after school activity or as a holiday program. It could even be used as an activity to keep an older child appropriately occupied while you tend to a younger child. Many of these programs can provide anything from a few minutes to an hour’s worth of educational activities and more.
Tell Me About Time4Learning?
Time4Learning is one such program. Covering a broad range of subjects, Time4Learning is a great way to expose your child to science, math, art, reading, and social studies. Materials are presented through a variety of multimedia activities – videos, online books, puzzles, activities, and games. The program comes with lesson plans and a reporting system for parents to keep track of what their child has done. The curriculum covers Pre-K to Grade 8 and you can advance your child is you feel the material is too easy. There is also a parent’s community and forum where you can speak to other parents to get help on homeschooling and other education matters.
Membership costs $19.95 a month for the first child and $14.95 a month for each subsequent child.
What’s in Time4Learning?
We received a free trial for a month to test run the program and this is what we found…
I enrolled Gavin and he received access to Pre-K Level 1 and 2. As you can see from the screen shots below, there are quite a number of subjects covered.
Pre-K Level 1:
Subjects: school supplies, alphabet, colours, shapes, rhymes, numbers, weather, on the farm, food, at the zoo, feelings, vehicles, tools, on the playground, sports, the human body, space fruit, the human face, and garden.
Pre-K Level 2:
Subjects: At the library, insects, colour mixing, seasons, playing outside, more letters, healthy habits, yourself, more numbers, out to sea, more rhymes, staying fit, manners, pets, days of the week, time, making music, measuring, nature, money, and in your neighbourhood.
Under each subject, there are a variety of activities you can do – watch a video, read a book, colour, do a puzzle, or play a game.
Once your child has completed all the activities within a subject, the picture is denoted with a red tick. You will be able to review this in the parents’ reports section.
There is also a “playground” that your child can go to for “recess”. The playground gives your child access to specific, approved children’s websites on the internet to play games. The list is quite extensive as you can see from the screenshot below:
There is an option for you to set a limit your child’s “play” time. Once that time has expired, your child has to go back to “class”. Although, looking at some of the activities in the playground, I’d be pretty happy for Gavin to stay there for a while, too.
How was Our Experience with the Program?
I introduced Gavin to the program one afternoon after school and let him wander around on his own after showing him how it worked. I peeked over his shoulder a few times but left him largely to his own resources for much of the time while I tended to his brother. Most of the activities in Pre-K Level 1 were too easy for him, but I couldn’t convince him to go to Pre-K Level 2. Since it was supposed to be an activity to occupy him while I bathed, fed and put his brother to sleep, I didn’t make too much of a deal out of it. He was enjoying himself and the program was reinforcing the stuff he already knew.
Gavin was pretty enthusiastic about the program for the first few days. After that, he seemed to get bored with it. The problem was not that he ran out of things to do. It was more like he ran out of things he wanted to do. There were still plenty of activities he had not done but he just didn’t want to do them. He would go back to the same activities over and over so naturally he tired of them fairly quickly. In the early, however, it was very effective for keeping Gavin busy while I did other things.
What’s the Verdict?
There were a few glitches with the program. I’m not sure whether they were to do with us or whether it was a maintenance problem but some of the activities would not run properly – they simply failed to load.
I also found that the parenting reports didn’t have much information on how well your child did with the activities. All it shows is what your child did, what date he tried them and whether the activity was completed or not. There is no information on what he did right and what he needed more help with (unless there’s something I’m missing here). The help file seems to indicate that you could find out more information about your child’s progress but the images weren’t the same as the reports I got. I’m not sure what happened there…
Aside from these minor issues, I thought it was a pretty good program. I cannot comment about it as a homeschool program since I haven’t really had a chance to look at the program in depth or seen the higher levels. From what little I have seen, I think it is promising to be used as a compliment to other homeschooling activities. As with all things, its suitability depends on each individual child – what works for one child does not necessarily work for all children. I would recommend giving it a trial as it is a fun and educational activity to occupy a child. I know I would have had a ball with a program like this as a child.
Popularity: 1% [?]
Right Brain Activities with Thomas and Friends
After compiling right brain resources and learning about right brain activities that I can practice at home with Gavin, I have discovered that it isn’t easy getting Gavin’s cooperation. Since right brain education is about having fun, forcing Gavin to take part in the activities is clearly out of the question. What is a mother to do?
Introducing Thomas and Friends right brain educational materials…
1. ESP Games – Where are Thomas and his friends?
I hide a character from the Island of Sodor behind one of four famous landmarks. Then I ask Gavin to tell me which landmark the engine is hiding behind. This activity is also great for teaching him about famous landmarks around the world.
