Introduction to Book Two for Teachers
Children’s First Steps
EMOTIONS – LANGUAGE – NUMBERS
It is well known that children inherit different and unique abilities, but what you may not know is how these abilities can be improved when teachers focus on them. If a child has inherited a talent in music or athleticism, for instance, practice develops the child’s music abilities and running and other forms of practice makes natural athletes even better. The activities in Children’s First Steps provide a way for you to practice and enhance children’s natural abilities in emotions, language, and numbers. This idea deserves further explanation. Emotions Emotions play a major role in children’s success. Emotions are involved in children’s self esteem, their level of confidence, the way they think about themselves and their sense of security about what they can and will do in life. Perhaps even more important, emotions are the basic building blocks of social relationships. Relationships involve our own emotions which influence us and the way we look at and are asked to understand the emotions shown by other people. Those who are highly intelligent where emotions are concerned are usually the most successful in their friendships, marriages, family and work relationships. It doesn’t take much imagination to realize just how important it is and will be to help children successfully develop where emotions are concerned.
We now know it is possible to help students practice using positive emotions for their own benefit and to develop emotional skills for greater success in their relationships with other people. Children develop strong emotional skills because the right type of emphasis on or practice with emotions shows them how to feel love, happiness, compassion, tenderness, empathy, and many other positive emotions. When children learn to identify and feel positive emotions, they can then practice displaying these emotions in the right way and at the right time. We want to note here that such abilities last a long time.
Think About It:
-Which emotions do you most often see in your classroom, positive or negative?
-What emotions would you like to see more of?
-How do you practice emotions with the students in your classroom?
-How do they react to disappointment?
-Do they feel included? Do they include others?
-How do you help kids identify, feel and practice positive emotions?
Imagine This:
-Can you imagine a classroom where students can balance their emotions on their own?
-Can you imagine a classroom where students feel more comfortable around each other and you?
-Imagine kids helping each other and being genuinely concerned about how others feel.
-Imagine your students knowing how to think about others and applying empathy and thoughtfulness on their own.
The Emotions activities included in this book have been especially designed to help you promote emotional development existing in the above scenarios. Many who have used these activities report that children learn quickly, and they immediately start using what they learn with their friends and family members. We discovered not only did the activities help kids learn about and practice positive emotions, but the activities also influenced adults. Parents reported the activities helped them be more positive and effective with their children at home. Teachers indicated that the learning activities have stimulated new ideas about child management in the classroom. All of this can take place as you engage in the exciting program of enhancing social and emotional opportunities for your students.
Language We know language as the means we use to communicate in both spoken and written form. What is less well known is that language also becomes the tool we use to think and reason. When children have better language skill, they not only communicate better, but they are also more creative, more thoughtful in their decisions and better able to think about their school work and the world around them.
When you use the learning activities included in this book, you are doing much more than teaching students basic language skills that can be used in reading and writing. You are teaching them to become more fascinated with words, how words are organized together and how words are used to think with.
Repeatedly, we have learned that children who have good language skills are also those who do better in school, do better in other achievement situations and do better in other life pursuits. By using these activities to teach children when they are young, you can start them on the path of successful development. Imagine a child who understands the meaning of a poem, or who becomes more interested in reading because he or she better understands words. It is also easy to see the advantage a child has who can understand the words other people use when they speak or write.
Numbers
The natural abilities children are born with almost always have more than one purpose. This is illustrated where numbers are concerned. Learning about numbers is much more than learning to use them in math. Neural scientists have discovered that children not only use numbers to count and do all the activities in math, but they also use numbers to reason and think about the physical world. Many of us fail to appreciate the true importance of this idea.
The world around us is made up of shapes and sizes, distances and directions. A building is a rectangle of four sides. Traveling in a car to a destination takes a certain amount of time. The weather is about distance and time. Children ask about numbers when they ask “how far,” “how long,” “how hot,” and “how high.” Using the number activities in this book gives your students greater opportunity to develop increased skill which can be used in more than one way. Children not only successfully prepare for school subjects, such as mathematics, but they also better understand what they see when they go out into the world.
