http://www.greatschools.

org/parenting/be
havior-discipline/slideshows/4391-brain-
first-grade.gs?page=5 17/07/2013
Activate their minds
A youth human brain is a chaotic jungle of
neurons getting "wired" together into intricate
circuitry patterns. Early experiences have an
enormous influence on children's absorbent
sponge-like brains and also strongly affect the way
they mature. By providing everyday activities that
arouse your child's curiosity, youre helping to
create neural pathways that will increase their
learning efficiency and capacity. Expose your
preschooler to a variety of stimuli and allow your
child hands-on interaction with three-dimensional
materials. Cooking, finger-painting, clay
construction, musical instruments, and going to
festivals, petting zoos, museums, tide pools,
concerts, and outdoor natural areas are all
sensory-rich activities.
Be gentle
Children need to feel safe and confident.
Stanford University research indicates that
traumatic stress and fear can release toxic
levels of the hormone cortisol, which can
destroy neurons in the hippocampus, a region
that supports factual and episodic
memory. You can minimize stress by giving
your child positive, loving, sensitive, and
encouraging feedback. Keep reprimands and
threats to a minimum, avoid unnecessary
power struggles, and shouting or spanking in
discipline. Also, be patient about bedwetting,
be sympathetic about fear of nightmares, the
dark, and thunder-and-lighting storms, and
allow your child to have a security object like a
cozy blanket or a stuffed toy.
Chatter time
Preschool is prime time for auditory brain
development. Supporting your child's hearing
and speaking helps construct strong neural
circuitry for absorption of more language
acquisition. Ideally, talk, sing, and read to your
child in a voice that varies in pitch and rhythm
and emphasizes important words. (If we
mumble in a flat drone your child will get
bored and not focus.) Try to ask open-ended
questions that initiate thinking, explain "how
things work," use high-level vocabulary, and
regularly include your child in conversations
that will help expand their vocabulary. Protect
your child's hearing by treating ear infections
promptly, and encourage her to "use her
words" instead of throwing tantrums.
Preschool is also an ideal time to introduce a
second language since the young, "plastic"
brain absorbs language quickly.
Social graces
If possible, enroll your child in a quality
preschool or schedule regular play dates with
friends. Encourage your child's fantasy play
with friends "pretend" games develop the
brain's verbal zones and enhance social skills in
sharing, communication, and conflict
resolution. Allow your child to have "imaginary
friends" for the same reason, but remember,
preschoolers have difficulty separating reality
from make-believe, so don't call them "liars" if
they insist that their stories are "true."
Photo credit: Bimmer Chaser 71

Let's focus
A three- to five-year-old child might
pay attention for five to 10 minutes, at
best. Demanding sustained
concentration on a task will frustrate
both of you, but you can help your
child improve his brain's working
memory via games and activities that
demand attention control.
Recommended are checkers, tic-tac-
toe, Candy Land, Chutes 'N' Ladders,
age-appropriate puzzles, and
concentration the card game in
which you flip over face-down cards
and try to match pairs. Praise your child
for hard work, and model self-control
in your own behavior.
Photo credit: heraldpost

Categorize the world
By the age of four, many circuits in the brain's
cortex are formed for math and logic. To
develop this center, encourage your child to
compare, collect, and label objects and events
in the world that shes curious about. Do
counting games, and teach the methods of
classification, like big/little, long/short, shapes,
colors, weight, height, and temperature.
Photo credit: cproppe

Digest this
For optimal brain growth, feed your child a
balanced, nutritious variety of vegetables,
fruit, whole grains, dairy, and meat. Perfect
brain food includes egg yolk, fatty meat, and
soybeans contain choline, the building block
for the neurotransmitter acetylocholine, which
is crucial in memory function. Its also crucial
to limit their intake of candy, cookies, fruit
juice, and sugary, and salty junk food that is
only "empty calories" devoid of essential
nutrition. A recent Bristol University study
indicated that young children fed junk food
developed IQs up to five points lower than
healthy eaters, because they consumed
insufficient vitamins and minerals for optimal
brain growth. Learn more tips on great brain
food for your child.
Body building
Ideally, young kids should get at least 30
minutes a day to run and play outside. John
Ratey MD, author of Spark, calls exercise
"Miracle-Gro for the brain" because it elevates
neurotransmitters and stimulates neuron
growth. Swings, rocking toys, and spinning
equipment are developmentally productive by
stimulating different parts of the brain at the
same time; building new pathways; and
enhancing learning potential, spatial
awareness, and rhythm. Full-body sports like
soccer, swimming, yoga, gymnastics and dance
are also valuable brain-building exercises.
Rare TV
An article published in the journal Pediatrics by
University of Washington
researchers concluded, "early television
exposure is associated with attentional
problems . . . efforts to limit television viewing
in early childhood may be warranted."
Deleterious results can be hyperactivity and
shortened attention spans. Avoid this by
limiting TV to one hour per day, and don't
enroll in preschools that place kids in front of a
screen. Positive programs can be found on
National Geographic, Discovery Channel, and
many short, easily-absorbed clips on YouTube.
Photo credit: Goldenfire

