The Brain Craves Clear and Precise Information

During the first six years of life, the child's natural development includes the formation of language, with the most intense activity occurring during the first two and a half years of life.

It seems like common sense to say that the more words a child hears during those first two years of life the larger the child's vocabulary and aptitude for language will be.

Research proves that intuitive deduction, showing that children whose parents spoke to them an average of two to five thousand words per day started kindergarten with an excellent vocabulary. Multiply 5,000 words per day by five years, and you have over 9 million words. For the child who is exposed to only 1,000 words per day, this five-year number drops to around 2 million words, and language skills usually lag behind for a lifetime. To get a handle on what a thousand words looks like: This column is about 500 words. A normal rate of speech is 120 words a minute, so a thousand words is about eight to nine minutes of speaking.

A flood of language does not guarantee optimum language development, though.

Children say the names of things first, and we are a help to our children if we name things in a clear and precise way in order to avoid confusion. I once spent a delightful hour with a six-month-old, handing him three pieces of fruit and giving him the name. After he held the banana for about 30 seconds, I would say ''banana.'' This activity mesmerized him. I'd hand him another piece of fruit and say the name. Apple. Orange. Banana. He'd hand me back a piece of fruit, smiling and confident that he would get another piece, along with a name. On we went for an hour, interrupted only by the fact that he had a plane to catch. His dad laughed as they left the boarding area, ''I think you had him at banana.''

This experience with the six-month-old emphasizes the ways in which we as adults can enhance language development before a child begins to talk:

• Speak clearly
• Name things one at a time
• Whenever possible hand the child the object being named
• Speak using real words--no goo-goo-duckie-poo baby talk
• Read aloud for at least ten to fifteen minutes per day
• Speak in whole sentences, slowly, kindly and respectfully
• For example, ''Orange. This is an orange.''

After the child begins to speak:

• Ask questions to encourage and help the child to begin to form sentences
  • Who gave you the orange?
  • When did you eat an orange?
  • Why didn't you like the orange?
  • Where did you put the orange?
• Read aloud for at least ten to fifteen minutes per day
• Show words as well as say them as you read

Research shows that perhaps the biggest help to a child's language development we can provide is acting with loving kindness. Talk, read and listen to your child every day with loving kindness. You can't talk to or love your child too much. A smile may be worth a thousand words.

Next week: Santa Makes the Invisible Visible

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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©2008 KIDS TALK™
25877 East Bright Avenue
Welches, OR 97067
503.550.3143
maren@kidstalknews.com

Kids Talk is published in conjunction with Scribe Marketing

Brains Love Opportunities for Meaningful Learning

During the first six years of life our brains are developing at a tremendous rate, creating a foundation for life-long learning and accomplishment. Research shows that children under six with enriched learning environments are more likely to complete college, to have successful marriages and to have less problems with the legal system than their peers who did not have the same learning interventions.

Children are born to naturally learn and to confidently engage, while forming attachments, with the people and objects around them. This positive engagement and attachment with people create essential social and emotional skills in the child. The frequent back-and-forth interaction with caring adults early in a child's life forms the emotional development for a life of successful relationships.

This variety of experiences with differing challenges in the context of human relationships creates deep meaning in a child's psyche. When these important experiences are not happening, a child will let us know. Most children under the age of two years who cry and aren't wet, hungry, tired or sick are simply…bored.

Bored. Bored. Bored. The bored child is crying out for challenging and meaningful experiences. The child cannot connect meaningfully to a DVD, TV set or computer game. The child requires caring people to help him or her get in touch with positive life-affirming activities.

The child comprehends from early on that the adults in his or her environment are the purveyors of these meaningful experiences. The adult's preparation of an environment with new, intriguing and purposeful activities is crucial to the child's developing brain.

The playthings or tools a child needs for these brain-stimulating activities involve these characteristics:

• The child's creative manipulation, not the child watching the toy or activity passively
• The child's making of sounds instead of passively listening to recorded sounds
• The child has pieces to assemble, take apart and put together again, and the objects won't break

An example of an activity that most children love to do during the period of time between crawling and mastering walking is getting into the pots and pans. The child will pull out all the pots and pans, bang lids, try to place the lids on top of different pans, stack the pans, and more. The child who is walking may carry each pan to a different room. This child-selected pots and pans activity meets the three criteria for a brain-stimulating activity.

What is interesting is if we give the child enough time and not interrupt his or her actions, the child will return every item back to the cabinet. I've watched a seven-month-old ''explore'' the pots and pans for two hours one evening, then return the next morning to the pots and pans left out overnight on the kitchen floor, returning each item to the cabinet.

