Multiple Intelligences

In the early 1980's Howard Gardner introduced the concept of multiple intelligences to contrast with the predominant verbal and math skills necessary to do academically well on tests and school grading.

When we look at the whole child in a multi-faceted manner, we have a valuable tool that can help us aid a child's development. The concept of multiple intelligences gives us another way to consider the child's interests and activities in the context of the child's entire life, not just how that child is doing in school.

Gardner has identified eight basic types of intelligence as follows: linguistic, logical and mathematical, spatial, musical, kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal and naturalist.

When we can look at our children's strengths and natural intelligence, we can then help our children strengthen their gifts and use these strengths to bridge weak skills. In helping our children develop their natural strengths, we will also help them develop other traits such as persistence, enthusiasm, impulse control and goal awareness, all of which may count more toward success in life than native ability.

If we see a child who loves to sing or listen to music, but is doing poorly in reading, we might introduce music combined with reading to use the child's musical talents to bolster a weakness. Reading the lyrics of a favorite song while singing along may be the key to help this struggling reader.

For the child who does poorly in math but loves to move, perhaps we can make a chalk number line and have the child walk or hop to add or subtract, and even multiply. Five plus three becomes a movement of starting on the five and moving three numbers away from the zero. The child discovers that he or she is now on the eight. For subtraction, the child moves toward the zero on the number line. Seven minus three leaves us at the four. Taking three hops three times gets us to nine. Using movement and numbers together can create success for this child.

For the child who enjoys interacting with other people (which is sometimes seen as talking and not getting one's work done, or keeping others from working), we should help the child learn to draw on other strengths besides interpersonal intelligence to develop persistence, enthusiasm, impulse control and goal awareness.

The child with the gift of gab and the love of animals might become an expert on snakes and present oral presentations to each class in the school and larger community.

Perhaps the child who loves to dance, but has weak skills in history, can create a dance performance about the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

The child with athletic gifts in soccer, yet who is struggling with reading, can be directed to reading and writing materials pertaining to soccer.

Using the idea of multiple intelligences along with the concept of bolstering weakness with strengths can give us a tool to help each child develop his or her unique combination of gifts for the world.

Next week: The Compliment Game

Kids Talk™ is a column dealing with early childhood development issues written by Maren Stark Schmidt. Mrs. Schmidt founded a Montessori school and holds a Masters of Education from Loyola College in Maryland.

She has over 25 years experience working with young children and holds teaching credentials from the Association Montessori Internationale. She is also Creative Director for a video-based reading series for children ages three to six, The Shining Light Reading Series. Contact her via e-mail at maren@shininglightreading.com.

Complete Collection of the Shining Light Reading Series Now Available on DVD
Visit www.shininglightreading.com for more information.

Ask your local newspaper to carry Kids Talk. Call, write or e-mail your local newspaper editor and recommend Kids Talk.

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©2007 KIDS TALK™
25877 East Bright Avenue
Welches, OR 97067
503.550.3143
maren@kidstalknews.com

Kids Talk is published in conjunction with Scribe Marketing

Left Brain + Right Brain = Whole Brain

Over the past 25 years, researchers have made great inroads into inner space, trying to figure out how our brains work.

Scientists know that certain parts of the brain control specific brain and body functions. Two hemispheres form the basic structure of the brain, connected by a bundle of neurons called the corpus callosum.

Between 24 to 48 months of age, the neurons in the primary motor cortex of the brain sprout a large number of dendrites, which are responsible for movement in the hands. The left motor cortex controls the right side of the body and right motor cortex controls the left side.

By the age of three years, 86% of children prefer to use the right hand more than the left. Researchers are looking into the proverbial chicken or egg question in regards to handedness. Does the use of the right hand create brain development in the left hemisphere and vice versa, or does brain growth create dominant hand use?

One thing we do know is that using the hands and brain development are closely connected. We would be wise to help our children use their hands in as many ways as possible in order to maximize brain growth and brain hemisphere communication.

Research has shown that certain kinds of thinking are directed in each hemisphere. The functions of the right hemisphere are referred to as ''right-brain thinking'' and the work the left hemisphere is called ''left brain thinking.'' Some examples follow:

Right-Brain Thinking:

Intuitive, spontaneous, emotional, nonverbal, visual, artistic, holistic, playful, diffuse, symbolic, physical

Left-Brain Thinking

Analytical, linear, explicit, sequential, verbal, concrete, rational, active, goal-oriented

Communication between the hemispheres occurs via the corpus callosum, which grows rapidly during the first six years of life. It is because of the corpus callosum that we can use our whole brains, and certain creative skills depend upon critical communication and perception shifts between the cerebral hemispheres.

We need to encourage activities that help develop our children's corpus callosum by strengthening right/left brain connection. Walking, running and swimming are physical activities that require the functioning of both sides of the body and therefore stimulate both sides of the brain fairly equally.

Along with activities that use the whole body, we need to encourage activities that create cross talk between the hemispheres of the brain.