More resources
Your Child's Growing Mind: Brain Development
and Learning From Birth to Adolescence, by
Jane M. Healy, Ph.D
Intelligence and How to Get It, by Richard E.
Nisbett
Help Your Preschooler Build a Better Brain:
Early Learning Activities for 2-6 Year Old
Children, by John Bowman
Seven Times Smarter: 50 Activities, Games, and
Projects to Develop the Seven Intelligences of
Your Child, by Laurel Schmidt
Photo credit: K's GLIMPSES

The kindergartner's brain
"Let me do that! I'm all grown up now."
Kindergartners can be swollen with self-esteem, thanks to graduating from preschool into "big
kid" school, where they mingle with older role models. Indeed, the kindergarten range of four-
and-a-half to six years old is often bossy, belligerent, and boastful about newly-acquired motor
skills like sprinting and monkey-bar tricks. The kindergarten brain also features many mental
upgrades from a preschooler's: superior memory, beefed-up attention span, a tighter grip on
reality, improved self-control and social skills, and a firmer grasp of knowledge codes i.e.,
numbers and the alphabet.
Even so, kindergartners are burdened and blessed with brain activity that's wildly alien to adult
intelligence. A five-year-old noodle has 100 billion brain cells (neurons) with 77 percent in the
furiously-networking cerebral cortex the zone that constructs language, math, memory,
attention, and complex problem-solving. The neurons are maniacally sprouting dendrites,
skinny octopus arms that slither out to receive data from up to 15,000 other cells, and axons
that transmit information to other cells. Links between neurons or synapses build
cognitive pathways that create every individual's specialized "brain architecture" that allows
them to comprehend, accumulate, and retain knowledge.
Harvard's Center for the Developing Child notes, "early experiences in brain architecture make
the early years of life [ages 0 to six years] a period of both great opportunity and great
vulnerability for brain development." In other words, these are crucial years for building the
foundation of "brain architecture" a time when, as a parent and caregiver, you can have a
significant impact on your child's development. Kindergarten is also a critical year because you
want your child to enjoy the educational process. How can you help your child navigate the
new world of "grown up" expectations? Start by following the guidelines to come.
Photo credit: woodleywonderworks

Talk, sing, and read
Talk, sing, and read books frequently to your
kindergartner. Steady exposure to verbiage
enables their cerebral cortex to develop strong
neural circuitry for swift acquisition of
language. Parents also would do well to be
active listeners, asking open-ended questions
that initiate thinking, such as, 'If you could
have any superpower in the world, what would
it be?' or, 'What do you like most about going
to the beach?' Plus, explain how things work,
use high-level vocabulary, encourage writing,
and include your kindergartner in adult
conversations. Kindergarten is an optimal year
for introducing new words and a second
language. Children's book author Tomi Ungerer
recently opined in the New York Times that,
"between the ages of three and seven,
children can learn three languages a year. If
you're not teaching them another language,
you can always develop their vocabulary."
Reading help in kindergarten
Learning to read by "sounding out" letters in
words is difficult for many kindergartners, even
if their brain's auditory development is
excellent. One reason, notes Jeannine Herron,
Ph.D., author of Making Speech Visible, is that
memorizing the alphabet is misleading,
because letter titles A, B, C, etc. don't
sound precisely like the sounds they represent.
For example, the letter G has a J sound, H is
way off-base with its "AAACH" pronunciation,
and all the vowels can be utilized with more
than one sound. This difficulty delays
thousands of struggling readers. To circumvent
this, Herron recommends teaching
kindergartners to "pay attention to what their
mouth is doing" when they learn phonemes
Be gentle in kindergarten
For their learning ability to flourish,
kindergartners need to feel safe and confident.
A 2007 Stanford University study indicates that
traumatic stress and fear can release toxic
levels of the hormone cortisol; this can destroy
neurons in the hippocampus, a region that
supports factual and episodic memory. To
protect your kindergartner's self-assurance,
give your child positive, loving, and
encouraging feedback. Minimize reprimands,
avoid unnecessary power struggles, and don't
use shouting or spanking in discipline. Express
sympathy if they're afraid of nightmares or the
dark, and be patient about bed-wetting: Many
children continue enuresis until age seven or
longer.
Tiny inventors
Find a great elementary school for your child
with a kindergarten teacher who comprehends
the learning process at this age. Kindergarten
brains thrive on exploring, playing, inventing,
experimenting, constructing, and tinkering
with three-dimensional materials. Their brains
actually grow in response to novelty and
challenge because curiosity secretes
dopamine, a chemical that stimulates the
dendrite expansion that wires the brain. For
these reasons, it's worth finding a class where
children's physical activity is encouraged and
teachers truly understand the developmental
needs of the age group. Your child's
kindergarten teacher also needs to be
encouraging, understanding, and supportive to
help him learn best. At this age, the big
academic topics they need to master
reading and math, most notably should be
presented as fun, with minimal and enjoyable
homework.
Stimulate the senses
Experiences this year will have a
huge impact on your kindergartner's
absorbent brain. When not in school,
children benefit greatly from
activities that pique their curiosity.
Expose your child to hands-on
interaction with three-dimensional
materials and take them on sensory-
rich outings to festivals, zoos,
museums, concerts, and outdoor
natural areas.
Let's focus in kindergarten
A kindergartner's attention span is about five
to15 minutes long. To bolster your child's
concentration level, engage her in activities
that require focus, like meditation and board
games. Teaching self-control and delayed
gratification will also help your child
academically: The correlation between self-
control and GPA is twice as high as the
correlation for IQ and GPA. You can also boost
your child's patience by modeling it in your
own behavior by speaking and acting calmly.
Finally, limit TV watching to an hour per day
studies suggest TV over-stimulates young
children's neurological systems, resulting in
hyperactivity and shortened attention spans.
Body building in kindergarten
Ideally, kindergartners should have at least 30
minutes a day to run and play outside.
Columbia University research discovered that
exercise builds brain cells in the dentate
gyrus. According to John Ratey, MD, author of
Spark, exercise elevates a chemical he dubs
"Miracle-Gro for the brain" because it builds
the brains infrastructure. Full-body exercises
like soccer, swimming, gymnastics, and dance
are recommended. Plus, for optimal brain
growth, feed your child a balanced, nutritious
variety of vegetables, fruit, whole grains, dairy,
and meat, and limit ingestion of candy,
cookies, fruit juice, and sugary, salty junk food.
Egg yolk, fatty meat, and soybeans contain
choline, the building block for the
neurotransmitter acetylocholine, which is
crucial in memory function. (Learn more about
healthy brain foods kids love.)
Photo credit: Ida Christine Kyisgaard

