Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.

Today there is so much pressure placed on a child from an early age regarding their education. As parents we all want our children to excel in their school but what methods of learning do we use in order to achieve these results.

In many instances we place our children with lessons that they do not like and they are not able to accomplish and this is very discouraging for the child. It would be better if the child was presented with fun tasks which they can do and develop their learning ability that way. This in my opinion is an important key to learning.

Lessons which are happily done are internalized and in this manner talent is grown carefully. Children learn best when they are having fun! Parents are encouraged to create the best possible learning environment and utilize proper tools and materials to allow the child to enjoy learning and feel empowered to learn.

Use this as a tool and give them as much as they can do! Praise them with their efforts and their incentive to learn will become much higher. They will want to do better and in turn they will succeed! That fire has been lit and we as parents can keep on igniting that fire in our children.

Make Reading Fun!

Reading aloud can be a lot of fun, not just for parents but for all family members. Here are some ways to get the most out of reading to your young child:

Read with drama and excitement! Use different voices for different characters in the story. Use your childs name instead of a characters name. Make puppets and use them to act out a story.

Re-read your childs favourite stories as many times as your child wants to hear them, and choose books and authors that your child enjoys.

Read stories that have repetitive parts and encourage your child to join in.

Point to words as you read them. This will help your child make a connection between the words he or she hears you say and the words on the page.

Read all kinds of material – stories, poems, information books, magazine and newspaper articles, and comics.

Encourage relatives and friends to give your child books as gifts.

Take your child to the library and look at interactive CD-ROMs and the Internet, as well as books.

Subscribe to a magazine for your child. He or she will love receiving mail!

10 Reasons Why Books Are Still Important?

Has your toddler just learned the alphabet? Then this is the perfect time to introduce him/her to the wonderful world of books. In this time of personal computers and the Internet, many of us consider books to be things of the past. However, they still play a crucial role in the overall development of a child during the early years of life. Those “educational” toys and “pre-school development” shows on TV may look pretty appealing, but nothing can replace good old books. Here are 10 reasons why books are still important for a child’s development:

1. The more books children read, the faster their vocabulary is expanded. Books help them to learn new words and new ways of using the words that they already know. This accelerates preschool child development, and also improves their soft skills in the long run.

2. Reading books to children at bedtime is a wonderful bonding experience that nourishes emotional development. Parents can also help the child relate the incidents in the story to real events in their lives.

3. Encouraging a love of books in toddlers is a great way to prepare them for the school environment and to adapt to the concept of daily schoolwork.

4. Reading books regularly stimulates children’s imagination, accelerates their emotional development and fosters natural curiosity. Children quickly learn to visualize the scenarios mentioned in the stories by reading the text alone. This type of development works even better if a parent assists in the process. According to a recent research conducted by author Jim Trelease, regular reading of books “creates empathy toward other people, because literature values humanity and celebrates human spirit and potential, offering insight into different lifestyles while recognizing universality”.

5. As children read different books, their knowledge on various subjects increases multifold. In addition, everything that they learn at this age stays in their mind for a long time to come. This can help them become better students in school.

6. Reading books improves a child’s attention span. Books with colorful pictures work even better than text-only books.

7. Reading can successfully replace TV as a source of entertainment, especially if the child is introduced to preschool books as soon as he/she learns the alphabet. Reading helps children utilize their time in a more constructive manner.

8. Children who learn to read at an early age have a better chance of getting a job later in life. They also perform much better than those who grew up watching TV and playing games on computers. In a recent speech, renowned author/illustrator Rosemary Wells pointed out that, “a young child's growing mind needs active play and live conversation. Television puts a child into what neurologists call the passive Alpha state. A child cannot learn from screens because programs are meant to sell products not to teach”.

9. A parent reading to his/her toddler often becomes a role model in the child’s mind. In this way, the child learns to be more obedient towards parents.

10. Developing the habit of reading regularly from an early age helps the child to cope better with the rigors of academic education later on. Allowing your child to watch a few pre-school shows on TV isn’t a bad thing to do. However, reading books is a very important activity that no child should be deprived of during the early years of his/her life. Read a book to your child today. It will go a long way in forging a lifelong bond between you and your toddler.