For example, singing involves the right-brain function of music and the left-brain strength of language.

Verbally expressing emotion uses the right-brain function of emotion along with the verbal skills of the left brain.

Drawing graphs uses the right brain's artistic function in tandem with the left-brain's analytical and mathematical skills.

Reciting nursery rhymes or poetry with motions takes advantage of the right brain's predominance in motion and nonverbal skills while connecting with the left brain's verbal skills.

Nursery rhymes and children's songs have endured for centuries because they naturally address the brain development needs of the young child. By encouraging singing and learning a large variety of songs with your preschooler, you'll also be encouraging the brain's hemispheres to work together and strengthen vital connection through the corpus callosum.

Telling jokes uses the playful right brain and the verbal, goal-oriented left-brain. If we can shift our joke telling at the right time to left-brain control, we'll be more likely to remember and deliver the punch lines. Comedians rely on effective brain cross talk to make us laugh.

Using whole brain communication can help us calm a crying or emotionally upset child. By softly counting into the child's right ear, since the opposite side of the brain controls each side of the body, we begin to stimulate left-brain function, which is concerned with logic and rational thought. Because number work is a left-brain function, counting in the right ear helps the emotional right-brain brain shift to a left-brain rational perception. This supports the old adage, ''Count to ten when you are upset.'' Counting helps us at any age to shift our thinking from our emotional right brain to our more rational left brain.

Singing can also help make the calming shift from right-brain to left-brain thinking. Keeping the right-hand side of a crying child next to you can help the child shift to a more left-brain perception.

In our children's first six years of life, a time of rapid brain growth, let's work to keep our children's environments full of music, language and creative activities that will stimulate and nourish both sides of the brain and the connection between the hemispheres.

Next week: Multiple Intelligences

Kids Talk™ is a column dealing with early childhood development issues written by Maren Stark Schmidt. Mrs. Schmidt founded a Montessori school and holds a Masters of Education from Loyola College in Maryland.

She has over 25 years experience working with young children and holds teaching credentials from the Association Montessori Internationale. She is also Creative Director for a video-based reading series for children ages three to six, The Shining Light Reading Series. Contact her via e-mail at maren@shininglightreading.com.

Complete Collection of the Shining Light Reading Series Now Available on DVD
Visit www.shininglightreading.com for more information.

Ask your local newspaper to carry Kids Talk. Call, write or e-mail your local newspaper editor and recommend Kids Talk.

Would you like to send Kids Talk to friends and family or receive Kids Talk e-mail updates in your own inbox? Sign up for FREE here:
Click here for a FREE subscription.

©2007 KIDS TALK™
25877 East Bright Avenue
Welches, OR 97067
503.550.3143
maren@kidstalknews.com

Kids Talk is published in conjunction with Scribe Marketing

Urgent But Not Important

Time management is not about managing our time. Time management is about managing ourselves.

We spend our time on activities that are important or not important, urgent or not. In our world of 24/7 e-mail, computers, text messaging, cell phones and satellite television, urgent and important are easily confused. For effective self-management we want to focus our attention on the important items and be able to discern the difference between three types of activities, as follows 1) urgent and important, 2) urgent but not important or 3) not urgent but important. The not urgent and not important items hardly get a second glance from us anyway.

To be able to detect the differences in these activities we need to ask ourselves a few questions.

What are the most important objectives for me to achieve today? this week? this year? in my lifetime?

What are the urgent activities that called to me today?

Which ones were both urgent and important?

Which ones were urgent but not important?

It is the urgent, yet not important, activities that we need to manage the most. The cell phone ringing or the ding of an arriving e-mail sound a call for immediate action. Electronic communications appear urgent, but how many of these missives actually are important to our long-term goals and objectives?

Listening to music, watching television shows, surfing the net, shopping or dining out can become the next ''urgent'' activity. When we allow the close, the cool or the alluring to define how we spend our time, urgent matters override the important ones.

By permitting seemingly vital matters to overtake activities that lead to our long-term or short- term objectives, we become confused, and our commitment to a goal is dissipated. The paradox of the important task is that it rarely has to be done today, or even this week. The urgent job always demands instant action. The irresistible siren song of the urgent devours our days.

In retrospect, we realize that the call of the urgent has tricked us, and we have ignored important tasks that did not beckon us with interruptions. In hindsight, which is always 20/20, we see how we have been manipulated by the mirage of the urgent. We have succumbed to our urges.

To avoid being fooled by the urgent but not important tasks that vie for your time and energies, take a moment to consider the following:

• Make a list of the five most important tasks you want to accomplish this year.
• Make a plan of how and when you are going to get those things done. List specific tasks and times.
• Decide what success looks like.
• Let others know your goals, and ask them to hold you accountable.

Since you are reading this column, I'll surmise that having a strong and healthy relationship with a child may be one of your five goals.

