Book Excerpts

Excerpt from Introduction

This handbook will explain why a child's participation - or "action" - is critical in learning all information. It is the action, or partaking in learning that allows the brain to spring into action when called upon. The more information stored in the brain, the more actions, or options, the child can draw upon in critical thinking. I offer color learning as an example of the power of early learning.

Why is it desirable to teach a child colors at an early age? After all, children eventually learn their colors. Early learning, as this handbook will show, sets the stage for future brain development. Each piece of information that is learned builds on previous knowledge. This, coupled with the fact that brain pruning (the process that dissolves unproductive brain synapses), begins at about the first decade of life, suggests that the earlier learning occurs the better.

Think of it as road construction. Will the children you care about have a brain made up of small-town byways, or a massive infrastructure of roads and railways to draw upon?

Excerpt from Chapter One
Why Early Learning Is Crucial

Understanding how the brain works is complex, but the underlying importance is basic: Healthy infants are born with a brain that has the necessary "hardware" to learn. However, what they learn is up to their caregivers.

This section illustrates why early learning in general is crucial. At the end of this chapter it will be obvious to the mother who told me, "I don't see the point in making a big production of teaching colors at a young age because kids eventually learn them anyway" that there is "a point." Maps of a child's world are already being drawn within the brain in infancy.2 Since we are born with most of the neurons that the brain will ever have,3 it is our responsibility as caregivers to begin the learning process at birth.

In the words of I.B. Harris, "Kindergarten is much too late for us to worry about whether a child is ready for school. We must begin the first days and weeks and months of life to get children ready to learn."4 Since a newborn is ready to learn, we are in a position to give children a gift beyond measure; to prepare them to live life to its fullest as logical thinkers, problem solvers, and creative beings that experience the many dimensions of life.

It may shock you to learn that at about age 12, a chemical is released in the brain that dissolves millions of cells gray matter - the unproductive and unused portions.5 This process, described as "pruning," dissipates unproductive synapses, eliminating any chance of ever using information not properly stored.12 At this time 80 percent of our brain mass disappears, and we're left with the same brain weight we had at 18 months of age!5 This paring down of the brain economizes on energy - otherwise the brain would be left cluttered, inhibiting efficient productivity.5, 13

Which parts of the brain will be dissolved during this pruning process and what will survive? A protective layer called the myelin sheath is the determinant between continued existence and destruction.11 ...the type, frequency and variation of stimuli to which you expose children between birth and 12 years of age will determine what is "available" in their brains when they reach middle school, high school, college and beyond.

As a mother I was initially panicked by this information, but after reading the clinical studies further, I realized this news is exciting and empowering. How fortunate we are to be presented with information provided by cutting edge research. We should celebrate in our ability to harness its potential for the betterment of the next generation and beyond. Specifically, caregivers can affect the longevity of neural networks and essentially foster brain development and long-term knowledge in children. Precisely, a neural field can be resistant to this dissolution of knowledge by the strength of the myelin sheath.5 This insulation forms around the axons as learning takes place, and the chemical that is released to disintegrate unused neurons cannot penetrate the myelin sheath.5


Excerpt from Chapter Two
How the Brain Learns Colors

The brain learns colors in four steps.21 This acquisition of color names follows a precise and systematic process within the brain with the mastery of one step essential before advancing to the next.21 As the teacher, you can speed up color learning and make it less confusing by following the sequence of processing the brain must go through in order for this learning to take place.

Researchers have found the following progression in the comprehension of colors21:

Step 1. Understanding a Color Name Is a Description of an Object

Step 2. Comprehending the Correct Color Name

Step 3. Correct Verbal Identification of Color Names

Step 4. Selective Attention to Color

In teaching a child colors, particularly a pre-verbal child, it is significant to understand not only how the brain processes each step but also how to apply that information in your teaching.

Each step is relatively uncomplicated and easy for you, the instructor (whether you're a parent, grandparent, day-care provider or pre-school teacher) to understand. It's simply a matter of being informed as to how the brain learns this information.

Historically, we have not necessarily taught our children color names in systematic fashion. The next chapter introduces the Technique for Interactive Color Learning as this author's approach to incorporating the steps reviewed in this chapter on color learning with brain science, creating a system to efficiently teach colors.


