Children are Homeless but Not Hopeless

One possible reason that US children are not doing as well as those in Finland, the country with the smartest teenagers, is the higher number of homeless children in the US, which is 1.4 million a year. Tasks for educators in the US are certainly more challenging than those in Finland.

Homeless children have significantly more challenges in their lives, ranging from health, social, economics, and even psychological. Homeless students often times go to school hungry. They don't get a good quality and quantity of sleep. They have to travel further to school. They generally feel isolated and stigmatized. They have higher level of anxiety than their peers. And as a result of their many temporary residences, they tend to move schools a lot, repeat a grade, and have a higher percentage of school drop outs.

At school, these children would rather not be identified as homeless. And many instances schools officials may not know that some of their children are homeless and need more help than their peers.

As required by law through the Steward B McKinney Homeless Assistance Act, these children are entitled to a free and appropriate education. Schools must eliminate barriers to enrollment, attendance and success in school for homeless students. This can be done by providing services to these homeless children including providing backpacks, uniforms, materials for school work, fields trips, tutoring, transportation arrangement, and many more.

One of the tutoring volunteer organization who supports homeless children by going to their shelters, and therefore making access to tutoring easier for these children, is School On Wheels.







In the US, just because children are homeless they don't have to be hopeless.
Go to Helping Homeless Students, for more information.

Early Childhood Learning is the Recipe for Full of Life Adults

Kids never run out of questions. "why is this?", "why is that?"..and on and on. Kids have a huge appetite for learning. They care to know everything around them. But the tragedy is.... when they are in high school, more over in college, somehow they loose interest in many things.

Something happened between the time a kid was just baby, a toddler, or even preschooler to the time he/she is in a high school / college.

It seems to me that if parents and teachers simply provide enough freedom for kids to think for themselves, enough time for them to explore their world, to imagine, as Einstein once said that imagination is more important than knowledge, enough patience to let them make mistakes, and more over fuel their inborn appetite for learning, we have already succeeded the goals of early childhood education.

A French friend of mine told me that in France, he used to study in primary school from 8 am to 6 pm. He wondered why children needed so much time to study. Why could not they be outside kicking soccer balls, and exploring the world more often? I agree with him, there is a need for kids to be free. To explore. To experience real life outside classrooms. This is how they can get the context of why learning is wonderful. Why learning and gaining knowledge about the world is exciting and could be beneficial for them.

I believe there are three goals of learning in early childhood:

1. Develop mental abilities - memory, concentration, imagination, visualization
2. Develop a good attitude towards learning - why learning is fun, why learning is cool, confidence towards tackling complex problems
   
3. Develop as much interest in as many fields, and to find few things in life that they are passionate about - something that can spice up the rest of their life

If we did not achieve these three goals during early childhood learning, then we miss the golden opportunity of developing a life long learner adults who are full of life because of their abilities to enjoy the world around them.

A friend of mine who is doctor once told me that he dropped anything he was doing, when his daughter asked him about anything. He knew that if he did not attend to the little girl's curiosity at that moment, minutes later, the little girl may not be interested in it anymore. My friend wanted to make sure that her daughter's curiosity is never dampened.

When I was in primary school, my mom was always ready to tackle any difficult homework problem with me. She gave me a good example of the "can do" attitude toward handling difficult problems. She would never say that something is too difficult for her and that she cannot do it. She would always attempt to tackle the problem with me with positive attitude. Thanks mom!

Hand Made

Compared to when we grew up as children in the 70s, today there are a lot more choices to early childhood learning materials and pre-schools /institutions for early childhood education.    How are we, parents, to respond to these choices?  How much do children benefit from these learning? 

In Japan there are various learning institutions for children as young as one year old, to join a pre-school program.   Top famous learning institutions such as Shichida (from 1 year old),  Kogumakai (from 2 year old), Montessori (from 2 year old), Suzuki Method (from 3 years old), Kumon (from 4 years old) provides different curriculum and use specific methods to teach.      Shichida and Kumon have recently introduced their methods in the US, also in some countries in Asia.   Kogumakai has opened a facility in China and Taiwan.

Schichida

http://www.shichida.co.jp/english/c1-1_method.php

Kumon

http://www.kumon.com/

As a mother, i do believe early childhood learning is important for children.   In the past 6 years, like any other mothers, i have gone through books, materials and attended trial lessons andfor a period of time my daughter actually took lessons at some of these pre-schools.   Frankly, they do have proven methods and wonderful techniques to stimulate young children.  However, i would also like to share the following learnings as a parent:

1.  It is good to expose your child to various stimulation, learning and experience since we know that children has unlimited capacity to learn and absorb new things.   At the end of the day we parents, are the one, with limitation.   We have limited time, money and energy to deliver them.  

2. Learning comes with experience.   As for parents, learning comes with some expectations.   The best expectation to have is to see your children enjoy every single things that they do.   If they do not enjoy it, then parents probably need to consider an alternative learning.    Learning experience only improves when it comes with pleasure.

3. Like providing nutrition for children, i believe in the "hand made" and "do-it-yourself" principles.   When it is hand made, you know exactly what to prepare and put into it.   Why take your child to various type of pre-schools when the best education is in fact right there in your own home.   If you have the time and you know what to do and how to do it, you can do it yourself.   By reading to your kids,  playing all sort of games (origami, puzzles, clays, blocks), making children toys/cooking/doing something together, or even just by talking to them, they can learn a lot already.   

4. To some extent early childhood education has become a competitive business and we, parents need to be careful in understanding the importance of education as much as the need of freedom, having fun and play, especially for children at a very young age.    

