Tools of the Mind

We are still in Utah and enjoying the summer. Mike is done working at Remedy MD, and is now full time for the Italian company from home until we get permission to move.

Mike and I read a book called "Nurture Shock." It is a book of studies on the pschology of praise, lying, teen rebellion, self-control, etc. It was fun to read and we agreed with a lot of it. In the section of self-control it talks about an early childhood education method called "Tools of the Mind." We bought that book as well and I LOVE it. I love to hear what great ideas other moms come across, so I like to share things I find. I hope it doesn't come across offensively.

A Russian psychologist named Vygotsky came up with the idea of this in the 1920-1930's. He died young, but psychologists have continued his work. Many of his ideas are mainstream and educators all over are using these methods with great results. Most of us do many of these things naturally, but I love learning why and how they work.

The Tools method developes children's minds to get them ready to learn. They do this through self-regulation. If a child can self-regulate they can:
-focus their attention
-develope deliberate memory and recall
-filter out distractions
-solve problems
-deal with difficult academic problems and occasional failure

Kids brains aren't little adult brains. It generally accepted that starting at about age 7 kids are capable of higher mental function and learning can be patterned closer to how adults learn. Prior to this they learn differently. Developing their brains by giving them tools to learn rather then learn any set curriculum is the idea.

Interest, language, imaginative play, and writing are the main components of the Tools program.

Interest
When a subject is interesting, learning is greatly increased. Brain activity is much higher when learning a subject that is interesting to the learner. For example in infancy when the baby points to an object, we tell him what it is and bring it closer. He then learns or is exposed to the name of the object and what we do with it. If we try to force them to learn about an object that they have no interest in we are wasting our time. Just as we let infants take the lead on learning, children's learning is maximized this way as well.

Language
Language facilitates learning and learning faciliatates language. We can form ideas and concepts with language. This prepares kids for higher mental functions.

Creative Play
Studies replicated from the 40's show that children of today are 3-4 years behind the children of the 40's in self-regulation skills. Without self-regulation learning is greatly inhibited. They attribute this to a lack of creative play. During creative play children learn roles, follow the rules for their roles (self-regulation), solve imaginative problems, learn symbolic function, and learn to think abstractly. Many educators and parents today think play is wasting time and try to replace this with lessons, sports, and formal learning. More time is also spent in front of the computer or tv leaving little time or energy for creative play. Children today know more facts because of this, so it appears that they are ahead, but there is less internalizing and networking happening in the brain. Internalizing and networking are much more important to learning than any set of facts we can teach. Vygotskians say the biggest predictor of academic success is to observe the child playing. Specifically observing his problem solving skills, self-regulation, and symbolic and abstract thinking.

Writing
Writing is a big part of the tools program. Writing in the form of drawing is what young kids do, and older kids learn to sound out words and write the sounds they can hear. Tools uses interest as the base for writing. Having kids write up a play plan, letters to each other, pretend invitations to a party, or whatever the activity is, is far more interesting and effective than getting them to sit and write what the adult tells them to. In the early elementary school years they are able to generalize the tools of self-regulation and motivation and use them to learn, even when the learning is not interesting to them.

Games, blocks, math manipulatives, puzzles etc are important parts of the program as well. Kids learn visually and with hands on materials. By using these things they again learn rules, self-regulation, and other regulation (which is an important aspect of self-regulation).

I love this method it's so simple and dynamic. There is no set curriculum or elaborate materials needed. It's individual. It is important to find the child's ZPD (zone of proximal development) and push them as far as they are ready in this zone. If a child is ready to read at a young age the parent should push them as far as they can. When they hit a point where learning is at a standstill the parent should step back, find another approach, wait, or try to create or find a new ZPD that will enrich and strengthen reading and other areas of learning. A child can learn things above their ZPD, but if they can't connect it to anything or internalize it the learning is not effective.

The way we have formatted the tools program this summer is by having the kids take turns picking a topic for the week

The first week Ezra chose cars and trucks.
Day 1:
-Determining the ZPD- I asked them what they knew about cars and trucks, what they wanted to learn, and what activies we could do.
-Enriching the ZPD- We looked up information on how they worked, and found a video on Toyota's website of cars being assembled.
Day 2:
-Creative play: They built a city with blocks and used their toy cars and trucks with roles they assigned to them.
Day 3:
-Writing: They made survey papers with four categories (Livi wrote, Ezra drew): trucks, cars, vans, and SUVs. We drove to a somewhat busy road and they placed tally marks in the correct sections whenever a vehicle drove past.
-Analyzing: We came home and analyzed and charted our data. There were mostly cars. I asked questions as to why they think this might be. They decided that since it was evening it was mostly dads coming home from work.

The Summer School link on my family link list is my blog of what we have done with the tools method. If any of you are interested here's the link: nelson-tools-school.blogspot.com