Mary, Mary, quite contrary, How does your garden grow? With silver bells and cockle shells And pretty maids all in a row.It’s an everyday nursery rhyme, it’s simple to sing with your small child, and apparently this nursery rhyme about a little child watering her garden is watering your little child’s mind!
Early childhood educators have identified pre-reading skills that are necessary for
learning of reading and mastery of language. They include phonological awareness, or awareness of speech sounds and rhyme similarities, vocabulary or knowing lots of words, and more a child loves enjoyment and pleasure of using language, more success they will have in reading and writing and academic studies. Nursery rhymes, with their words of imagery, rhymes and rhythm that children find so fun, have all these qualities!
Let’s look at other ways that you are probably already simply, instinctively and effectively watering your child’s mind, and what researchers are now saying about it.
Let’s look at songs and music, activities that lots of caregivers instinctively share with their children. The National Network for Child Care at http://www.nncc.org/Series/good.time.music.html explains why songs, action songs, music and rhythm are important for children. They allow children to express their emotions, channel their energy creatively, gain confidence in themselves as they coordinate their minds and their bodies together, learn new words and ideas, and learn about themselves as they explore what they like, what they like when and what they can do. Learning these physical and emotional controls, ways of expression and self-knowledge are necessary for a happy life now in childhood and in their future adulthood. This is real reason why we let our toddlers take out pots, pans and wooden spoons and bang them, making a terrible ruckus.
How about even simpler, even more unassuming activities, such as having fun blowing a dandelion’s seeds into air. The child development psychologists Linda Acredolo and Susan Goodwyn in their book “Baby Minds: Brain-Building Games Your Baby Will Love” explain that such a simple yet fun and stimulating activity will stimulate your baby’s brain development. The practical conclusion that these researchers draw from latest research is that “If your baby is not having fun, it’s probably not worth doing”.
Thus, conclusion we can draw is “If your small child is having fun, then it’s probably stimulating your child’s physical and mental development”. We already instinctively knew that, and so it’s wonderful to have researchers and experts confirming and encouraging this. Whenever my toddler pulls toilet paper still on its roll and runs around house redecorating it in toilet paper, I just tell myself that this is a fantastic activity for his brain, body and creative imagination.
Actually, small children are programmed to learn and to engage in activities that will develop their minds and bodies. It probably has not escaped your attention that kids will naturally invent a fun and interesting game (fun and interesting to child) out of absolutely anything. The brain plasticity scientist Lise Eliot explains in “What’s Going On In There? How Brain and Mind Develop in First Five Years of Life” that there are way too many connections in brain and communications with rest of body – billions of neurons and a quadrillion synapses at last count – for it to be preprogrammed in genetic DNA material. Thus, babies and children are programmed to try things out and to repetitively practise them for days and weeks and months, so that brain circuitry will sprout in first place and then solidify to become permanent. Actually, this is my own layperson’s description. Lise Eliot refers to it as neurogenesis, synaptogenesis and myelination. It’s reason why babies kick in womb, so that connection between leg-kicking part of brain and actual leg can be developed. It’s reason why my newly mobile son never tires of playing with toilet brush in toilet bowl, developing and practising his hand-eye coordination and his understanding of physical world, in this visual, audio and tactile activity of splashing water.
We all know that cuddling our babies and children is important for their emotional and psychological development. Lise Eliot gives examples in chapter “The Importance of Touch” of how touch and physical contact increases physical and brain development. Studies show that premature babies that receive cuddling and massages thrive measurably more and do better on visual baby tests. Children with various medical problems had better clinical outcomes after receiving massage therapy. Perhaps you have seen famous “Rescuing Hug” (such as at http://www.daurelia.com/spirit/rescue.htm or http://www.snopes.com/glurge/hug.htm), where physical touch of her baby twin sister was responsible for very survival of a premature baby.