2. Mandala
Since Gavin’s crazy about trains, I use pictures of trains instead of Mandala patterns. Although he doesn’t mind doing the Mandala books that I bought for him, I find that the pictures of trains seem to inspire him more.
Linking memory has never been much of a problem for Gavin because he loves stories. He has been able to remember up to 46 cards using the set of 1000 linking cards that I am compiling. I also play random linking memory with him, making up new stories and using more cards each time.
4. Memory Grid
With the memory grid, we use engines. Admittedly, this gives him an edge which means we have to use a bigger grid…
I usually use Smarties for this activity, but then there are only so many Smarties I can use without giving Gavin an OD on Smarties (since the idea is to let him eat the Smarties). I found this to be a better way to play this activity – guess the number of engines.
6. Imaging
It used to be magic carpet rides. These days, we take flying trains to the magical Island of Sodor. It’s a little like a ride on the Hogwart’s express – at least in my mind it is, I’m not sure what Gavin sees in his. I steal a little out of Thomas and the Magic Railroad and talk about the conductor sprinkling his magic gold dust onto the railway tracks so that the engines can fly to the Island of Sodor. Gavin loves this story and is often asking me to take him to the Island of Sodor.
The key to the right brain is fun and it is easy to make any right brain activity fun if you know what motivates your child. And if you get it really right, he’ll be begging you for more. It used to be me asking Gavin whether he wanted to play [insert right brain activity]. These days, Gavin is the one asking me to let him play his new “Thomas game”…
Popularity: 1% [?]
Reading: Whole Words and Spelling from Our Experience
I’ve heard comments that learning to read with flashcards is only successful for teaching a child short term word memory recall. It has also been said that if the child is shown the same words in a different context, for example, in a book or in a different font, he is not able to read it.
This is our experience…
Although Gavin has been learning to read using a variety of mediums, I have always used quite a bit of flashcards with him. He has been able to recognise the words he has learned in restaurant menus, newspapers, and sign boards. The only difficulty he has is usually with curly fonts, such as cursive handwriting. He has also begun to read books on his own. Words he is unfamiliar with he will either by-pass or make a guess.
Recently, I was using the messenger on Skype. Gavin came up to me and crawled into my lap as I was typing. The exchange was completely silent because I have no speaker on my desktop. Shortly after I typed “I didn’t sleep much last night”, Gavin asked, “Mummy, how come you didn’t sleep much last night?”
Although Gavin can read, I often find that the awareness that he can read often prompts friends and family to test him. They will ask him to spell a word or read random words that they point to and find that he is unable to comply. These are the problem with such situations:
- The ability to read a word is not the same as being able to spell a word. I believe that this is especially the case when the child has learned to read the word using the whole word method. That said, Gavin has also recognised words that I spell out to hubby in an attempt to communicate words I do not want Gavin to understand. It looks like the days of spelling words to avoid Gavin’s understanding is soon coming to an end.
- Being able to read some words does not mean he can read any and every word you point out. Gavin is learning to read using the whole word method and he is also learning phonics. Currently, he reads mainly using the whole word method. Although he knows the sounds of letters using phonics, he isn’t quite able to put a whole word together using phonics alone because he can recognise the starting sounds but not the sounds of letters in the middle of the word.
- Asking a child if he can read or spell puts him on the spot. He may choose to comply or he may play dumb simply because he dislikes being tested. I have seen Gavin pretend that he cannot read words that I know he can read. I have since learned not to press him when he does so.
Children know a lot more than we give them credit for. Just because they choose not to answer our questions, or even to answer them incorrectly, does not mean they don’t know or that they do not understand.
Popularity: 1% [?]
Update – Flashcards and Design
Firstly, I’d like to apologise for the crazy design changes you’ve been seeing on this blog. I’m not a tech-person so changing the colour scheme on this blog has been a really big task for me. Most of that has been fixed but if you see anything strange, please let me know. Feel free to make any recommendations on how you think I can improve the site further.
What’s with the new colour scheme? Although Gavin would have preferred blue, I thought red was more appropriate since we’re talking about early child development and red is the first colour a baby sees (black and white aren’t counted).
I will also be uploaded all new flashcards directly to Figur8: Resources – Flashcards. You can head over there and check out the new flashcards uploads. The 1000 linking memory cards that I am currently compiling will be uploaded to Figur8 Right Brain resources. Please check back regularly for new uploads.
Popularity: 1% [?]