Example: We hope children will be confident about themselves when they face new situations. This is the case throughout their childhood. They grow up and go out into a physical world. The older they get, the more time they spend in this world. Kids who have developed strong skills in numbers, and therefore also reason well and actively think about the world around them, are more likely to be successful and look for areas in their life they can turn into areas of success. If they better understand their surroundings, they are more likely to avoid mistakes, be more successful, and generally do better. Contrast that with children who are less able to accurately interpret their physical environment. These children more often avoid what they do not understand; they feel more afraid and experience more difficulty. They are more likely to simply keep up and less likely to look toward areas where they can improve their success.
It seems to be common sense that we excel in areas where we are confident and avoid areas where we are not, but why not help children increase the areas in their life where they can be confident? The activities in this book provide you with the tools to help children establish a strong emotional foundation. They help begin the framework for better language skills and the ability to communicate with others. These activities will enable you to provide your students with greater opportunities to improve their abilities with numbers, improve their reasoning skills and ultimately to feel prepared and confident.
Two Learning Environments
Lastly, to improve our opportunities to help children there is one more thing we can do. When it comes to brain growth, what teachers do is very important and is significant. What parents do is important and significant. We can be even more effective if parents and teachers do some of the same things during the same sensitive period. The reason for this is clear.
If a child is exposed to similar things with both parents and teachers, it is more likely that his or her brain will conclude that the ideas and mental skills they are being invited to learn should be focused on because they are showing up in more than one environment. The activities in this program have been designed to be easily adapted to both home and classroom use. We have prepared two sets of brain growth activities. One set of 108 activities is for teachers and one set of 108 activities is for parents. All activities have corresponding teacher/parent activities. There are four Children’s First Steps Brain Growth Activity Books available:
1. Parent’s Book: Beginning, ages 4-5 (54 Brain Growth Activities)
2. Parent’s Book: Advanced, ages 5-6 (54 Brain Growth Activities)
3. Teacher’s Book: Beginning, ages 4-5 (54 Brain Growth Activities)
4. Teacher’s Book: Advanced, ages 5-6 (57 Brain Growth Activities—Note: Three activities in this book were copied from the Teacher’s Activity Book for Beginners.)
* The 108 activities in the parent’s books and the108 activities in the teacher’s books can easily be adapted for home use or classroom instruction to provide parents and teachers with 216 brain growth activities.
All 216 unique activities are available on CD-ROM.
Educating Others We have developed training programs in emotions, language, and numbers so others can be taught how to become more proficient in helping children. The training programs for Children’s First Steps are simple to use and can be completed in one day or spread over a number of days. The program is ideal for preschools, kindergartens and various parent groups. We believe when both parents and teachers are involved, they will readily see the results of their work in the enhanced abilities of their children. Please see the contact information below for more information regarding these incredible activities and the training programs. If you have any questions, would like more information, or would like to find out how you can distribute this wonderful program and its activities, please feel welcome to contact us.
Knowledge Gain Learning Systems
703 South State Street
Suite 1
Orem, UT 84058
Tel.: 801.225.9585
800.526.7793
Fax: 801.221.8810
Website: www.totalcharacter.com
Email: brett@totalcharacter.com
POWERFUL BRAIN GROWTH
LEARNING TECHNIQUES
The purpose of Children’s First Steps is to provide activities and information that will help you to understand how to develop the brains and enhance the abilities of your students. To develop the brain and improve abilities, you must pay attention to how the brain itself functions and learns, and then you must provide stimulation–or activities in this case–that match up with the brain’s natural methods of learning and developing. Following are two brain-based learning methods, Metacognition and Mind Mapping. These two brain-based learning methods are very powerful when it comes to brain growth because they take advantage of the natural development of the brain. Although these brain-based learning methods could be discussed at great length, they have been briefly introduced in this book to provide you with a look at how powerful and effective brain-based learning can be when used to teach your children.
METACOGNITION
Metacognition—students thinking about their thinking—helps to associate positive feelings to learning, adds meaning and value to what children learn and helps kids personalize and understand how to apply what they learn. Each activity in the Children’s First Steps program provides a series of metacognitive questions—possibly the most exciting portion of the activities.