5. Japanese nowadays are more and more aware of the need to learn foreign language.  As a result English learning for young children has also become a trend.  Some methods Japanese use to teach their children English are:

Flash cards

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SSV5SiXkbc&feature=related

Digital reader

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1ivQNv0XA8

Going to regular English classes with dancing, singing and English speaking program

Watching Sesame Street, Disney English programs, listening to Nursery Rhymes on CDs

In Australia, learning a second language is also common for young children.  Chinese and Japanese are the top two foreign languages learned by many Australian kids.   

So does early childhood learning produce a future generation of people who are bilingual / trilingual, intellectual and wiser?  Lets hope so.    But we all know that it takes more than a language of wisdom and intelligent to survive at work, or even at home.

Parents.. We are Accountable

"The bottom line is that no government policies will make any difference unless we also hold ourselves more accountable as parents. Because government, no matter how wise or efficient, cannot turn off the TV or put away the video games. Teachers, no matter how dedicated or effective, cannot make sure your children leave for school on time and do their homework when they get back at night." is part of Obama's speech on education reform asking every parents to be accountable.

Why Should We Not Pay Students for Good Grades?

If we try to make a society who thinks that studying should be paid, as if it is work, hence no fun, then yes we can pay each students a certain amount of money based on their performance. But we we want a society who loves to learn, and would learn something for the sake of learning, then we'd better not associate money, or work to studying at school.

There other ways money could be used to help lower drop out rates, and to motivate kids at school:

• The money would better be used to pay teachers' training, who would then learn the skills to show that learning is exciting. Student would in turn have better chance to love to learn.
• The money could also be used to increase the salary for teachers, therefore attracting higher educated individuals to want to be teachers.
• The money could also be used to give more unemployment benefits to unemployed professionals who are willing to give their time to help teach school kids from their experience.
• And how about giving tax breaks to corporations who allow a certain number of their employees to use their work hours to go to schools to tell stories about what their schools have taught them, and how that helped them to get to where they are in their profession.

Secrets to be the Smartest Teenagers in the World

The teenagers in Finland have proven themselves to be the smartest in the world in one of the International Test. But Finnish teenagers are not under as much pressure as American teens. Finnish kids don't start school until a year after those kids in the US. Finnish kids are more independent. They do more essays.

The Finnish teachers have master's degree. They are given more freedom to run their classrooms. They focus on the weakest students.

Another explanation for Finns' success in producing the smartest teenagers in the world is the culture of reading. Libraries are attached to shopping malls. Book buses go to remote places. Parents of new born receive government-paid gift pack including books. Read more on What Makes Finnish Kids So Smart?

Praise the Hard Work, Not the Intelligence

Should we praise our kids' hard work or their intelligence? Should we make our kids believe that their failure is based on lack of effort of lack of ability? The answer is hard work, or lack of effort. It turns out that less emphasis should be given to intelligence and or lack of it, because believing too much on one's intelligence prevents one from living up to one's potential, and believing too much on one's lack of intelligence depresses motivation. As parents, we need to praise the hard work of our kids, and at the same time help kids understand the consequence of lack of hard work. For more, read The Secret to Raising Smart Kids.

The video below shows a research on how praising the hard work makes children want to work harder but praising the brilliance makes children more unable to cope with failure.

Can a 12 Month Old Baby Read?

How early can a child read? 5 years? 4 years? How about 24 months? 18 months? No..

The answer is 12 months and 2 days. Check this out...

Where is my Vegetable from?

Where is the vegetable from? Isn't it from a supermarket? How does kids learn to be the stewards of the environment? What's organic vegetable?

Here is an idea for a weekend activity. You build a vegetable garden with your kids. Show them how a small thing like a seed can turn into a vegetable. Measure the growth of the vegetable. Have each kid plants their own, water it, and harvest the fruit of their labor.



This teaches not only gardening skills, but the lessons of commitment, patience, and focusing on the goal.

Lilly the World Map Master

Do you know your world map better than a 2 year old Lilly? This video shows Lilly knows the world map better than probably most adults. This shows what a 2 year old brain is capable of. I am wondering how her parents made the learning so fun, that Lilly enjoys learning so much. She probably does not see the difference between what adults call learning and playing.



See how Lilly wants to 'play' more.. even after being told to say bye bye...
In the simplest term, learning is equal to playing, because learning for kids is fun.

Baby First Steps

How fun watching our baby took his first steps.. 9 steps in total. It was when Luke was 11 months old. When he was 7 months, we gave him a jumper. This helps hims built his leg muscles.

We also put floor padding around his super yard, allowing him to test himself, without the risk of hurting himself too bad when he fell.

At about 12 months, we gave him a push / pull toy, which encourage him to walk. But by this time, he walks a lot that he wants to carry boxes, more than pushing and pulling his toys.

Baby Sign Language

Babies seem to understand their surroundings more than they can express them. It makes sense since they are still learning to speak. But what if there is an easier way to communicate than speaking. Just like we, adults, when traveling to a new country where we don't speak the language, we would use ... yes, the sign language.

Luke, our baby knows how to clap when he likes what he sees, makes a cross with his fingers when he sees a cross. And we know he wants to tell us more, but unable to ... which results in some frustration on his part, and maybe ours as well.

I just saw this amazing video on a baby who has learned a sign language, from My Smart Hands. I was wondering if anyone else has the same success, or has any other thoughts on teaching their babies the sign language.



There are some basic sign language for babies available at Signing with Your Baby.