How Do Kids Develop Cognitive Skills?

What are cognitive skills? They are the processes that involve progressive building of learning and thinking skills within children. These skills help children to process sensory information and learn to evaluate, analyze and remember it. Part of the cognitive skills is based on a child’s genetic makeup, and part of it can be learnt. This means if the basic skills are present, learning and thinking skills of a child can be improved with practice and training. Generally, children start developing cognitive skills rapidly in the first few years of life, and progressively build them throughout their schooling. The teachers at GAFL, one of the best schools in Kengeri, put in all efforts to help their students develop learning and thinking skills effectively.

The cognitive development of children occurs in four diverse stages. Each of these stages builds upon the previous stage and is characterized by higher levels of thinking. This model of child development tracks qualities of attention, short and long term memory, logic, reasoning and processing within children.

First stage – Sensorimotor stage

This is the time from birth of the child up till he is about 2 years old. In this stage, kids learn about the world through their senses and manipulation capabilities. They learn through senses as they explore the world around them. They use their sense of touch, sound, sight, taste and smell to start making connections with objects around them. All of this controls things like movement and vision.

Second stage – Preoperational stage

This is the stage when the kids are between ages 2 and 7 years, and can develop memory and imagination. This is when they are able to understand things symbolically, and different ideas of the past and future. Children start developing attention skills, short and long term memory, and skills that are foundational for reading during this skill. This is also when kids start learning through language. They learn words and start using complex sentences. This is the time when kids require a language-rich environment. The more words they are exposed to, the more their neural pathways will develop.

Third stage – Concrete operational stage

During this stage, children are between the ages 7 to 11 years, and are more aware of external events and feelings of other people. They begin understanding that not every person has the same feelings, thoughts and beliefs. At this stage, children start thinking with more complexity. They consider the ‘what if’s of every situation and figure out possible outcomes. They start understanding people’s reactions, perspectives and experiences.

Fourth stage – Formal operational stage

This is the stage when children are above 11 years of age. During this stage, they are able to use logic to solve problems and plan for the future. They start finding clues and put the puzzle pieces together to come up with a solution. They start putting themselves in other people’s shoes and understand that actions have consequences. This is when their emotions and feelings are strengthened.

Thus, cognitive skills are those that the brain uses to think, read, learn, remember, pay attention and solve problems. These skills are measured to determine the IQ of children. However, all cognitive profiles do not look the same. Children have some skills that are stronger than others. Remember that kids learn by building connections between the cells of their brain. The more these pathways are used, the stronger they get. Thus, it is only practicing that will help them build cognitive skills. Depending on which stage your child is in, you can analyze the kind of thinking and learning skills he will be able to pick up, and then focus on them.

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Learning From Everyday Activities

Just like charity begins at home, learning begins at home too. Although parents depend upon schools and teachers to help their children imbibe educational knowledge and etiquette, a child learns his basic values at home. Every parent wants their children to be the best of the lot. And for this, they start teaching their little ones on their own the little concepts that they feel their children ought to know before school starts. But, you need to do so in a fun way so that children are interested in what you teach them, and learn even without realizing that they are being taught.

Other than values, you also need to teach your child the basics of all that can help them in school. Although it is the duty of teachers to do so, it is also your responsibility to put in your efforts if you want to see your child excel. And, you aren’t required to do so with books and theories. You can teach them about new concepts and give them knowledge through everyday routine activities too. Remember that children are more interested when they are naturally exposed to practical situations, rather than when they are literally taught to learn something. This is why we have come up with this blog to help you know some tactics for the same.

Math skills

Math is one of the most important subjects your child must be skilled in. Encourage numeracy within your child at an early age. Introduce him to shapes, sizes and counting to form a great foundation. Utilize food items like chapattis, peas, chocolate bars, pizza slices, cheese triangles, etc. to teach him shapes. Other everyday seen objects like doors, windows, plates, wheels also help. Compare things at home and ask your child to tell you which one is bigger/smaller so that he can recognize sizes. Ask him to count the number of chocolates, fries, popcorns, etc. that you give him. Play board games that use dice and game pieces to move ahead so that he can improve on counting skills in a fun way.

English skills

Language, specifically English, is another most important subject your child needs to learn well. Create funny tunes about rhyming words, sing easy classic songs, and sing number counting. Make it a point to teach your child a set of new words every day. Create a beautiful story using new words that can interest them, and they will be sure to grasp those words faster. You can also encourage singing out rhymes and poems aloud during bathtime, playtime or while driving somewhere. Whatever you wish to teach your child, do it through melodious tunes to make learning faster.

