Once upon a time....

Once upon a time....

Ya its all about story telling...

Do you feel that stories are just for engaging the children? Do you read stories just to make the task of bringing your child to bed easier? Or you reluctantly read stories because your child pesters you to do so? Whatever the reasons may be, it is really a good thing that young parents reluctantly or willingly reads stories / generously gets story books for their kids to read.

There is a lot of emphasis given on storytelling by schools and educators than before. This blog is just to reveal the importance of storytelling in child development.

Here are some of the reasons why we should tell stories to young children?

Sharpens the skills of listening, imagination and visualization:

The moment we say There was a huge forest, with tall trees and dark green bushes... the child recollects the forests they have visited or the pictures they have seen in books or photographs they have come across. As they grow up, this skill of imagination helps them in understanding concepts.

You may wonder, but this is true! All of us have learnt about space. But even now what comes to your mind when you just read this... Nine planets.  Is it just the word planets? No. Definitely not! In a fraction of second we visualize the nine planets. The depth of visualization may differ from person to person but this is how learning takes place. It basically happens by visualizing and inferring from our previous knowledge.

Increases vocabulary:

What could be the maximum vocabulary that you use with a nursery child? Keep quite! Eat fast! Drink milk! Dont disturb! No sweets! No shouting! No running! No jumping! and the list grows. Exposing the children to stories helps you to introduce to new situations which helps them to understand unfamiliar words and increases their vocabulary.

Connects emotionally:

Tucked in the blanket, holding tight  - it’s a great time for every parent to get emotionally connected with the child. Ranging from your childhood stories to fairy tales and mythological stories you can narrate whatever comes to your mind in your own style. This creates an emotional bond between you and your child.

Enhances speaking, reading and writing skills:

Storytelling helps children practice and refine their speaking skills when they share their story with others. It helps children enhance their writing skills when they write their own stories. It also helps children develop reading skills and sparks an interest in reading. It encourages children to look at various literacy materials to find a story they want to share or to find stories that have been told to them.

Out of all these various reasons, Storytelling plays a vital role in character building.

We feel very great for our culture, country. Where did it come from? Think of how stories about our nation and culture shaped our attitudes about the same.

Stories provides a simple platform for discussing good and bad behaviour to our children, explain the difference between right and wrong. We can supply them with a list of do’s and don'ts.

Think how many morals are included not only in modern stories but fairytales, concepts such as, always listening to your parents, being nice to animals and each other, not to talk to strangers etc., Stories are an excellent way of teaching children how to act in the world around them. 

Just talk about your childhood stories, it gives your child an understanding of your family setup, relationships, love, care, respect and many more.

Introduce your child to Mythological stories to make them God fearing, spiritual. Tales of Akbar Birbal, Tenalirama opens the door for critical thinking. Stories like Fairy tales, Arabian Nights teaches values as well as enhance imagination.

Want to remind a child about good and bad behaviour? Sketch your own characters, one with all the good behaviour and the other with bad behaviour. Have as many supporting characters. Bring in real time situations, build your own story become a Rowling!

Couldn’t stop yourself? Geared up for narrating stories to your kids!

Great!!Happy Parenting!!!

Parents - Unlock your child's learning potential!

The concept of Multiple Intelligence and Learning styles aren't new.

Intentionally or unintentionally, we always prefer our own way of learning style when we are allowed to learn by ourselves. 

To be simple, recall your friends learning style during the semester exams. 

• Few interested in taking notes in different colors, organizing the content is an understandable way.

• Few always like to hear from their friends, they don't bother reading the text book but still would have scored better. 

• Few write in air or sand to memorize the content, prefer to walk when they learn.

• There are a few who can exactly say the page number of the topic and just can recollect the content of the page virtually. 

Here there is no supervision, no intervention, and no hard and fast rule for learning. We chose our style of learning. The ultimate aim was to get through the exams with maximum possible marks. 

Similarly, we have to allow our children to choose their learning style. I have seen parents saying, 

"I take so much pain in setting a question paper at home and always make him write all the questions as home test but still he had scored very poor marks." 

"I made him write the answers five times but still he hadn't attempted the same in exam."

We need to agree that reading and writing is not the only way to understand and memorize concepts.
Being a responsible parent,  just identify your children's learning style and facilitate the same.

Here are few suggestions:

For auditory learners:

Use your gadgets: Help your child to record himself reading a chapter or notes aloud. 

Educational songs: Take time to search for topic based songs over Web. 
True you can find educational songs if you really search for! Else create your own.
A song on Forces
A song on Continents 

Associative  words: These are letters or words that make you think of other words. Example: My Very Excellent Mother Served Us Noodles to remember the names of planets.

Pair and Share: Sit with your child and discuss the key points.

Comprehend: Ask him to talk himself  through a problem. Example: In solving a Math problem - (2*3)/6+2

Here I have to apply the rule as more than one operation has to be performed. First I need to multiply 2 and 3, then divide the answer by 6 finally I have to add the resultant number with 2.

We always insist our children to workout Math problems daily but we forget to insist them to recall the procedure of solving the problem each time.

