Tonight, we are back with Chapter 7 of “The Well Balanced Child: Movement and Early Learning”, entitled “Of Many Minds”.  This is a fairly lengthy chapter and I want to focus on the parts of it related to education for you all to ponder.

This chapter makes the point that one of the most important things that happen in childhood is that connections are made within the brain, between higher and lower regions and also between the two hemispheres of the brain.  Piaget called this period the “sensory motor period” and I think with good reason! There is discussion about the important role about the cerebellum, which you can find on pages 93-94.

This is a great quote from page 94:  “Although learning can take place at any stage in development, it is more efficient if it coincides with the time of neurological ‘readiness.’”  This statement appears to be in stark contrast to the American school system today, where facts are stuffed into the child with little regard for what is happening physiologically, never mind holistically, with the child.

The right hemisphere develops slightly ahead of the left hemisphere up until about age 7.  The right hemisphere is associated with whole word recognition, maths, rhythm, spatial orientation, language (emotional), visual, intuitive, holistic kinds of things.  “The years of optimum right-hemisphere dominant development are years when learning is still strongly linked to sensory-motor activity.” Continue reading →