Science skills

Another important aspect is Science. Have your kids surrounded by Nature every day for some part of the day. Help him identify leaves, flowers and fruits along with their colours. To encourage the basics of physics, take him to a construction site, which is the best example of showing him the activities of pushing, pulling, lifting, dropping, etc. Have your child beside you while cooking. This will help him learn the various states of things – liquid, gaseous and solid. Introduce him to how water can turn to steam or ice. Explain to him how solid and liquid can be combined. Ask him to help you stir and pour to encourage his motor skills.

These are just some of the skills that can be taught, and some activities that can be utilized. Take every opportunity to teach your child something new every day from his daily activities. This will help your child’s brain develop faster. And for the rest of his education, leave the worries up to the teachers at GAFL, one of the best schools in Vijayanagar.

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How To Reduce Parenting Stress?

Parenting is definitely a stressful job. Even if you have your child studying in a top institute like GAFL, the best CBSE school in Bangalore, worrying about him is absolutely normal. Waking up early in the morning, getting your kids ready for school, taking care of their studies, worrying about their progress at school, spending sleepless nights when they are unwell – all of this only adds up to your daily stress. The more stress you take, the more negatively it will affect your health. Because you can’t run away from your daily routine and responsibilities, you need find out an alternative for beating the stress. Though taking a walk, listening to music and exercising are great options to help you relax, there are other relaxation strategies you can practice that will calm your mind and help you stay more present in the moment. These tactics require lots of time and patience, but they definitely bring great outcomes. Here are a few relaxation strategies you must try in your everyday routine.

Deep Breathing

Tension in the mind brings a shallow and rapid breathing. This kind of improper breathing deprives us of the right amount of oxygen. To purify our body and help it produce more energy, we need the right amount of oxygen, which only comes with breathing properly. For this, you must lie down on a comfortable place with your eyes closed and hands on your abdomen just below your ribs. Breathe slowly and deeply. Keep doing this for a few minutes and let your mind be devoid of thoughts. Keep doing this several times a day for only 5-10 minutes, and you will see how soon you improve on your breathing.

Focusing on your breath

Take a few minutes to concentrate on your breath. With your eyes open or closed; with your mouth open or closed; breathe through your nose, and focus on the sensation of the breath moving in and out of your body. Let your mind follow the movement of air as you inhale and exhale. Do you feel a particular area where you can feel your breath with greater attention? Focus on the point. Don’t let your mind wander – compel your mind to focus on the breath for a few minutes. Then, take a deep breath and get back to your day.

Going on a mental vacation

Stress tenses up our body. To break up the tension, start imagining something that makes you feel good. Lie down with your eyes closed. Relax your muscles and take a few deep breaths. Imagine a place or an activity you enjoy, and try to completely experience the imagined event. Try to see, hear, smell and feel everything as you would do in reality. Stay in your imaginary world for a few minutes and then slowly return back to reality.

Practicing progressive relaxation

Lie down comfortably and close your eyes. You need to practice progressive relaxation individually with different parts of your body. Start with your feet and lower legs. Tighten your muscles as hard as you can and feel the tension. Then, slowly release the tension and let the muscles relax a little bit at a time. Now, move up to your upper leg and hip muscles, and repeat the process. Do this moving up the body slowly with individual body parts. Relaxing this way one group at a time will have your entire body feel relaxed, calm and peaceful.

These strategies will not entirely eliminate the stress you have, but they will help reduce stress levels and give you energy. Keep practicing these exercises every day and you will see positive results soon.

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Which Skills Do Educational Therapists Practice With Kids?

No two children can be the same when it comes to mastering their studies and other aspects. Every child has his/her own way of thinking, evaluating and memorizing things. Out of these, some kids have more learning and attention issues as compared to others. This does not mean that they need to be left out. This means that they need extra attention and help from an educational therapist. Even if you provide your child with the best schooling and education from teachers like those at GAFL, the Best CBSE school in Bangalore, if he is weak, he may need some extra coaching. And there is absolutely nothing to worry about or be ashamed of.

If you can’t distinguish between an educational therapist and a teacher/tutor, you must know that educational therapists are specially trained to work on certain skills with kids who have learning and attention issues, which is why they can prove better than tutors. If you are still unsure, you can read further to know the skills that an educational therapist can work on with your kids to aid for their betterment.

Pre-reading skills

Before focusing on the reading skills of your child, there are certain skills a therapist will work on so that it becomes easier for your child to read. These pre-reading skills include phonemic awareness, print awareness and vocabulary. The coaching starts hearing and playing with small sounds in words (phonemic awareness). He will then be taught to learn how to follow the words and sentences printed in a book (print awareness). Lastly at this stage, he will be taught to learn names, meaning of things and different feelings and ideas that can be connected to real life (vocabulary).

