How To Help Your Child Or Teen Build Executive Functions Executive Functions are a cluster of high level cognitive skills that involve management and effective use of thinking skills. It’s a network of awareness and attention that includes planning, controlling attention, inhibiting inappropriate or ineffective behaviors, processing information in working memory, and other similar skills […]
play
IGNITING COGNITION WITH PLAY
Play is not pointless fun. For all people, but crucially for children, play profoundly supports and promotes social and emotional skills, self regulation, language and thinking. Most parents easily see that playing with others can help children learn to do things like interact, share and generally get on with others. It fairly obviously encourages children […]
What’s Your Child’s Play Style??
Anna and Ellen are sisters, 1 1/2 years apart in age, octogenarians when I talked with them. Anna’s favorite childhood game was “playing house.” She loved it and delightedly remembers spending hours with her sister playing with their dolls in the little room they set up to resemble a home. It was filled with all […]
On Line Games: Why Cyber Playing Can Lead to Cyber Meltdowns in Children
On-Line Games Are Designed To Keep Us Playing They get progressively harder as we continue to play. They are designed to keep us feeling challenged and interested, getting a little more demanding as we build skill. This is part of the fun of playing on line and it keeps us coming back. It works well for […]
Book Review: The Gardener and the Carpenter
Gopnik, Alison, (2016). The Gardener and The Carpenter: What the new science of child development tells us about the relationship between parents and children. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN: 978-0-374-22970-2 Alison Gopnik is a professor of Psychology at U C Berkeley and has been an active researcher and instructor in the developmental sciences […]
Teach or Play??? How little children learn
Hirsh-Pasek, Kathy and Golinkoff, Roberta Michnick with Diane Eyer (2003). Einstein Never Used Flashcards: How our children really learn—and why they need to play more and memorize less. USA: Rodale. ISBN 1-59486-068-8 The authors, both of whom are mothers and professors of psychology, provide a wonderfully written discussion of early brain, cognitive and social development […]
Play part 3: Building cognitive, social skills & emotional skills
Social play with peers is particularly important because, unlike play with a parent, in which there is an implicit power structure, peer interactions have a more even distribution of power. Peer play places children in control, providing opportunities for self-directed learning and learning through shared experiences. In particular, social play lets children explore ways […]
Play part 2: Types of Play
Developmental scientists classify play into a number of different types, notably object play, physical play, and pretend play. Each of these can become forms of social play when they are shared with another person. Each of these three general forms of play emerge in infancy, during the 12 – 24 month period. The very first […]
Play, part 1: The Power of Play
It is easy to underestimate the value of play. As adults, our “play” takes place during leisure time and we see it as fun and lighthearted. We regard it as recreational, with no practical purpose, other than unwinding, having fun, or spending time with friends. It nurtures us, but we don’t regard it as serious. […]