Why jump in a math class with 3-year-olds

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

“A lesson should be a lesson. No need to be distracted. Sit up straight. " Sound familiar? Who among us has not heard these phrases, starting from the very youngest nails. For a long time, as a teacher, I myself was terribly annoyed by all these, as it seemed to me, "dancing with a tambourine" around the child's learning process.

It would seem, what is easier? There are so many different manuals for children of all ages, sit down and work out!

Perhaps there are children in nature who are instantly involved in "sedentary" intellectual activity. The good universe presented me with a gift in the form of two kinesthetics, my children, who must first be caught in order to work out with them. In addition, kids with an independent character and a playful nature often come to my developmental classes. As a result, it turned out that it is difficult to do without a metaphorical tambourine. And we draw in English, we jump in mathematics, and we learn the world around us through a fairy tale.

Is it that bad? Children under 6-7 years old, as is commonly believed, are not strong in logical thinking. But figurative thinking works great, intuition, empathy and connection with the unconscious are strong. Curiosity, research interest is also on top, but here's how to send them in the right direction? I think a great method is to study "serious" sciences casually.

By the way, relatively recently I read a book by the famous art therapist Elena Makarova, who, among other things, is engaged in historical research. She studies materials related to the lives of children and teachers in the Terezine concentration camp during the Second World War. The prisoners were Jews, who were forbidden to teach exact sciences to children. And the teachers got out of the situation by those very "roundabout paths", since it was allowed to study the fine arts, theater and music. Many children who went through the camp, of course, died. But among the survivors there was a large number of people who later made a scientific career. I do not know if it is possible to deduce a pattern here, nevertheless the facts, albeit tragic, but interesting.

For me, such a story became an additional motivation to organize classes with my and other people's children according to the principle “one through the other”. For example, when we walked through body parts in English, we drew funny skeletons, whose arms and legs supposedly fell off. At some point, the children asked for paint and received it immediately. They began to draw their pirates and giants, and I gradually motivated them to name their body parts in English. That is, I myself voiced the process in English, and the children, it seems, even without noticing it, repeated after me. Gradually, I ceased to be afraid to get away from studying and, on the contrary, I try to come up with some completely "unrelated to the subject" lesson, which, in fact, relaxes the child and draws into a dialogue with you.

The most difficult thing here for me personally turned out to be not even that one has to prepare for the lesson, but overcoming oneself: the cliché with which the article begins - in order to study something, one has to sit down and deal with the subject being studied. I wish you all interesting pedagogical experiments and deliberate journeys along the roundabout paths!