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What a child should know and be able to do before school: early development
Early development became the new religion of modern parents. But is the desire to cram more knowledge into children from birth always justified?
The book by the Japanese Masaru Ibuki “It’s too late after three” about the benefits of early development, written in 1971, unexpectedly gained a new wave of popularity in 2011. Montessori methodology, developmental centers for children – is it really a necessity or just a desire of parents not to miss anything?
Ekaterina Lysenkova, director of the methodological department of the Startum network of centers for additional education for children, told healthy-food-near-me.com what skills it is important to instill in a child at an early age without spoiling his childhood.
“The main problem of our time is that parents stir up and arrange competition in front of each other, ‘and mine already knows four languages.’ The only thing that is important for a parent to take into account is the child’s psychological readiness, and teaching certain skills will help him with this, ”the expert says.
Parents are usually worried that the child will not be able to join the team, will be an outcast, he will be teased. Communication is a really important part of a child’s adaptation to their environment. However, in fact, children learn communication in the sandbox, when they share toys and defend their boundaries. Many go to kindergartens or circles, sports sections before school, so the child comes to school with the experience of communicating with peers and adults.
However, regular day-to-day communication and teamwork skills and negotiation skills are not quite the same thing. It is important to learn to communicate with peers on various topics, to unite to achieve your small goals (even in a game), so that you feel much more comfortable and freer in a group with strangers. The adaptation of the child to the new team should be as less traumatic and stress-free as possible. After all, the higher the level of anxiety, the lower the ability to perceive information.
In an effort to make children child prodigies, parents often forget that the child must develop according to age. It is strange to demand perseverance from a one-year-old kid, and Homer’s recitation from a three-year-old. Moms and dads love to rush children, rush to jump over the natural stages of development, thereby excluding the most important components from the child’s developing environment. It seems to them that it is much more important to learn the English alphabet at the age of three than jumping rope or playing ball.
However, it is precisely such outdoor games, as well as coloring or drawing, that help the baby to develop hand-eye coordination and navigate in space. Without this essential skill, the child will experience difficulties in all disciplines, because even writing letters requires good coordination. To combine business with pleasure, parents can send their children to courses where they use non-standard methods – leadership schools, mental arithmetic, etc.
Finding your own ways to solve problems
Most people think in a standard way and often act automatically. Children, on the other hand, have a unique ability to find creative and simple solutions. This skill is one of the iconic leadership qualities, which is why it is so important that it is maintained and developed throughout life.
The fact is that at school, children are often required to take standard actions: for example, solve problems with one method, write essays on literature without expressing their informed opinion. All this can gradually discourage the individual from exploring the subject. To prevent this from happening, parents send their children to leadership and acting classes for the little ones.
At first, children tend to think that reading is boring and boring. The human brain initially perceives the text as a picture and adults already have the skill to interpret it deliberately, and for this, children need to read the same thing several times. So it is important to start teaching the child to read syllables and analyze what he read.
There are techniques that allow you to solve both problems in combination, for example, the speed reading method. But it is very important not to overdo it and not discourage the child from opening the book at all. You can invite your child to read a fairy tale about his favorite hero together, or, for a start, at least just leaf through a book with pictures. The kid must get used to the book, learn to handle it.
The conventional wisdom that there is a special mathematical mindset has no scientific basis in fact. People who call themselves humanities, unable to add two plus two, in fact, simply avoid practice in mathematics. Recently, scientists have even introduced a special term “mathematical anxiety”. This is a fairly common occurrence when a schoolchild or student, when thinking about mathematics, has symptoms of anxiety.
As for school, most often the study of a new subject there is associated with stress: the teacher can give a two for the wrong answer, the class laughs if the student speaks out of place or is mistaken at the blackboard. That is why it is worth introducing a child to elementary mathematical operations even before school, in a friendly atmosphere. It is effective here to use the method of mental arithmetic, which is effectively used in Western countries.
“Mental arithmetic not only allows you to learn how to count, but also develops both hemispheres of the brain, concentrates the child’s attention, develops imagination. There are even special schools of mental arithmetic, for example, “Startum”. All this will increase the chances that a schoolchild will not faint at the sight of logarithms by the time they reach high school, ”explains Yekaterina Lysenkova.
Important!
It is necessary to teach skills that will allow the child to adapt more easily and join the new team. However, you need to do it in a fun way, without punishment or threats. Otherwise, the child will only feel disgust for new knowledge, for school, for the entire educational process. It is important to choose such developmental centers in which educators and teachers take into account the age characteristics of babies and use effective unique methods of development.