In our hurried world we rarely give our children the time they might need to fully experience the challenging and meaningful activities their brains crave for growth. The young child needs opportunities for meaningful activities, and that requires lots of time with people, as well as time to explore and interact with physical objects.

Give the gift of your time, quantity as well as quality. A child needs both.

Next week: The Brain Craves Clear and Precise Information

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.

©2008 KIDS TALK™
25877 East Bright Avenue
Welches, OR 97067
503.550.3143
maren@kidstalknews.com

Kids Talk is published in conjunction with Scribe Marketing

Discovering Constellations

Let us give the child a vision of the universe...for all things are part of the universe and are connected to form one whole unity.

~Maria Montessori

A vision of the universe begins with looking up at the stars. ''The sky is the ultimate art gallery just above us,'' wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson. All we have to do is look up.

We help our children learn the names of animals from all over the world. Most three-year-olds can discern the difference between elephants and hippopotami. The stars, which we can see on any clear night, remain, for many of us, a nameless mystery.

My favorite book about the stars is Find the Constellations by H.A. Rey, famous for his Curious George series of books. Look for a 2007 or later version for an updated planet finder guide.

Rey does a wonderful job describing the constellations. His advice makes the major constellations easy to spot any time of the year using seasonal northern and southern sky view illustrations.

Rey describes stellar terms such as magnitude, light years and the star schedule with easy-to-understand language and entertaining drawings. Included in this book are the mythological stories of Andromeda and Orion that connect the constellations across the sky.

At 8:00 pm tonight, and 4 minutes earlier for the next two weeks, you should be able to step out and see the following constellations when looking north. For instance, tonight's 8:00 sky will be visible at 7:00 pm on December 1.

Looking due north, the Little Dipper will be about halfway up the horizon appearing as if it were hung up by its handle. At the end of the handle is the bright star Polaris, also called the Pole Star or the North Star. By the way, the Little Dipper has an alias, the Little Bear, Ursula Minor.

The star Polaris appears to stand still in the sky while all the other stars circle it. The stars do not actually move around Polaris. Because of the rotation of the Earth, it only looks that way to us, as if the Pole Star was on a pole that the other stars are dancing around. Polaris always points north, thus its other name, the North Star. Look for the Little Dipper and the North Star to get your bearings in the night sky.

At this time tonight The Big Dipper will be low on the horizon looking as if the Little Dipper is pouring into the Big Dipper. Polaris, in the Little Dipper, lines up with the two outside stars in the bowl of the Big Dipper. The Big Dipper is technically a portion of the constellation of the Big Bear, Ursula Major, which can lead to some confusion as you look at star charts.

For your first viewing, the Little and Big Dippers may be all the challenge you want. Once you can locate the Little and Big Dippers it will be easy to find Draco the Dragon, Cepheus, Cassiopeia and Andromeda in the North Sky using a sky chart.

If you do want to look at another constellation on your first night out, turn and look due south. The Great Square will be about 70 degrees above the horizon. The Great Square is made up of four stars from the Pegasus and Andromeda constellations and is a landmark of the autumn sky.

After you locate The Great Square use a star chart to find Andromeda to the left (east) and Pegasus to your right (west).

Give your child a vision of the universe by stepping out and finding Polaris, the Pole Star, the star that the rest of the constellations dance around.

For we are all waltzing under an amazing work of art.

Next week: Brains Love Opportunities for Meaningful Learning

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.

©2008 KIDS TALK™
25877 East Bright Avenue
Welches, OR 97067
503.550.3143
maren@kidstalknews.com

Kids Talk is published in conjunction with Scribe Marketing

Physical Activity Enriches Young Brains

During the first six years of life, a child's brain develops based on the interaction of the child with his or her environment. Research shows that certain factors enrich the child's environment and produce positive outcomes in terms of the child's future educational level, social development and self-discipline. These factors include movement, opportunities for meaningful learning, information presented in clear and coherent ways, opportunities to control stressors, social relationships, nutrition and adequate time to learn.

True physical activity engages all the child's senses. Jumping in a water puddle creates a multi-sensory experience with the splash of water, droplets sprinkling the face, the sight of water splattering, the slosh of the foot through water, along with the squish of the mud and a spatter of water on the tongue. The jump into the water puddle fills the senses with the coolness and freshness of the air after a thunderstorm.

The child and his brain delight in the plunge into the puddle.