Tuning up in kindergarten
Expose your children to music, and if they
show any aptitude, get them an instrument.
Play structured, melodic music for them and
sing songs. UC Irvine's Gordon Shaw gave 19
children piano or singing lessons for eight
months, and found that the kids demonstrated
dramatic improvement in spatial reasoning.
Shaw, who regards music as "a window into
higher brain function," has published
numerous studies indicating that children who
study music are ahead of their peers in math.
Photo credit: Helen Morgan

Inside your first grader's brain
"That's not fair!"
If your six-year-old's pleas for justice are driving you nuts, take note:
Your childs fixation on fairness is developmentally positive. The first-
grader's swiftly developing brain is leaping from magical thinking to
logical, rational mental processing; shes eager to understand the
principles behind rules and regulations.
First graders are incongruously attracted to both the penal code (laws,
police, ethics, traffic signs, crime, jail) and to competitive winning at
all costs! They'll panic if you jaywalk because they fear prison. But
they'll also lie, cheat, and argue to win.
What's happening neurologically inside the first-grader's conflicted
skull? The buzzing three-and-a-half foot child in front of you is
experiencing major brain blasts as his cognitive circuits are getting
programmed for life! First-graders have trillions of pathways that
connect their neurons in the cerebral cortex. This tangle of wiring is
getting pruned in a six-year-old at an alarmingly intense rate. The
rarest-used pathways are eliminated to streamline each individual's
thought process. Here's some help to optimize your first-grader's
quickly developing mind:
Photo credit: Heidi & Matt

Aim high
The sensory lobes that recognize and analyze
challenges are maturing at a rapid rate in the
six-year-old's brain. In other words, the first
grade brain has stunning plastic capability that
should never be underestimated. Your first-
grader will do best with a sensitive, yet
demanding teacher who insists on quality
work. According to professor of psychiatry at
UCLA School of Medicine Daniel Siegel,
teachers expectations of students abilities
have a huge effect on student learning. In one
study, teachers were mistakenly told that some
of their students who had been previously
identified as learning disabled were in fact
gifted. After the teachers raised expectations,
the students performed up to expectations.
Photo credit: Neighborhood Centers

