BRAIN DEVELOPMENT
Early Brain Development
Brain development in children is crucial during the early stages of physical development. Famous theorists Piaget explains how the brain develops at a rapid speed during the first 6 years of a child’s life. "By the age of three, a baby’s brain has reached 90 percent of its adult size. The child's brain is influenced by both the genetics and the environment." (Weiss, 2000). The environmental influences on the child's brain development highlights how parents'/guardians' and teachers' interactions with the children during early years can have a great effect for their life time (Weiss, 2000). |
Tips for Healthy Brain Development Here are simple things that you can do at home to promote strong brain development in children 1Respond to a child’s need for affection in a warm and timely fashion 2.Hold, touch and cuddle with your child. 3.Create a safe environment for your child by removing any threat to their development. 4.Talk, sing, dance, and read to your children. This helps to improve their vocabulary. 5.Be attentive to your childs needs. Every childs needs may be different. 6.Create positive discipline strategies. 7.Help to develop routines, repetition and sequences, because children learn well through routines and sequences and repetition. |
Activities you can do at home with your children!
Children need simple, hands-on activities for their proper brain development. Examples: rolling a ball on the floor, petting a cat or dog, turning the page of a book, or reaching to grasp a spoon. These activities involve many body senses and movements: touching, talking, listening, tasting, smelling, playing, singing, looking and running.
All of these varied activities build young children's brains. Because infants and young children are primed to learn from birth, the key is to provide a variety of interesting familiar and familiar experiences during their
development. Exposing your child to new things helps his/her brain consolidate prior knowledge/connections and form new connections. The child's brain is given opportunities to compare the old to new experience and relate one to the other. That is an effective food for the brain development.
Example of activities
1. Provide something interesting and engaging whenever babies are awake or alert such as, a new picture to look at or some time to wiggle on the floor and grasp a noisy toy. Limit the time that toddlers spend with television or preprogrammed mechanical toys and encourage them to explore new things or interact with people and pets..
All of these varied activities build young children's brains. Because infants and young children are primed to learn from birth, the key is to provide a variety of interesting familiar and familiar experiences during their
development. Exposing your child to new things helps his/her brain consolidate prior knowledge/connections and form new connections. The child's brain is given opportunities to compare the old to new experience and relate one to the other. That is an effective food for the brain development.
Example of activities
1. Provide something interesting and engaging whenever babies are awake or alert such as, a new picture to look at or some time to wiggle on the floor and grasp a noisy toy. Limit the time that toddlers spend with television or preprogrammed mechanical toys and encourage them to explore new things or interact with people and pets..
2. Give time each day to practice and encourage repetition of songs, stories and other familiar experiences. Provide babies, toddlers, and children lots of time and opportunities for practice and repetition of activities. Building a child's brain through consistent practice/repetition opens opportunities for brain development. Telling the same stories and singing the same songs over and over again may feel boring to you, but it interesting for the children. A child's brain is "wired" to encourage repetition of sounds, patterns or experiences that provide security and love, and thus develop strong neutral pathways in the brain that become the highways of learning(Scholastic,2013) . Such repetition is good for your children and is a practical and easy approach to helping your child's growth and learning
3. Read to babies for 10 minutes per a day from birth onwards.
Read stories or show pictures to your babies or young children over and over again.
3. Read to babies for 10 minutes per a day from birth onwards.
Read stories or show pictures to your babies or young children over and over again.
4. Talk, laugh, sing, play peek-a-boo in any language parents can speak. Children have the capacity of learning more that one language when younger than when they get older (Scholastic, 2013). Children need to hear language from different sources of activities. The key to language development in a child's brain is hearing language from familiar and unfamiliar sources -- lots of it. Children need to hear language from birth, long before they can speak. The brain stores all the information. By the time they are ready to talk, the brain just retrieves that information and vocabulary. Toddlers whose mother talked to them when they were infants have more vocabularies and a solid basis for later communication that those who were not talked to(Scholastic, 2013).
Ways to expose your children to different language experiences:
Ways to expose your children to different language experiences:
- Playing rhyming games together.
- Reading aloud: read books and ask the child questions about the story before, during, and after reading the story. Talk about and listen to stories with your child.
- Sing popular songs that have consistent repetition such as "The Wheels on the Bus", "Hookie Pokkie", and "Humpty Dumpty"
- Speak directly to your child and ask open-ended questions rather than closed questions with "Yes" or "No" answers.
- Play a variety of music from different types of instruments, cultures, or genres (Scholastic, 2013).
5. Provide opportunities that challenge and stretch your child's abilities Young children learn most efficiently when they're provided with some opportunities to work slightly above their current ability with the assistance of an adult.
Ways you can challenge and stretch your children's abilities include:
Ways you can challenge and stretch your children's abilities include:
- Help young children learn to catch a ball by first tossing a soft plastic ball to them lightly and then slowly moving a little farther away over time as you toss the ball.
- Play familiar and challenging games that will help children consolidate and apply old knowledge and skills and learn new skills too.
- Provide a low table for children to hold onto as they learn to walk until they are confident enough to take their first few steps. As they begin taking steps, help the children walk by having them hold onto your fingers. Gradually, let go slightly to help the children take a step on their own. Then watch for smiles of pride!
- When you feel they are ready, once again gradually introduce more challenging activities, books, poems, songs, and games for them to read, sing, and play respectively (Scholastic, 2013).
Watch this video to learn more about Brain Development in children! This video explains the process of brain development from early childhood. It dicussess how children learn and how you as a caregiver can provide the best learning environment for your child.