Three Metacognitive Goals
1. To establish and reinforce a connection between positive emotions and learning activities
2. To give meaning and value to the concepts learned for increased retention
3. To awaken awareness of what learning “feels like” emotionally, physically, and intellectually so that the children can recognize and initiate learning in the future
Two things are essential to accomplish these goals. One, whatever form this activity takes it must be consistent. Two, the activity must include the three goals of metacognitive processing every day. Adhering to these two rules allows the children to become familiar with the process and become more fluent in their verbal responses.
Facilitating any metacognitive processing activity is a humbling but positive experience for teachers. Children do not always learn what we intend them to learn. Sometimes they learn important and profound lessons from us that we did not intend to teach. As teachers, it is tempting to gently lead your students to give the expected response or to interpret or reframe their response according to your agenda.
This is very demoralizing to children (and adults!) and critically hampers the learning process. It is crucial that we allow children free expression within the metacognitive activity so we can accurately identify what they have learned or have not learned.
As you become more skilled in participating in metacognitive processes, it may be of value to do a very short metacognitive review of previous activities at the beginning of each day’s instruction. Again, please view the questions listed in the “Let’s Talk About It” section of each activity for metacognitive questions.
MIND MAPPING Mind Mapping is a technique for organizing information that uses both sides of the brain, encourages children to use symbols, and has many learning benefits. The activity requires the brain to integrate multiple sources of information, including visual images, emotional responses, and written words. Integrating these into a symbol system stimulates the brain to use higher level functions. Essentially, Mind Mapping helps children organize large quantities of information for better retention and greater achievement. Mind Mapping is often a more effective learning method because it initiates the natural paths of the brain when learning and recalling information.
Mind Mapping Advantages
• Mind Maps use the whole brain, not just the left side
• Mind Maps are fun
• Mind Map images are more memorable than the words in an outline
• Mind Maps, like our brains, are non-linear (ideas do not come from our brains in an outline manner)
• Mind Maps are quicker and easier to use than an outline
• Mind Maps can help you organize information by allowing you to see an overview of the information and connections between ideas
Mind Mapping Basics • Use a central image: This image should be simple, but fun and representative of the main idea. For example, if your students just learned about bigger and smaller, you could draw a big shape and a small shape in the center. You don’t have to be an artist to convey the general idea!
• Use lots of smaller images: Surround the central image with other simple, colorful, meaningful, and memorable pictures. For example, the concepts of bigger and smaller do not refer exclusively to size. To illustrate those concepts’ relationship to less and more, draw pictures showing less and more around the central image. • Branch out: Use lines to branch out from the main idea to sub-ideas. Use dashed lines, arrows, or circles to show connections between all the concepts.
• Use key words: Words used should be few and meaningful. Young children may not be able to read, but you can include words they have learned to recognize.
• Use colors: Relate ideas, enhance images, and improve appearance with lots of colors. For example, if you are teaching concepts of bigger, smaller, less, and more, you might use the same color to highlight similar concepts. Or, consider letting children color the pictures you draw in a certain order to reinforce relationships.
• Include all ideas: Draw what comes to mind using free association. When certain correlations and ideas enter your mind, use them. For example, a truck is bigger than a car. Adults eat more food than babies. Use natural associations to reinforce ideas.
To help you become more familiar with the idea of Mind Mapping, practice by drawing a Mind Map that describes yourself. What will you use as your central image (probably yourself)? Surrounding this central image, what will you use to represent yourself? Perhaps your family members, certain talents, and hobbies might be included. Are there colors that best characterize your personality? Continue until you have depicted several aspects of yourself. When you are finished, you may wish to show someone else your personal map and see how he or she responds to it. You may be surprised with how well that person understands your images and learns more about you.
This same activity can be utilized to reinforce and teach your students number concepts. As you do this, you are also teaching them how to recognize and use symbols, as well as how to maximize memory skills. These are skills they will rely on for the rest of their lives.
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