Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, November 21, 1994 TAG: 9411220143
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DARRYL E. OWENS ORLANDO SENTINEL
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Why? Your child was a genius, of course.
Most parents at least hope their youngster is going to be the next Einstein, but most kids don't pan out as card-carrying Mensa members. When parents come to that realization, their next step often is to stock their home with flash cards, books and the latest computer software and gizmos to create geniuses by osmosis.
While this deluge may be well-intended, parents will be sorely disappointed if by doing so they had hoped to have their youngster explaining fractal geometry before he's potty-trained.
But here's some good news: Although you can't rush learning or build a genius from the ground up, experts say, parents can stimulate a child's thirst for knowledge by seizing upon everyday activities as an chance to nurture creative thinking.
``The only way a child is going to internalize a flash card is to eat it,'' said Sarah Sprinkel, program consultant for early childhood education for Orange County (Fla.) Schools. ``Flash cards mean nothing to little people. Intelligence isn't going to be rushed. Just because something can be taught, doesn't mean it necessarily should be.''
Parents ``are their child's first and very best teacher,'' Sprinkel said. ``Creative thinking, that's how they think, and we need to adjust to that by setting the stage for it to happen.''
There are any number of ways that parents can set the stage for these enriching, interactive experiences that build reading, writing and arithmetic skills, experts say.
And children often provide loads of chances for parents to help them expand their knowledge base. All it takes is a parent who is wily enough to pick up on a kid's initiative - and run with it.
Sharon White picked up the learning baton when her daughter Noelle was about 2, playing simple learning games.
Now 4, Noelle has a full plate of reading, spelling and counting activities she plays with Mommy, but none of them can touch the activity they engage in most days on the way home from daycare:
``When we're driving home we play this thing called `the game,''' said White, 31, a secretary. ``I describe things, like I'll say, `It keeps things cold' and she'll tell me what it is. It really makes her think.''
And the learning doesn't stop once they get home. When White cooks she involves her daughter by describing the ingredients she is using, and asking her to spell the items.
That way ``she can learn more about everyday things,'' said White. ``I just want her to learn more. Now she's so into it she'll just ask question after question.''
Experts agree that one of the best ways to stimulate young minds is by incorporating interactive, creative thinking opportunities into chores and routine activities in and out of the house.
By doing so, parents provide children with infinite chances to elevate their minds, expand their boundaries and hone rudimentary reading, writing, math and science skills.
``Kids who are born with an average intellectual capacity can flourish and do well in school based on early experiences,'' said Laura Lynn Humphrey, an associate professor of psychiatry at Northwestern University and a child and family psychologist at the Family Institute in Evanston, Ill.
``During the early years, a child's thirst for knowledge and discovery is primed for the rest of their lives.''
Quenching that thirst doesn't have to mean draining your wallet. Diligent parents have helped the CD-ROM software market explode in recent years, but experts say that while the bells and whistles are nice, learning always comes back to the basics.
``Those kinds of experiences are nice for a child to have, but they should come after the child has had experiences with real objects, pushing them, rotating them, grouping them, predicting how high it might be,'' said Lynn Hartle, an assistant professor of early childhood education at the University of Florida.
Learning for youngsters should focus on concrete, interactive, hands-on experiences, experts say, rather than rote memorization.
``You need to have something in the head to move around and use,'' Hartle said, ``but education is moving away from [the mindset] of adding more things to knowledge to being able to structure information.''
``Because the world is changing so rapidly, I can memorize something now that can be totally not useful in 30 years. Most good jobs require critical and creative thinking. We have few factory worker jobs today where you do same thing over again,'' she said.
One of the earliest seeds parents can plant in a child's fertile mind is reading. Many parents know reading aloud to kids helps build language skills as well as bringing families closer together. But an often overlooked benefit is that reading makes the child weave images and scenarios in his mind.
``The advantage of reading over watching television, even for the same story, is that the television provides all the [information] for the child,'' Humphrey said.
``The child doesn't use his imagination unless prompted to,'' she said. ``Reading urges his own construction of it. That's the kind of learning environment you want to provide, one that prompts the child to think and imagine.''
Parents can take their child's creative thinking a step further with one easy step: Ask questions.
One of the most difficult skills for many children to grasp down the line - mathematics - is ironically one of the easiest ones for parents to nurture in the early years.
Many parents don't even realize that kids explore the basic building blocks of arithmetic almost all the time in their play. Concepts such as comparison, contrast, grouping, sorting and noticing shapes are literally child's play.
``They can really start making simple comparisons even when they're toddlers and it should expand from there,'' Hartle said. ``At 18 months they can realize that's the same as that, such as `Oh, a dog. Oh, another dog. As you start using words like `That's a pair of glasses, a pair of shoes, they can recognize that two make a pair.''
Parents should consider turning chores into a math bowl.
``Children can learn one-to-one correspondence. That's easily done with setting the table. Ask them `How many people do we need to have plate for?' and then they begin to count 1-2-3. This is a real important concept to build things on,'' Sprinkel said.
``Things kind of happen simultaneously, learning to count, learning to add one more, learning to take away one more,'' she said.
Children love the kitchen. And parents should, too. It's a wonderful, inexpensive laboratory.
``A lot of activities in the kitchen are wonderful science activities,'' Humphrey said, and ``kids are really scientists.''
Melt an ice cube in a cup and your little Louis Pasteur can learn how solids can transform into liquids. By allowing your child to help make dinner, he can learn simple measurements by watching you use a pinch here, a dash there.
The possibilities are endless, experts say. Endless, that is, as long as the parents listen and observe the cues their children are sending.
``When children are really listened to about their naturally occurring curiosity, and the parent takes something from the child's initiative and expands on it, the child begins to tell wonderful, complex stories about very real issues in the world,'' Humphrey said.
``If a parent gets real excited and contributes to the story and shows that story is wonderful,'' she adds ``the child is getting so many positive messages about learning. It's taking a fun family experience and also stimulating basic scientific discovery.''
ACTIVITIES FOR LEARNING
Blocks, balls, beanbags: Children learn basic lessons in geometry (shapes), physics (gravity and what happens to falling objects) and spatial relationships (the ability to visualize what can't be seen or touched).
Folding clothes: Helps teach children the concept of grouping (shirts here, socks there).
Car games: While riding to the store, children can learn colors (``show me a red car), categorizing (show me a big car .... a small car) and counting (how many cars do you see?).
Peekaboo: Children learn the lesson of object constancy, that is even if they can't see an object, the object remains.
Getting on a scale. Children learn about weights and measures.
by CNB