For Visual learners:

Graphic organizers  Graphic organizers are an effective tool for Visual learners. Help your child to draw a mind map / flowchart for the lesson using various colors.

Illustrations and diagrams: Suggest your child to go through the graphs, diagrams, charts, etc., and reinforce the concepts using these.

Study wall: Paste a full size chart paper near the study table. Ask your child to post something about the chapter that he wants to recall often.

Flash cards / Charts: These are an excellent aid for visual learners. Encourage them to do posters or chart work for the topics. Here the objective is learning and reinforcing the concept rather than the artistic work involved.

I would like to share my experience in facilitating a grade 1 child in learning the spellings for common verbs. At the end of the activity I was really surprised to see the child’s creativity.

I helped the child to choose 30 verbs, I asked her to write the verbs in colour paper, stick it in a chart and to draw relevant picture for the verb. I left the room and was engaged in my chores. After a couple of hours she came to me with the chart with a feel of achievement. Though it was not very artistic, the child had put in some effort to illustrate the verb.

I asked her to explain the pictures. She started like this..

Here is a big stone near a road and a girl is sitting on it, The boy is opening his mouth to bite, and so on. I was really impressed to see the illustration for Jump – a standing figure with upright hair!

I  did not stop with that, I asked her to tell the spellings which was my objective. Without any difficulty she could do that.

For Kinesthetic learners:

Give them enough space: Kinesthetic learners prefer studying in non-sitting positions. Give them a big room to walk while they memorize or a place to lie down or stand up and learn.

Attention span: This kind of learners only have a little of attention span. Break their study time not exceeding 30 mins.

Enact / Roleplay:  Get involved in enacting a story or role-playing a concept wherever possible. You can be his audience at least.

Hands on experience: Basically kinesthetic learners have a great interest in experimenting 

or creating new things. Encourage them to participate in presentation shows, Science exhibitions, Making models etc.,

All of us have multiple intelligence but the proportion differs. Few are dominant and few are not. This proportion determines our individuality and learning style. Happy Parenting! 

Multiple Intelligence and the learning styles

Howard Gardner developed the Theory of Multiple Intelligence to document the fact that human beings have very different kinds of intellectual strengths and these strengths forms the basis of their learning style. According to him the different intelligences are 
linguistic, logical, kinesthetic, musical, visual, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalistic.

To be simple, not everyone learns best by reading and writing, some learn better through actually doing, some finds easy to understand the concept when given as pictures. It is very important to know how kids learn and represent things in their minds, and then how they use them in order to show what it is that they've understood.

In a class of thirty kids it is highly difficult to address individual child's learning style in a forty minute period. It is possible for a teacher to ensure at the end of the unit at least one or two activities match each child's learning style.

Take for an instance, Grade I, Environmental Science,
Topic - Plants and Trees
Subtopic - Common plants in neighbourhood

Suggested activities: 

• Take the children to the school garden            
• Allow them to observe the different kinds of plants and trees - Kinesthtic, Interpersonal, Visual
• Back to classroom and ask the kids to list the observed plants and trees - Linguistic
• Tabulate the list under plants and trees - Logical
• End the class with a song about trees or plants - Musical ( I would suggest Karadi Rhymes - Neem, Peepal, Banyan )

Activities for children with Interpersonal and Intrapersonal like roleplay and drawing can be given in the following classes.

Though millions of people live on this earth, we are physically unique; there's an intellectual uniqueness too. Lets explore the child's uniqueness instead of grading and comparing :)

Creativity - Nurture or Nature?

All of us admire creative people! Where does creativity come from? Is it nurtured or its a natural inborn talent?

Creativity is...

An Ability. A simple definition is that creativity is the ability to imagine or invent something new. Creativity is not the ability to create out of nothing, but the ability to generate new ideas by combining, changing, or reapplying existing ideas. 

An Attitude. Creativity is also an attitude: the ability to accept change and newness, a willingness to play with ideas and possibilities, a flexibility of outlook, the habit of enjoying the good, while looking for ways to improve it. We are socialized into accepting only a small number of permitted or normal things, but a creative person realizes that there are other possibilities too.

A Process. Creative people work hard and continually to improve ideas and solutions, by making gradual alterations and refinements to their works. The creative person knows that there is always room for improvement.

Characteristics of the Creative Person

• curious
• seeks problems
• enjoys challenge
• optimistic
• sees problems as opportunities
• sees problems as interesting
• doesn't give up easily: perseveres, works hard

Believe it or not, everyone has substantial creative ability. It is still there and can be reawakened. Often all that's needed to be creative is to make a commitment to creativity and to take the time for it.

Certainly creativity can be nurtured by 3A's - Appreciate - Analyze - Apply

A simple classroom instance... 

Give a simple task, allow the children to present the same in front of their classmates, 

1. Identify and  appreciate the positives in the completed task.
2. Once if the whole class is done, allow the children for self evaluation, where analysis takes place.That's all our job is done!
3. At the end of the task, the children can generate new ideas by combining, changing, or reapplying existing ideas for their next task.

Remember this is not copying, this is creating :)