Give yourself specific tasks with deadlines. May I suggest child input here as you define your tasks? Remember we want to ''work with'' our children, not ''do to.'' Have a clear vision of what achievement looks like. Let each child know what you are planning on doing to make the child feel important and loved. P.S. Children are wonderful for holding us personally accountable.

With clear commitment to your goals, you'll be able to sort urgent tasks into the categories of either ''important'' or not ''important.'' At some point you will have the lasting satisfaction of knowing that you made the right choices in managing yourself.

Next week: Left Brain + Right Brain = Whole Brain

Kids Talk™ is a column dealing with early childhood development issues written by Maren Stark Schmidt. Mrs. Schmidt founded a Montessori school and holds a Masters of Education from Loyola College in Maryland.

She has over 25 years experience working with young children and holds teaching credentials from the Association Montessori Internationale. She is also Creative Director for a video-based reading series for children ages three to six, The Shining Light Reading Series. Contact her via e-mail at maren@shininglightreading.com.

Complete Collection of the Shining Light Reading Series Now Available on DVD
Visit www.shininglightreading.com for more information.

Ask your local newspaper to carry Kids Talk. Call, write or e-mail your local newspaper editor and recommend Kids Talk.

Would you like to send Kids Talk to friends and family or receive Kids Talk e-mail updates in your own inbox? Sign up for FREE here:
Click here for a FREE subscription.

©2007 KIDS TALK™
25877 East Bright Avenue
Welches, OR 97067
503.550.3143
maren@kidstalknews.com

Kids Talk is published in conjunction with Scribe Marketing

Modeling Behavior

The telephone rang as we sat down for dinner. I excused myself to answer the call.

''Good evening. Is Mrs. Schmidt in, please?'' I recognized the voice immediately. It was a telemarketer from a local non-profit organization where I had ordered five-year guaranteed light bulbs. For months the same two ladies had informed me of their establishment's needs, and I purchased light bulbs for every socket in the house, given a few to our neighbors and stored a half dozen backups in the basement.

My comments about having enough light bulbs didn't deter these saleswomen. The calls continued, but I didn't want to talk to the light bulb ladies. It usually took me ten minutes to politely disengage myself from a call.

''No,'' I replied. ''She's not here.''

''Do you know when she'll be back?''

''No. I don't know when she'll be back. Goodbye.''

As I sat back down to dinner, my husband asked me who was on the phone.

''The five-year light bulb people. They won't leave me alone.''

''Well,'' Mark said. ''Do you realize you just compromised your integrity to your children?''

It felt like a sledgehammer had hit me in the face. In my desire to be non-confrontational and not to be rude, I had lied. Right in front of my three- and four-year-old daughters. As cool as you please.

What slippery slope had I slithered? There was manure in the barnyard, and I was right in the middle of it.

My inability to be truthful and honest to the caller had compromised my principles. Why did I find it impossible to give any of a number of honest messages, such as: ''Excuse me. We are sitting down to dinner. I can't talk to you.'' Or ''Thank you for calling. I have all the light bulbs I need for the next five years. Good-bye.'' Or ''I could have been flat out rude and hung up the phone.''

But for whatever reasons, I had found it easier to fib. A white lie, a polite lie, but a falsehood, nonetheless. Casual deceit was not something I wanted to pass down to my children. It was true confession time.

''What I just did was wrong. I should have told the lady on the phone that I didn’t want to buy anymore light bulbs or that I was busy with dinner. I didn’t want to hurt the sales lady’s feelings. I didn’t want her to think I was mean and rude. But it is better to have the person on the phone think I’m rude than to have my family think I’m a liar.''

Our actions illuminate who we are. From my embarrassment I realized that I needed to choose my words carefully. I learned that in awkward situations there is a way to be honest, yet direct and kind. This was critical as I became uncomfortably aware of how my actions and words could influence my children and impact their perception of acceptable conduct.

That evening, dealing with my little white lie and my humiliation, I uncovered a fundamental truth: Whatever you do, intentional or not, lights a path for your children. Make sure you’re headed in the right direction.

Next week: Urgent But Not Important

Kids Talk™ is a column dealing with early childhood development issues written by Maren Stark Schmidt. Mrs. Schmidt founded a Montessori school and holds a Masters of Education from Loyola College in Maryland.

She has over 25 years experience working with young children and holds teaching credentials from the Association Montessori Internationale. She is also Creative Director for a video-based reading series for children ages three to six, The Shining Light Reading Series. Contact her via e-mail at maren@shininglightreading.com.

Complete Collection of the Shining Light Reading Series Now Available on DVD
Visit www.shininglightreading.com for more information.

Ask your local newspaper to carry Kids Talk. Call, write or e-mail your local newspaper editor and recommend Kids Talk.

Would you like to send Kids Talk to friends and family or receive Kids Talk e-mail updates in your own inbox? Sign up for FREE here:
Click here for a free subscription.

©2007 KIDS TALK™
25877 East Bright Avenue
Welches, OR 97067
503.550.3143
maren@kidstalknews.com

Kids Talk is published in conjunction with Scribe Marketing