“The most important thing that parents can do is talk and read to their children. During the toddler and preschool years, it is critical to provide children with different language and reading experiences.” (G. Reid Lyon, Ph.D., Chief of the Child Development and Behavior Branch within the National Institute of Child Healthy and Human Development

Parenting Tip: Children Love to Learn!

Glenn Doman received his degree in physical therapy from the University of Pennsylvania in 1940, and began pioneering the field of child brain development. In 1955, he founded The Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential® , whose work with brain-injured children led to vital discoveries regarding well children. Glenn is the best-selling author of 6 books, all part of the Gentle Revolution Series

Why Teach your baby to Read?

Just read the book on How to Teach your baby to Read by Glenn Doman.
Here is the summary on what he has written-

I think that it is a wonderful thing for a mother (or father) to teach her baby to read for a number of reasons:

1. It is easier to teach a two-year-old to read at home than it is to teach a six-year-old at school. Much easier.

2. Since babies would rather learn than do anything else in the world, and would rather be with their parents than with anyone else in the world, there are few activities as joyous for mothers and babies as learning-to-read sessions.

3. Reading is the very basis of all learning and the acquisition of knowledge, and if mother teaches her baby to read at one, two, or three years of age he will not fail to learn to read in school at six, seven, or eight years of age. Literacy and success go hand-in-hand, and illiteracy and failure go hand-in-hand. This is true in nations, in states, in cities, and in neighborhoods, and is especially true in individuals.

4. It is a wondrous thing for a baby, or child, or an adult to be able to read.

5. Most importantly:

We parents go through all the early years of baby's life, taking care of the running noses, the dirty diapers, the sheer horror of losing sight of the tiny child on the crowded beach for thirty seconds which seems like an hour, the frantic silent prayers on the way to the hospital at 2 a.m. with the five-year-old's temperature rising to a new world record, and all the other prices we pay so willingly for the joy and privilege of squeezing that beloved tiny body and beholding that beautiful little face.

Then when, as custom has had it, at six years of age, it becomes time to introduce him to all the golden and glorious things that have been written in his own language and in others, and thus to open the truly magic door to all knowledge and all that is beautiful in this world, we turn him over to a stranger called a teacher, and pray that the teacher will know what a truly brilliant and eager-to-know mind this most exceptional of all children has.

Having put up with all the loving problems, we are entitled to all the loving fun to be had in teaching our babies to read, and in so doing, to lift our babies on to our shoulders and say, "Behold, my child, the world in all its splendor. It is our gift to you."

The truth is that we expose children to reading too late. By six years of age the ability to take in raw facts, whether auditory (spoken) or visual (written), without the slightest effort is just about gone. If children did not hear words until they were six years old, we would have another staggering educational problem to match the present staggering reading problem and a flood of books with titles like Why Johnny Can't Talk.

It is easier to teach a five-year-old to read than it is to teach a six-year-old. It is easier at four than at five, easier at three than at four, easier at two than at three, easier at one than at two and easiest of all (for the baby) below one.

The superb truth is that babies take in raw facts such as written and spoken words at a rate that no adult could come close to matching.

Babies are linguistic geniuses and no adult who values his ego should get himself into a foreign language learning contest with any baby. To your eleven-day-old baby, English is a foreign language. By three he'll have completely functional use of English, which he'll speak with a perfect American accent. Don't you try to match that three years from now with a foreign language you heard for the first time eleven days ago.

In order for a baby to learn spoken words, there are three requirements from a neurophysiological standpoint. The words must be spoken loudly, clearly, and repeatedly in order for his immature auditory pathway to understand and remember. All mothers understand this instinctually and speak to their babies in loud, clear, repeated words. The result is that all well babies have a functional use of their mother tongue by three. Indeed, it is this very process of speaking to a baby in a loud, clear, repeated voice that physically grows his brain's auditory pathway.

Learning to understand spoken language through the ear is not a school subject, it is a brain function. So also is learning language through the eye a brain function rather than a school subject.

Why, then, do not all babies learn to read spontaneously as they learn to speak spontaneously?

The problem is that we have made the print too small.

In order for a baby to read words, there are three requirements. The print must be large, clear, and repeated. The baby's immature visual pathways are not able to deal with small print. Indeed, it is the very process of showing the baby large words which physically grow and mature his brain's visual pathway.