Reading help
Learning to read by "sounding out" letters in
words is difficult for many kindergarteners,
even if their brain's auditory development is
excellent. One reason, notes Jeannine Herron,
Ph.D., author of Making Speech Visible, is that
memorizing the alphabet is misleading,
because letter titles A, B, C, etc. don't
sound precisely like the sounds they represent.
For example, the letter "G" has a "J" sound,
"H" is way off-base with its "AAACH"
pronunciation, and all the vowels can be
utilized with more than one sound. This
difficulty delays thousands of struggling
readers. To circumvent this, Herron
recommends teaching kindergarteners to "pay
attention to what their mouth is doing" when
they learn phonemes.
Talk it up
Your loquacious first grader will thrive if you
talk and read with her as often as possible,
since rapid brain growth in vocabulary,
grammar, and pronunciation happens primarily
before the age of seven. An Entropy article
authored by Princeton researchers reports that
six-year-olds can comprehend 13,000 words
because their cerebral cortex, with such strong
circuitry, acquires language at the rate of 10
new words per day which means a new
word every 90 minutes! Six-year-old brains
have developed interconnected "mental
language maps" where they can quickly chart
and categorize the meaning of words. To help
their language skills develop, include them in
adult conversations. This is also a prime time
to introduce a second, or even third, language.
Photo credit: BrettMorrison

Safe space
First graders need to feel relaxed and
emotionally secure for their brains to learn
best. Research indicates that traumatic stress
and fear releases toxic levels of the hormone
cortisol, which can destroy neurons in the
hippocampus, a region that supports factual
and episodic memory. To protect a first-
grader's confidence, parents and other
important adults should give loving,
encouraging feedback, as well as minimize
reprimands and threats, and avoid shouting
and spanking for discipline. Express sympathy
if they're terrorized by nightmares or ashamed
of bed-wetting. Many children continue
enuresis until age seven or longer.
Photo credit: crispyteriyagi

Calm the storm
Patience, patience. Dramatic six-year-olds can
be exasperating, but imagine what they're
experiencing. In Your Childs Growing Mind, by
Jane M. Healy, Ph.D., she notes that,
"Neuropsychologists talk about the 'five-to-
seven shift' because so much change occurs in
the brain during these years. One study found
that a specific area involved with language and
spatial awareness had changed 85 percent
between ages six and seven in one girl's brain."
Photo credit: ROIHUNTER

Tuning into their minds
A 2009 Journal of Neuroscience article reports
that when 31 six-year-olds received
instrumental musical training for 15 months,
the result was impressive changes in brain
anatomy. For example, the auditory and
cortical motor systems actually grew larger. So
expose your child to music, and if she
demonstrates an interest, by all means, get her
an instrument. Play structured melodic music
for your child and sing songs.
Photo credit: Woodleywonderworks
Focusing research
A first grader's attention span ranges from six
to 20 minutes, depending partly on gender. A
report published in NeuroImage claims, "we
found robust male/female differences in the
shapes of the trajectories with total cerebral
volume peaking at age 10.5 in females and
14.5 in males." This difference, says Leonard
Sax. M.D., author of Boys Adrift, explains why
six-year-old boys cant pay attention as long as
six-year-old girls. To bolster a boy's
concentration, encourage activities like
meditation and board games, and limit TV and
video watching. Studies indicate screens over-
stimulate still-developing neurology, resulting
in abbreviated attention. Why? Some
researchers believe TV and video viewing
wastefully releases high quantities of the
neurotransmitter dopamine, a key regulator for
focus.
Photo credit: Smile Moon

Of brain and brawn
Try scheduling at least 30 minutes a day for
your first grader to run and play outside.
According to John Ratey MD, author of Spark,
exercise elevates a chemical Ratey dubs
"Miracle-Gro for the brain" because it builds
the brains infrastructure. Aerobic sports
programs like soccer, swimming, hockey and
martial arts are outstanding brain-boosters.
First grader's thrive on physical challenges,
because their energetic, integrated sensory
systems progress far quicker than adults.
Abundant research reveals that students who
exercise intensely perform better academically
than those who do not.
Photo credit: Khem

Mute emotions
Don't expect six-year-olds to open up easily
and "share their feelings." When Harvard
neuroscientists using MRI imaged activity in
young children's brains, they discovered that
the cerebral cortex that does the talking is not
yet connected to the amygdala, a subcortical,
primitive area where emotion occurs. That's
why it makes little sense to ask first-graders to
tell you why theyre feeling sad. Quite often,
they don't know!
Photo credit: J-Zimmerman

A balance of brain food
Feed your child a balanced mixture of
vegetables, fruit, whole grains, dairy and meat,
and limit their intake of candy, cookies, fruit
juice, and sugary, salty junk food. Children
need a wide variety of essential nutrients for
optimal brain growth. For example, egg yolk,
fatty meat, and soybeans contain choline, the
building block for the neurotransmitter
acetylocholine, which is crucial in memory
function. Learn about more healthy brain
foods kids love.
Photo credit: trdwijaya

More brain resources
The Developing Brain: Birth to Age Eight, by
Marilee Sprenger
Your Child's Growing Mind: Brain Development
and Learning From Birth to Adolescence, by
Jane M. Healy, Ph.D