Reading skills

The reading skills that need to be instilled within your child primarily require a combination of recognizing letters and their sounds so that it is easier for them to learn how to sound out words (decoding). Once he is comfortable with words and their pronunciations, he needs to learn how to read smoothly with the right inflection (fluency). After being able to read what is printed, he should also be able to understand what is being said as he reads and draw conclusions of the statements (comprehension), and then describe and retell what he read (narration).

Writing skills

Writing is another skill that becomes difficult to teach to those children who have problems with concentration. However, an educational therapist is skilled at instilling writing skills within such kind of children too. It starts with simple practicing of how to write letters and then sentences (mechanics). It then goes to the next step of organizing thoughts and mapping out ideas about what to write (pre-writing). Your child will be taught to work on different types of writing like narrative, influential and descriptive (writing). He will also be taught the importance of checking and revising what he has written (editing).

Math skills

Math is one of the very important subjects that your child must learn, which is why math skills become another important aspect of educational therapist coaching. These skills include basics like working with patterns, number sense and recognition; computation that involves working on addition, subtraction, multiplication and division; and strategical skills like using formulae and solving problems by reading and using the data given.

Executive functioning skills

The other basic skills that are taught to your child to help focus on his attention and learning include those that help one’s brain to function these include finding ways to improve short and long term information recall (memory), organizing belonging and thoughts (organization), and learning to approach problems in various ways (flexible thinking).

Now, you may have understood why an educational therapist is important to help your child boost up his learning and attention. Make sure you don’t feel embarrassed about your child and help him out of his problem at the earliest.

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Social Thinking For Your Kids

Social Thinking means the way individuals interact with other people. How one reacts to a person after analyzing his emotions, intentions, viewpoints and thoughts without verbal communication is what is known as Social Thinking.

Now-a-days as more and more children of a tender age are using a variety of social platforms, it is important that we as adults teach them how to effectively communicate to people on the other side. Not limiting this to social platforms only, it is important that your child communicates effectively in every social situation where they meet other people. You may wonder if Social Thinking will actually help your child with social skills issues. So, here are the details about how this program works.

What is Social Thinking about?

Social Thinking is basically to help kids who struggle with their social skills. It helps them discern what other people may be thinking and feeling. Based on this analysis, they are taught how to think in social situations. They are taught how to think about their own and others’ thoughts and feelings. Building these skills helps them learn the connection between thoughts, feelings and behaviours, which in turn leads to better social interactions. The whole idea about this program is that kids develop social thinking before using social skills.

Who requires Social Thinking education?

Social Thinking is required for children at the age of four, and for adults too. This is because children begin interacting with people and on social media by this age. So, it is better that they are equipped with this kind of thinking and skills right from an early age. This program helps with social learning, attention issues, difficulty of working in groups, and understanding facial expressions and body language. Any kind of non-verbal learning disabilities, high-functioning autism and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) can be sorted out with Social Thinking.

How does Social Thinking work?

Instead of asking your child to make eye-contact, you can teach them that people’s eyes are sources of information. Teach them how eye expressions can give clues about what someone is thinking. This way, your child will understand the importance of looking into the eyes to analyze what the effect of the conversation is on the person he is speaking to. This is just how Social Thinking works. It helps convey social concepts to children in a way that makes sense to them. There are many social concepts included in this kind of study. Once these concepts are thoroughly taught to kids, they learn how to apply them in different situations. You can teach the little ones how to understand facial expressions and body language through storybooks; higher grade schoolers through comic books; and teenagers through different guides.

Apart from Social Thinking, you also need to have a great learning atmosphere for your child, where he is brought up with positivity and is taught to build his thinking abilities and skills. Other than your home, it is your child’s school that affects his attitude, behaviour and thoughts. So, make sure you choose one wisely. GAFL, one of the Best Schools in Kengeri is a judicious choice!

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Understanding Your Child’s Learning Strength

Every child has his own way of dealing with new tasks. By utilizing his natural learning strength, he can come up with creative methods of learning new things. However, he won’t be approaching every new task in exactly the same way. Although, the pattern that he uses to interact with new information is similar every time. This pattern is his learning strength and the pathway to learn new things. This learning strength combines your child’s talents and abilities with his skills and knowledge to help him imbibe new information.

Different types of learning strengths

Every child has a different learning strength. May it be learning independently or by working with others, the different types of learning strengths include learning by looking, learning by listening, learning through language, learning through action, and learning through logic.

