FAMILY TIME: Here, There, & Everywhere Week 2

FOUNDATIONS OF LEARNING

Thinking Cap: Use your thumbs and index fingers to gently pull your ears back and slowly unroll them; begin at the top of the ear and gently massage down and around the curve, ending with the bottom of the ear lobe. The “Thinking Cap” is a Brain Gym exercise that activates the brain for focused attention on hearing. Specifically this exercise stimulates over 400 acupuncture points in the ears which relate to several brain/body functions including increasing auditory recognition, attention, discrimination, perception, memory, and reticular formation of the brain to tune out distracting, irrelevant sounds and tune in to language or other meaningful sounds.

Steady Beat: Steady beat is an organizer for the child, purposeful and calming. The research carried out by High/Scope Educational Research Foundation shows a positive correlation of steady beat with reading, vocabulary, math, music, and physical coordination. Steady beat seems to help in these areas because it contributes to a child’s ability to concentrate, understand space and distance, and have better control of physical movements.

Phonemes: Phonemes are the smallest parts of spoken language, the sounds that distinguish one word from another. All languages share certain phonemes in common, and playing with syllables like su and lu will help children perceive the distinctions between different phonemes. As children learn to distinguish the sounds of language, they become more creative and expressive in their communication, and enhance their understanding of the words they hear spoken around them.