All that the mother of a two-year-old has to do to prove this to herself is to get a piece of white poster board, with a red marker print the word Mommy clearly in letters six inches high, and show it to her baby a half dozen times an hour apart, saying in a happy excited voice, "This says Mommy."

Don't test him; just tell him. Soon he'll tell you. Hundreds of thousands of mothers have taught their babies to read this way, which is a wonderful thing indeed.

by Glenn Doman,

Founder of The Institutes for the Achievement of Human Potential

Why is reading to my baby good for him?

Reading will help build your child's vocabulary, stimulate his imagination, and improve his communication skills. In fact, the more you speak to your child from the get-go, the better it is for his growth and development. Studies have shown that language skills — and even intelligence — are related to how many words an infant hears each day. In one study, babies whose parents spoke to them a lot (an average of 2,100 words an hour) scored higher on standard tests when they reached age 3 than did children whose parents hadn't been as verbal. A running commentary on the state of the neighborhood during your walk and naming your child's body parts as you bathe him are good ways to chat. Reading is one more fun way to add variety to your verbal interactions.

But my baby doesn’t seem interested!”
Newborns may not respond to your reading, so it may be difficult to tell if they’re really even listening or benefiting from your efforts. But, you will see that with time, your baby will begin to understand the routine, be curious about the book you’re holding, show interest in the pictures and generally, begin to enjoy reading time. The advantage of starting early(if you want to) is that by the time your baby is 6 months old or ready to observe pictures and register words, she would already be familiar with the books. She would already have a head start and you will actually have to put in very little effort to get her interested in reading with you

Early Childhood

Early childhood is an important phase in the life of human beings. It may prove to be a troublesome time for the parents of toddlers since they have to be extremely conscious about the child’s physical care. The biological and brain development of children during the first few years of their lives depend entirely on the quality of stimulation that is evoked by their environment – at all the three levels of family, community, as well as the society.

Studies have indicated that the first three years of a child’s life are extremely crucial for both the emotional and intellectual development.

According to James J. Heckman, “Early childhood interventions of high quality have lasting effects on learning and motivation”.
Early childhood development is actually an umbrella term encompassing a child’s social, emotional, language, literacy, physical, creative, and cognitive development. All these developmental stages are inter-related. They collectively contribute to the all-round development of the child. However, children develop their milestones at their own pace.

Therefore, it is imperative for parents to give special attention to the needs of their children. Early child development is thus a lifelong determinant of well-being, health, and learning skills of the child in the future. Here are some important aspects of early childhood development that parents need to be aware of:

1. The first six years of life are extremely crucial for the growth and development in children. As a matter of fact, their mental growth is accelerated when they receive adequate attention, love and affection, mental stimulation, and encouragement. Preschool child development occupies a pivotal position in the lives of the infants. It is during this phase that parental responsibilities towards the growing child become most important. It has been proved by research studies that children tend to develop a more extensive vocabulary if their parents involve them in frequent conversations.

2. Early childhood is an exploratory age when kids begin to discover their surroundings. It is an imitative age as well. Kids start picking up the mannerisms, speech, and actions of elders around them. Parents therefore should be appropriate in their behavior in front of children. Research has identified the particularly critical areas in early childhood development: vision, logical thinking, language, music, and emotion. These are considered as "windows of opportunity", and should be considered as important aspects of their development.

3. In early childhood, behavior problems seem to be more troublesome and frequent as compared to problems related to the physical care of children. If their actions are unsupervised, they might grow up to be disobedient, obstinate, antagonistic, and stubborn. Parents should pay extra attention to the needs of their children.The social behavior of individuals at a grown up stage is determined by the way they have been nurtured by parents during their early childhood years. Therefore, it is extremely crucial to ensure that children are not only provided with proper nutrition and education, but also protected from abuse, harm, and discrimination.

The state of early childhood development, when measured with a comparable approach, results in the betterment of the child and subsequently, the entire community

How do Get ready for Primary 1?

