Family Matters

Choosing a day care centre for our kids requires self-testing. No doubt, the right choice can determine our kids’ happiness and can, in time, save us a great deal of energy and heartache when we shift them from one place to another.

Possibly the greatest optimist in history was Thomas Edison. He went through 1,500 attempts to come up with the right wire to light his bulb. He never thought that each attempt will repeat because he was not the same person after that attempt. The Thomas Edison preparing for his 1,500th attempt knew something that the Thomas Edison preparing for his 1,499th attempt did not know.

It all started 18 years ago, when I wrote the “Garden of Eden” program, which put most of the emphasis emotional intelligence. I started an early childhood centre with kids aged 1½ to 4 and proved that excellence depends on the teaching, not on the kids.

Auditory kids pay the most attention to sounds. To them, voices, tones, pitches and rhythms provide a wealth of information and carry emotions that other kids simply ignore. They have superior abilities to “record” and “play back” TV shows, skits, songs and conversations. On the other hand, they are sequential thinkers and must be able to focus on one thing at a time.
Here are some ideas that will help auditory kids learn better, be happier and love learning.

Digital kids have an outstanding ability to notice patterns, structures, rules and processes. They like to think, take things apart and put them together, possible in a better way. Knowledge is the source of their power and they continually look for opportunities to get more information and sharpen their mind. These kids learn best and expresses themselves best using systems, languages (including math, music and computer languages) and logic.

Digital kids think of things as being “interesting” or “boring”.

Here are some ideas that help digital kids learn better…

Kinaesthetic kids needs to move in order to think. They are also very sensitive to others and have lots of “gut” feelings. Kinaesthetic children learn by doing.

Too often, these kids are treated as trouble makers, being blamed for not being able to sit still. However, but forcing them to sit and be quiet, we effectively shut down their brain and ensure that they learn nothing. More than that, we teach them that learning is not fun.

Visual kids have a combination video-and-still camera in their heads. They like to see things. Pictures, colours and visual representations of things are their main information carriers. These kids learn best and expresses themselves best using pictures, graphs and colours. To them, one picture really IS worth a thousand words.

Visual kids use colours, graphs and pictures to learn the sounds around them.

Here are some ideas that help visual kids learn better…

The ways in which we can support children with learning difficulties and gifted children depends on time, much like there is a difference in treating any medical condition. When diagnosed late, the treatment is very much reactive. When diagnosed early, development is very much proactive. A proactive approach allows planning, good use of the preschool space, more time and better child-teacher ratio, added bonus of parent involvement and maybe the most important part is taking advantage of our ability to provide success experiences at a critical time and provide children with a solid foundation for years to come.

Kids can tell left from right as early as 3 years. Every kid has a bank of words in their brain. For every kid the bank is a different size. Some kids need to hear a word 700 hundred times before they “know” the meaning of that word and can use it. Some kids with learning difficulties [...]