The Important Function of Play

At S.E.E.D.S. we stand by the belief that learning and play are natural for all children.  Play is nature’s way for all children to develop their neural pathways, knowledge, skills, feelings, emotional maturity and social behavior.  To further discuss this topic we will focus on research conducted by Jaak Panksepp. He studied animal behavior as a means to understand human behavior.  His many years of research led him to summarize “Primal Emotions” to their “Affective Feelings.”  Of the 7 primal emotions (e.g. seeking, rage, fear, lust, care, panic and play), we want to focus on play and its affective feeling of joy.

First we must ask ourselves what brings about joy? Why is play such a huge part of that? When we think about play and joy we feel happy. If you stop and think these few sentences alone are filled with “feelings”. Feelings are intangible and outside of the realm of academic curricula. When we focus on feelings and emotional maturity we talk about the pro-social brain. Building a pro-social brain means de-emphasizing traditional concept of “academics” and focusing on social emotional development. Children that grow up in a robust and nurturing environment will naturally develop the skills and curiosity to explore the typical “academic” concepts like language arts and mathematics. Yet, when children do not have the ability to fully integrate and participate as social beings, they tend to have a more limited interest in academics. Human beings are naturally social. Yet, all too often we put the academic brain to the forefront of education rather than the pro-social brain. Maybe we forget that without socializing we cannot educate others.

Our experience in teaching tends to show that students are more receptive to learning activities when they are secure/comfortable, interested in the lesson/activity, and are having fun.  Panksepp tells us that play brings joyous feelings.  So interactive lessons that are playful and engaging create conditions where students are interested in the topic. This allows the child to use their intrinsic curiosity as the motivation to learn through their feelings of joy. They choose to learn because they see the activity as fun and engaging, which results in deep learning of the content.  Topics that are relevant to a child’s interests and pique their curiosity will keep them from encountering the quicksand of boredom. Instead, they will develop their critical thinking skills and utilize their curiosity to learn more than most people would think or expect. Learning for children is a very innate process. Most children naturally engage their curiosity. When top down learning begins to take place, children tend to disengage, which kills their curiosity and limits their learning potential. If you really want to teach a child, have them teach you something from their point of view. Once you do this the learning will become mutual and multidimensional, which is what fuels curiosity and deep learning. This is the benefit of the social brain through student centered learning and social interaction.

Walk the Talk: Sequel

Walk the Talk: Sequel

This is a sequel to our blog of July 8, 2015 “Walk the Talk.”  In that blog, we pointed out that young children often lack the vocabulary to communicate effectively.  However, they are keen observers of their world.  What they see forms lasting impressions and memories.  Later in life, these images may be linked to language and other memories.  We should all keep the following quotes from Jim Henson and Robert Fulghum in mind.

 Actions speak louder than words.  When children detect inconsistencies between the words we say and things we do, it is confusing.  What they retain is unpredictable.  What they think and feel about it may be latent and subconscious.  When it is revealed, it may not be what we intended.

Consistency is one of the many challenges of parenthood and teaching.  Children and students are similar in that they don’t know what they don’t know.  They build their knowledge base from their observations and experiences.  Their simplistic view of the world is to trust those closest to them.  They are quick to notice inconsistencies in behavior and speech.  Put yourself in the place of a dolphin newly arrived at an animal park.  You are hungry but the trainers are not feeding you.  So you slap the water with your tail.  The trainer looks up, sees this, and tosses you a fish.  Wow!  These land critters might be trainable after all!!  So you repeat your action and you get another fish.  Aha, you think, this may be easier than you thought.  The next day, you see another land critter near your pen, and you slap your tail on the water.  But this time, the land critter doesn’t toss you a fish.  Hmm, you wonder.  And you repeat your action several times and still don’t get a fish.  The land critter walks away.  What’s going on?  It’s seemed so simple the other day.  Why didn’t the land critter feed you?

After a while, another land critter approaches.  You do your tail splashing, and it tosses you a fish.  Finally!!  Food!!  But if you don’t get food, you get confused.  You might stop doing a tail slap and try something different.  But it would be confusing to get food sometimes and not get food at other times.  Your brain scrambles to try to find a pattern to make some sense of it.  And if you don’t find a pattern that effectively predicts the outcome for your efforts, you get frustrated and possibly discouraged.  If this continues to build, you might think about escape before you starve to death.  You might just write off these land critters as unreliable and unworthy of any further effort on your part.

It doesn’t take much to transfer the dolphin idea to a home or classroom.  The resilience of the human mind is such that no matter how dismal or dire the situation may be, there are individuals who rise above it all and succeed; there are those who are utterly destroyed by the system; and there are a bunch of folks that manage to muddle through and may not be highly successful along with those how haven’t been destroyed but are greatly discouraged and cynical.

If more people can heed the words of Jim Henson and Robert Fulghum, we can hope to get more children going through life on a more positive trajectory.  Of course it matters greatly the example the children see.  Join S.E.E.D.S. in trying to make the world a better place by walking the talk.  Give your children and all children who see you, a great example of what it is to be a good decent human being.

The Importance of Listening

S.E.E.D.S. takes an emergent lesson approach to curriculum development.  The curiosity of the learner is the required starting point.  For parents and teachers of very young children, the child’s limited language ability hampers effective communication.  In this sense, listening is not limited to the detection and processing of sounds and words.  The child’s behavior and actions are key sources of information for the care givers. 

