How Young Children Learn
by Bernice Hauser Primary Education Correspondent
If we all agree that young children (ages 3-5) are innate explorers, then how can we, the adults, enhance and enrich their constructs about the world around them? I would like to share with you my thoughts about these young ages:
- Young children need repeated opportunities to build upon a concept, to develop a new concept, to replace naive assumptions and to explore new ways of using this concept.
- They cannot distinguish between magic, fantasy and reality. They believe it is magic that turns water into ice, magic that makes salt dissolve in water.
- They cannot understand cause and effect.
- They have not developed an understanding of time -- long ago, yesterday, two weeks ago are all the same to them.
- They can sequence events in only the must rudimentary fashion.
- They do talk, hum, converse while they are engaged in an activity. We can learn what they understand by carefully listening to them.
- They must be engaged in an exploration and/or experience which engages all their senses -- touching, tasting , (albeit with adult supervision) hearing, seeing, smelling, in addition to kinesthetic and aestheticc appeal, that which encourages psychological satisfaction (e.g., a sense of accomplishment).
- They are rooted in the here and now.
- The art of questioning on the part of the adult is crucial. Questions like "What if. . . ?" or "I wonder what would happen if. . . ?" and "If we try this, what do you think. . . ?" enhance their critical thinking.
- They need to have many opportunities to manipulate concrete materials.
- They need to document what they discover -- but their documentation, their validation of what they have discovered or learned does not lend itself only to pencil/papper recordings. Instead they utilize dramatic play, singing, painting, drawing, talking, building and constructing, pantomime, picture taking to underwrite their newly formed concepts, albeit incorrect or not yet fully formed.
- Three year olds work best in an instructed group of no more than three children, but they can also work alongside their peers. They like to talk, and they enjoy what their peers are doing. They cannot truly engage in a cooperative group venture; they need their own sets of materials.
- Four and five year olds can work in somewhat larger groups, in some cooperative activities, (block-building is an example). They can engage in some joint problem-solving activities, but they do prefer their own set of materials and to arrive at their own thoughts and ideas and then to share them with the group. They can sustain a longer group activity session.
- The adult should always act as a facilitator: he/she should be a recorder, listener, and provider of materials and opportunities to interact with materials. The adult is the planner for all kinds of explorations (though we can follow the children's leads) and the questioner to encourage another way of looking and solving the mystery and/or problem.
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