·        By looking – getting information from charts, maps and pictures; and reading other people’s body language

·        By listening – learning from lectures and conversations; and understanding tone of voice, pitch and other auditory clues

·        Through language – getting information from written and spoken data

·        Through action – learning by moving, touching and doing; and hands-on activities

·        Through logic – trying to make sense of things with questions like why and how

Different types of thinking styles

Another factor that helps your child imbibe information is through his thinking style, which is the way he processes the information he takes in. Just like various learning strengths, different children have different thinking styles too. These include reflective thinking, intuitive thinking, sequential thinking and global thinking.

·        Reflective thinkers – These kids need time to think about what they have seen, heard or read. Such kids tend to be quiet and thoughtful, and believe in thoughts before actions.

·        Intuitive thinkers – These kids need to explore the ‘why’s of things. They look at something and break it down into small details. They never memorize what they see, read or hear. They always break up the data and understand it well, considering it to be the better way of remembering things.

·        Sequential thinkers – These kids need logic behind every idea. They watch every detail that add up to the bigger picture, and understand the best when they steps behind every thought. They also prefer to do things in a logical order or sequence, one step at a time.

·        Global thinkers – These kids can see the details as well as the bigger picture at the same time, thus helping them to make decisions and reach solutions quickly. For them, everything suddenly comes together and makes sense, unlike in the case of sequential thinkers who need logical steps.

So, what is your child’s learning strength and thinking style? Taking account of your child’s talent, ability, skill, knowledge, and thinking style together, you can understand how he engages with new information, and how he naturally learns. Finding out your child’s learning strength is important to help you find the best studying options for him, and also improve on other aptitudes he can work upon. Thus, it can help you find the best pathway for at-home learning, which makes it easier for you to teach him effectively. But what about at school!? Their learning becomes effective and beneficial if the teachers also focus on specific learning styles. If your child is at GAFL CBSE school inBangalore, you need not worry as teachers there are well aware of these different learning strengths and thinking styles, and treat every child with patience according to the category they fall in.

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Create And Utilize Your Time For Bonding With Your Kids

Your kids are at school five days a week. Their regular routine looks something like this – going to school, taking a nap, doing their homework, going for classes, watching some television, and playing with friends. So, they have an almost fixed schedule five days a week, but what about the weekends? What do they do to spend their long weekends? Do they while away time watching television or surfing the Internet? Or are they busy playing with their friends, gadgets or video games? Do they spend time with you during those two days or are you busy too finishing up pending chores of the week? If you don’t spend some time with your kids over the weekend, you are definitely following a wrong practice. It is very important that your child bonds with you the most rather than the television, gadgets, and his friends. Even if you are very busy with your chores, schedule and work, you need to have some quality time with your kids. Spending quality time with your kids will only strengthen your bond with them and have a positive effect on your relationship. If you are having a tough time balancing between your chores and finding time for your kids, these few tips may help you.

·        Just like you have a fixed schedule for the weekdays, do the same for the weekends too. Set up a fixed time – a particular morning or evening of the weekend for completing your chores and have the rest of the weekend to enjoy together.

·        Instead of trying to complete all the chores together, try setting up a way in which you can divide your weekend chores throughout the weekdays too. Instead of doing 7 chores on a weekend, try to make time for 1 chore per day.

·        Instead of completing all the chores on your own, divide the work between your family members, or take the time to get the errands done together so that even while driving to the bank, grocery store or elsewhere, you spend time together.

·        You need to embrace the decision of leaving a few things undone. If you try to be perfect with completing your chores, you are not going to be able to spend time with your kids, and that’s for sure. Let some of the small stuff go so that you can bond with your kids.

Once you put these things into practice, you will see how you can wonderfully carve out the time to be with your kids. But then, what do you do with the time? While away all of it just sitting with them, or relaxing, or watching television? No way! Utilize the time you have got out of your busy schedule to do something creative, fun or worthwhile.

·        If your kids are young, play board games with them – even if it is for half an hour a day. Or if they have a favourite sport, try to put in all efforts to play with them or be with them while they play.

·        Exercise is an important part of everyone’s life. With a busy schedule throughout the week, you may not have time to do so. So, why not utilize this child-bonding time doing some exercise? This is the fittest and healthiest way to strengthen your bond. Get 45 to 60 minutes of exercise every day. If it’s not possible at a stretch, burst it into 15 minute counts.

·        You can involve your children with your regular every day activities like cooking, baking and shopping. Give them responsibilities during these chores and see how they will be highly interested.

·        It’s okay to have some activities that are not too useful, once in a while. You can take your child to a movie or community event, spend time painting each other’s nails, or going for some snacks and coffee.

Make it a point to plan up a more bonding schedule for your kids and yourself right from today. Utilize the time when you are with them to the fullest and leave their school time worry to their teachers at GAFL, the renowned CBSE school in Bangalore, where teachers are trained to take care of every kind of mental, physical and emotional health of their students.

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