Excerpt from Chapter Three
The Technique for Interactive Color Learning

The development of the Technique for Interactive Color Learning (referred to as "TICL," pronounced "tickle") relies on two basic principles: the four steps of information assimilation discussed in the previous chapter, How the Brain Learns Colors, and the essential nature of early learning which provides the building blocks for intelligence and determines whether a child can fully achieve his or her potential.

While I will not suggest that you put away your board books and DVDs on color learning, I will suggest that, based on current research, those one- and two-dimensional items should be supplementary to hands-on, three-dimensional learning. The Neocortex, the highest functioning portion of our…brain, has pre-programmed within it three-dimensional, brilliantly colored, geometric forms making three-dimensional learning innate to our brains.5 This is not just because our brains come pre-wired for three-dimensional sight, but also because of the importance of touching an object in strengthening brain growth and the myelin sheath.

One single neuron does not hold the specific memory of a color name because many neural fields are involved in memory.5 Thus, it is in the best interest of the child to create those neural interrelationships using sight, sound and touch (many will use taste as well, and that's great, as long as choking is not a hazard). For example, verbal interaction with a child is a stimulus to the brain that drives the higher brain neural response of image-making, involving each of the three layers of our brain. Television, on the other hand, feeds both stimulus and response, eliminating crucial brain reaction, and thereby limiting the development of the neural networks.5

This is why the word interactive appears in the name of this technique. "Inter," meaning between or with each other, refers to the interface between you and the child, and "active" means the mind in a state of engagement or operation. The beauty of this method is its simplicity and the way it lends itself not only to brain development, but bonding and creativity, which I discuss in the following chapter. This method, and early learning in general, should be experienced as joyful and playful.

The TICL Technique (is) for children under the age of one (and) for children age one and older. Below is a detailed outline of the TICL method, including scripted dialogue you may use. Your goal should be to come as close to this as possible since this script was designed with the importance of repetition and ease of assimilating new information. Remember this is fun for both you and the child, and if you need to abandon ship in the middle of the game, that's okay!

After the child comprehends color identification, you can use this mastery as a spring-board to further brain development - the entire purpose of teaching colors at an early age.


Excerpt from Chapter Four
Why Bonding and Creativity Are Vital in Learning

Touch is vital ... because nerve endings are involved in how the heart and brain function separately and interdependently.5 Nerve endings are involved in such things as motor movement, spatial orientation and vision. These cannot be stimulated in utero because the nerve endings are protected from their watery environment by a fatty substance. Learning deficiencies, among other critical deficits, will result if the nerve endings are not activated as soon as possible after birth.

Simply because the bonded mother, or primary caregiver, speaks to her child more than the non-bonded mother, the child of the former will have a more powerful vocabulary than the unbonded child.5 Pearce writes, "To nurture the human is to nurture intelligence, of which language is foundational."5 The touch-starved child, deprived emotionally and sensorily, will be deficient in language.5 Abstract language (the key to arithmetic and geometry) cannot fully develop at a later time without the firm groundwork of a concrete language5 during the early years.

While I suggest that the Technique for Interactive Color Learning begin as soon as the infant can sit up, well after this heart-brain connection's foundation has commenced, touching and interaction while playing with the child strengthens this link even in older infants and toddlers.

Play and creativity are the groundwork of intelligence.5 Story-telling is a wonderful type of creative play. Haven't you seen a child listen to a story fully entranced? At the appropriate time, the child's jaw drops and eyes widen, all the while "seeing" images inside the brain.5 Children love to hear the same stories, which may be innate as repetition causes neural networks to engage each other and the myelin sheath to strengthen.5 Since each new story forms new neural connections, while repetition strengthens those networks, the more stories repeated as many times as you can tolerate, the better!

The Technique for Interactive Color Learning incorporates the importance of creativity and story-telling to capture the interest of the child and develop neural networks. Perhaps most significant, TICL provides an environment for emotional bonding. Celebrated pediatrician T. Berry Brazelton documented that "supportive, warm, nurturing emotional interactions with infants and young children…help the central nervous system grow…(and) interactive experiences can result in brain cells being recruited for particular purposes ..."22 TICL suggests a nurturing environment as the caregiver reacts with excitement and pride in the choice the child makes when posed with the question, "Can you find the one that matches?" even if the answer is incorrect.

So while implementing TICL, laugh and smile; touch and caress; praise and admire.