5 Ways to Develop Your Child's Curiosity!

A very important part of childhood is the awareness of the five senses in the body. As children learn to observe their surroundings, they begin to both identify and distinguish between sounds, sights, tastes, smells, and sensations. They develop a sense of curiosity about themselves and the world around them, and this in turn helps them understand their own selves. In fact, curiosity also fosters a feeling of learning, which can prove to be of great help in the future.

Parents may often feel irritated while answering the numerous questions children come up with. But it is necessary to understand that for a child, everything around him/ her is new, and hence exciting. This latent inquisitiveness of children leaves them awestruck at almost everything they look at.

Children are naturally curious from early infancy. From the tender age of eight months, a child’s brain starts posing questions. Physical activities stimulate the curiosity in children, and since they are naturally curious about their surroundings, they explore their environment mostly while playing. In fact, the latest medical trends in child development encourage parents to foster the sense of curiosity among kids.

According to noted pediatrician and author Thomas Berry Brazelton, “As a child becomes more adept at handling their body, their hands become freer, more exciting, and more available for learning”.

How can you develop your child’s curiosity?

1. Games and other physical activities are perhaps the best way to inculcate curiosity among children. They are basically inquisitive about their toys and belongings. Hence, parents must develop interesting play activities that will help your child to quench his/her curiosity. Science toys can be a good tool to develop curiosity in the infant brain.

2. Parents should encourage children to explore their natural surroundings. This external exploration paves the way for introspection which in turn inspires curiosity.

3. Children should be encouraged to ask questions. As we all know, having answers to questions is the first step towards satiating the basic thirst for knowledge.

4. Kids should be encouraged to look for answers to their questions. This will give them more confidence and also enhance their understanding of things around them.

5. Parents must teach children to be good observers. Keen observation is the perfect complement for a curious mind. Parents should also help to improve their child’s attention span. Higher level of attention leads to enhanced degrees of curiosity.

It’s good to be curious!

• Curiosity broadens the child’s mind. A broader mind helps in a holistic development of the child.

• A curious child is always actively seeking answers. This curiosity propels them towards unraveling the mysteries of daily life.

• Curiosity makes children good receptors, and capable of grasping new concepts easily. Thus, curiosity enhances a child’s potential to learn.

Curiosity plays a pivotal role in the mental and intellectual improvement of a child. A child’s inquisitiveness leads to valuable exploration, and exploration is the key to learning. Curiosity should never be suppressed or else it can have an adverse impact on a child’s early development. As John Holt says, "Children do not need to be made to learn" since they are already born with what Einstein called "the holy curiosity of inquiry". So encourage the curious side of your children and watch them grow into knowledgeable and mature individuals!

Start your baby really young on languages!

How will my child learn to read?

Learning to read does not happen all at once. It involves a series of stages that lead, over time, to independent reading and to fluency.

The best time for children to start learning to read is when they are very young, usually at the preschool level. This is when they are best able to start developing basic reading skills.

The stages involved in learning to read are listed below.

1. The pre-reader and the beginning reader:

likes to look at books and likes to be read to

likes to behave like a reader – for example, holds books and pretends to read them

learns about words by looking at picture books and playing with blocks that have letters on them, magnetic letters, and so on

learns about words from songs, rhymes, traffic signs, and logos on packages of food

learns how text works – for example, where a story starts and finishes and which way the print proceeds

begins to understand that his or her own thoughts can be put into print

uses pictures and memory to tell and retell a story

2. The emerging reader:

is ready to receive instructions about reading

learns that text is a common way to tell a story or to convey information

begins to match written words to spoken words and to perceive relationships between sounds and letters

begins to experiment with reading, and is willing to try to say words out loud when reading simple texts

finds the pictures helpful in understanding the text, and learns that the words convey a message consistent with the pictures

3. The early reader:

develops more confidence and uses a variety of methods, such as relying on visual cues, to identify words in texts

adapts his or her reading to different kinds of texts

recognizes many words, knows a lot about reading, and is willing to try new texts

4. The fluent reader:

thinks of reading as a good thing and does it automatically

uses a variety of methods to identify words and their meanings

can read various kinds of texts and predict events in a story

relates the meaning of books to his or her own experience and knowledge, and understands what is new

It takes time to pass through each of these stages, and your child will need plenty of attention and support as he or she moves through them. You can play a leading role in helping your child acquire the reading skills he or she needs to succeed!