lkg and ukg child's learning windows and brain development

NIDARA TIPSALL THINGS CHILDREN

LKG and UKG Child's Learning Windows and Brain Development

For Parents and Educators

1NTRODUCTION


Brain development in children is one of the most fundamental aspects of growth that all parents must take very seriously. Without proper functioning of the brain, daily functioning of the child’s life is not possible. Right from getting up to completing their work will become an uphill battle. Having said that, a very key part of this development is something called “learning windows” - they seem to be the new hype in children's development. For those of you who have not heard of this, don't worry. It's a new concept, and it hasn't received much attention outside of core scientific circles. But it has very significant implications for your child's education, growth and life and here are a few things you can do as a parent do develop your child during the right learning windows.


During a child's development, there are many of time periods, or "windows," in which a child can best learn or perfect a particular skill, such as speech. After this time period is over it becomes much more difficult, and many times impossible, for the child to learn the same skill. A suitable example is language development. We've all heard and seen that young children find it much easier than adults to learn a second language -- and it's true.

1.


This is what learning and developmental windows are all about. But How do these windows occur? What implications do they have for your child and if you child misses as critical window, can he or she still make up this lost opportunity? These questions and many others are currently under the scrutiny of neurobiological and child development research.

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In order to appreciate growth and learning in children, we first need to have a little lesson in biology. In a brain, there are millions of neurons, which form the electrical connections that let us think. These cells send their signals through axons, some of which can reach a length of up to a meter in humans. Neurons, however, are not the only cells, or even the most important ones, in the brain.

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Wrapped around many of the axons are cells which form myelin sheaths, made mainly of fat. These sheaths serve to protect the axon, letting its signal travel about 100 times faster than in an unmyelinated axon. Why is this so important? Simple, if you have more myelinated axons in your brain, then your "circuits"are working much faster, and certain activities may be easier for you to learn.

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Why is this process of myelinisation so important for children?This is because as newborns, we have very few myelinated axons. This helps explain why infants cannot see very well, and don't have good motor coordination, among many other things. Their neurons just aren't working fast enough, and so cannot coordinate very well.

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As children grow, different regions of the brain become myelinated at different ages. There is the trick: myelinization is the fundamental key to developing learning windows. For example, in the brain when the Broca's area, the region in the brain for language production, becomes myelinated, children develop speech and grammar. Astonishingly, the brain knows which areas you need myelinated first. Wernicke's area, which is the center of language comprehension, becomes myelinated around 6 months before Broca's area even starts. This is very clever, since you need to be able to understand language before you can speak it.

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Of course, there are many other factors that contribute to learning windows and development. Early in life, many neurons are not very specialized as to what exactly they will have control over. Take the motor cortex for example. Early in life, these neurons which control movement are only generally organized, and each neuron has multiple connections to different muscles. Your child’s experiences until the age of 10 decide how much of their cortex will be devoted to each part of their body. If your child uses their hands a lot, for example in drawing, then more neurons will be dedicated to the muscles of their hands and fingers, while less will be selected for the rest of their body. The more a muscle is used, the more connections will be stabilized. However, the less a muscle is used, the more the connections will die off.

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Now comes the fun part – how do you apply these findings to developing your child ?Learning windows are only effective if there are effective environmental stimuli which the child can interact with. For example, to stimulate more language comprehension, you need to talk a lot with your child, teach them new languages and introduce them to environments that encourage wholesome development especially during this window.

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Another example - Or to help the child be more coordinated or active in life, you should encourage him or her to run , exercise and play games, especially during the window to develop gross muscle coordination. To make your child multilingual, teach him or her a new language during the language window.

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To improve your child’s cognitive flexibility, or their ability to think through various issues in non linear ways, introduce them to puzzles early in life, especially during the ages start from 4.

To make your child’s memory stronger, continually look for ways in which you can teach your child in multiple ways – by seeing, hearing and doing.

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Now you might be wondering how to help your child if you have missed their learning windows. Great thought. It is not that your child cannot learn, but just that it will take 10 times the effort to master something at a much later time.

Written by: Shubha Janardhan, Co-Creator of Nidara.Connect with Shubha: www.fb.com/snj104

CONCLUSION


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