Our brains require activity to learn about the world and to connect new activities to previous experiences. It is this intense and joyful contact with the physical world that stimulates the brain to grow in life-enhancing directions. Peeling a banana, tasting new foods, digging in the dirt, discovering ants and rolly-pollies, feeling the tickle of a dandelion puff, landing in a pile of leaves. These types of activities create foundational experiences that keep the young brain active and engaged in life, while forming the substructure for life-long learning.

Physical activity used to explore the natural world creates a curious intellect. Questioning and investigation expand the limits of our minds.

Curiosity, and the movements accompanying inquisitive exploration, can be stilted in environments that have too many off-limits areas or are one-dimensional in their scope. Consider the child who is confined to a playpen or constantly told ''no'' as the child tries to explore his or her world. The passive single dimension of battery-operated toys, television, DVDs and computers are mind-deadening to a child whose mind and body crave multi-sensory, novel, challenging and meaningful activities, all involving movement.

For example, our modern world creates situations where children are strapped into car seats for an average time estimated to be 350 hours during a child's first two years of life. That's the equivalent of over 40 eight-hour days strapped in a car seat at a critical time of development for the young mind--a time when movement and exploration are vital to the life of a child.

Give your child as many opportunities to move and explore as possible. Make your home and backyard a place where your child is free to delight in his or her discoveries of the sights, sounds, tastes, smells and sensations of the world.

Childproof your home and yard for safety. Visit www.safensoundkids.com for ideas on how to make your home safe yet child-friendly.

Put away the battery-operated toys, computers and DVDs until your child is older than six years, a time when your child will be in a different period of development.

Help your child move, explore and discover. That's the way the brain grows.

Next week: Discovering Constellations

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.

©2008 KIDS TALK™
25877 East Bright Avenue
Welches, OR 97067
503.550.3143
maren@kidstalknews.com

Kids Talk is published in conjunction with Scribe Marketing

Don't Be a Pop Quiz Parent

At the neighborhood barbecue, I squirmed in my lawn chair. I was embarrassed, not so much for myself, but for Erica, the six-year-old at our table who was being grilled by her father, Tom.

''How much is 6 times 9?''

Searching for the answer, Erica looked up at the pavilion ceiling, then down at her fingers as she remembered a mnemonic device for the multiples of nine.

''54.''

''Who was the 16^th President of the United States?''

''What is the capital of Nevada?''

''How much is a quarter, a dime, a nickel and a penny?''

''At what temperature does water freeze?''

Every answer brought forth another question. Erica's dad corrected any inaccuracies, and he later rephrased the question for a second go-round.

This wasn't dinner. This was double jeopardy. The clock-ticking music in the background was the only omission.

When the dinner plates were cleared the inquisition stopped. ''Dessert must be a cease-fire period,'' I thought.

''Tom, do you quiz Erica every night at dinner?'' I asked.

''Yep,'' Tom answered. ''I get the questions from a set of cards. Erica gets 10 new facts a day, and we review 20 more.''

My discomfort with all these questions stemmed from the idea that this pop quiz was to impress me with how smart and knowledgeable Erica was. It appeared that the questioning was not unusual.

''How do you quiz the children in your classroom?'' Erica's mother, Julie, asked.

''I don't.''

''How do you know what they have learned then?''

''I watch them work,'' I said, ''and I listen to their questions. I talk to them. I try to challenge them with activities where they can express what they know through writing, drawing, dancing, doing plays, cooking and other projects. Their work is the test.''

''What do you mean?'' Julie's eyebrows furrowed.

''Think about when you're cooking dinner. If you have someone asking you how many ounces in 1/2 a cup, where does cinnamon come from, how long do you cook chicken, how much protein is in a cup of rice, what would you think?''

Julie said, ''I guess I would think they were trying to gather information.''

''And if someone asked how to make a roux, julienne carrots and deglaze a roast, what would you think they wanted?''

Tom started to laugh. ''I'd think that they were trying to impress me with the fact that they went to French cooking school.''

Julie said, ''I think I see what you're trying to get at. We should let Erica ask the questions. That all our quizzes trying to figure out what she knows doesn't really help her learning. Our questions are about what we know, like we're a fancy French chef, and not what she wants to learn.''

''Exactly,'' I said. ''It's Erica's own questions that are the ones that will create the strongest learning for her.

''If we'll listen,'' Julie said.

''Oops,'' Tom said, ''I guess I'll have to stop being a pop quiz pop.''

Next week: Physical Activity Enriches Young Brains

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.

©2008 KIDS TALK™
25877 East Bright Avenue
Welches, OR 97067
503.550.3143
maren@kidstalknews.com

Kids Talk is published in conjunction with Scribe Marketing