Home Schooling for your child?

Secrets to homeschooling:
• Homeschooling can be complete fun, if you enjoy learning with your kids. You can try to make boring things more enjoyable like providing exciting examples to your child. Let your child learn the way he/she feels comfortable because that is the way they will love to enjoy learning.

• It is essential to devote your valuable time to your child’s learning. Avoid doing your tasks while they are studying because it will help them to concentrate on their studies. Your concentration towards them will be rewarded later. Keep your child’s learning time sacred and do not involve yourself with your friends when they are studying.

• If your child is not doing well, or you are messed up with some problems at home, don’t give up, just try reading. Reading is the best way for your kids to learn and retain. Reading aloud delights little ones. You can record your reading and the toddlers can listen to them again and again while you complete your household tasks.

• Make use of educational products to enhance your child’s capability to learn faster. Such products help your child to gain self-confidence and have a better learning experience. Moreover, practical learning helps your child to judge better and make them good test-takers.

• Many of us believe that children are empty vessels waiting for the information to be poured into them. This is a wrong perception. Homeschooling parents should sit with their children and explore each of their textbooks to get the bigger idea of the picture. Try to understand the purpose of the textbook, chapter by chapter, heading by heading and word by word. Once your child is doing chapter by chapter work, you can bring them back to the big picture and then relate the importance of the information given in the textbooks.

• It is suggested to keep in touch with home school mentors and researchers. These people are a great help to mothers’ homeschooling their kids for the first time. Involve yourself with a group or some good library. Even a good education magazine can do wonders.

• Get into some social outings and trips to enhance the learning power of your child. But do not overdo it, as it might kill interest of learning at home.

• Observing your child helps you to know your child’s best capabilities and talents. Children thrive in an environment that encourages independence and autonomy. Thus proper surroundings and tools should be provided to the child.

Is your child gifted?

Signs of giftedness in a preschooler
Your 2- to 4-year-old may be gifted if he:

• Has a specific talent, such as artistic ability or an unusual facility for numbers. For example, children who draw unusually realistic pictures or who can manipulate numbers in their head may be gifted.

• Reaches developmental milestones well ahead of peers.

• Has advanced language development, such as an extensive vocabulary or the ability to speak in sentences much earlier than other children his age.

• Is relentlessly curious and never seems to stop asking questions.

• Is unusually active, though not hyperactive. While hyperactive children often have a short attention span, gifted children can concentrate on one task for long periods of time and are passionate about their interests.

• Has a vivid imagination. Gifted children often create a vast and intricate network of imaginary friends with whom they become very involved.

• Is able to memorize facts easily and can recall arcane information that he learns from television shows, movies, or books.

Other signs of giftedness may be a little harder to discern. By age 3 or 4, for example, some gifted children begin to realize that they are "different" from their peers. This can make them feel isolated and withdrawn; it may also make them likely targets for bullying.

They may begin to experience intense frustration because they can think more rapidly than they can express themselves, verbally or physically. If your child appears unusually angry or frustrated, you may want to consult a mental health professional.

New born babies learn even in their sleep

New born babies are such fast developers because they keep learning even in their sleep, researchers have found.

Even though infants may stay awake for just a few hours a day, their brains keep working around the clock, scientists said.

They believe that the brain is constantly adjusting and adapting to the physical world despite appearances that they are dozing.

The discovery was made by experts at the University of Florida after simple experiments with 26 sleeping newborns.

Researchers played a tune to them, and then followed it with a gentle puff of air to the babies' eyelids. After about 20 minutes, 24 of them had learned to anticipate the puff by squeezing their eyes shut.

The babies' brain waves also changed.

Dana Byrd, a psychologist, said, "We found a basic form of learning in sleeping newborns, a type of learning that may not be seen in sleeping adults.

"They are better learners, better 'data sponges' than we knew. While past studies find this type of learning can occur in infants who are awake, this is the first study to document it in their most frequent state, while they are asleep.

"Newborn infants' sleep patterns are quite different to those of older children or adults in that they show more active sleep where heart and breathing rates are very changeable.

"It may be this sleep state is more amenable to experiencing the world in a way that facilitates learning."

The results, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could be used to identify babies that are not developing properly such as those at risk of dyslexia or autism, she added.