Numerous studies show that children tend to learn best when they learn what interests them.  In other words, students learn what they want to learn.  Prof. Mitra’s “Hole in the Wall” computer experiments aptly demonstrate that learning can be a self-organizing process.  (https://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_the_child_driven_education). 

The traditional school system is a top down affair.  Grownups determine the curriculum and tests (often in written form), and the education system force feeds content to the students who are expected to regurgitate it on exams to demonstrate their mastery of the subjects.  This mass production industrial / manufacturing model of education is given way to other techniques.  Some use the title “student centered learning” and “collaborative learning” but none seem to truly result in the child driven learning shown by Prof. Mitra’s experiments.  One child who mastered the lessons early self-selected to teach back to others in her village.

Another of Prof. Mitra’s ideas integrated to his child driven education model was the “granny cloud”.  These were grandmothers in the UK who volunteers to chat with young learner worldwide in Prof. Mitra’s experiment.  This is S.E.E.D.S. Community-base Education on a global scale.  In another experiment Mitra recruited a local accountant to introduce the “granny effect” to local children.  Without knowing anything about the lesson, the “granny role” was simply to encourage the children with praise and to ask the children to “show me what you learned.”  These simple actions encouraged the youngsters to further they own studies. 

It was encouraging to see so many parallels between Prof. Mitra’s work and some of the S.E.E.D.S. methods.  The whole process of education (from Latin “ex” and “ducere”, literally to lead out) is a very natural human activity.  Babies come into the world lacking the native language of their parents.  Yet driven by their innate curiosity, they explore, play, and learn about their world physically, emotionally, socially, and eventually economically as well.  If parents and teachers learn what the children are interested in learning, the benefit to the children will be astronomical. 

Walk the Talk

There is an anonymous saying: “Children are great imitators. So give them something great to imitate.”  Many adults are not fully aware of nor appreciate the turbo charged learning ability of young children.  With little language ability, “a picture is worth a thousand words” becomes a viable learning model for them.  Not surprising, parents and other family members are the most often view “pictures” in their world.

Parenting and caring for youngsters is a 24/7 non-stop job.  You are being scrutinized by the youngsters.  Along with the pictures, young children hear the spoken words of the other “grown-ups.”  They will have difficulty learning when deeds and words don’t match.  The words of Horton the elephant in Dr. Suess’s “Horton Hatches the Egg” serves as a practical guide: “I meant what I said and I said what I meant.  An elephant’s faithful one-hundred percent.”

The inconvenient reality is that double standards exist.  But it should be noted these are the direct result of a basic choice: You can be a Horton or you can be a non-Horton.  Things can be so much simpler if you say what you mean and mean what you say.  And there is an old saying “Actions speak louder than words.”

When it comes to education, teaching by example is a tried and true method that has stood the test of time.  The practitioners of “Do as I say and not as I do” send mixed messages to young learners.  Consistency between deeds and words allows young children to recognize patterns that shape their behavior and learning.  These patterns help them to forecast and predict events in their daily lives.  Certainly there will be changes and variations.  For example, sunrise is the end of night and the start of a new day.  The sky becomes lighter and brighter in the morning.  But if storm clouds are present, the morning sky will be darker, but the night is still ending.  Most of us realize it is still the start of a new day.

Consistency is a challenge for everyone especially after a long tiring day.  But parenting and teaching require constant diligence during a child’s formative years.  What happens in the child’s first three years sets the tone for learning for the rest of their lives.

You have the freedom to nurture curiosity

A key hallmark of America’s founding was protecting the freedom of choice.  Growing up and getting educated in the U.S. was couched in and saturated with freedom of choice.  The Sustainable Early Education Development System (S.E.E.D.S.) is predicated on free choice.  Parents, teachers, and students self-select to participate and implement S.E.E.D.S. ideas and practices.  

Freedom of choice is the foundation for fostering and nurturing young curious minds.  It goes hand in hand with allowing a child to follow her/his curiosity in exploring their world.  Restricting a child’s curiosity limits their freedom of choice.  This ultimately leads to stifling their learning and informal and formal education.  It may not be possible to cater to the full range of choices a child might want.  But it is essential to routinely provide a child with choices AND linking the choices to responsibility for the consequences of that choice.

Babies are born into the world and must acquire the language of their parents.  Lack of effective communication is a common problem between parents and young children.  Ironically, some children seem to communicate with each other using a language unfamiliar to adults.  While many adults assume the babies don’t have a language, another way to look at it is the adults don’t understand the babies’ language.  From the child’s perspective, the big people don’t seem to understand but seem trainable.  The baby cries and the world moves around them.  They have power.  Eventually, in most cases, both babies and parents seem to work it out and develop a comprehension of a common language.

The parents’ juggling act is to nurture and foster the child’s curiosity while allowing optimum freedom of choice.  Parents are naturally protective of children.  What follows is the classic Goldilocks pattern.  Too little protection (i.e. little or no parental control or nearly total freedom) can, at worst, be misinterpreted as parental neglect.  At best, some of these children may become super outstanding.  Too much protection (i.e. full-on over protection) can manifest itself in absolute authoritarian control.  These children may be timid and lack self-confidence.  Somewhere in between is the “just right” mix of protection and freedom.  We aren’t sure how to characterize these children.  Hopefully they have their curiosity intact.  They may become life-long learners, critical thinkers, effective problem solvers, and socially responsible people.  This is what S.E.E.D.S. hopes to empower parents, teachers, and students to achieve.