Pengikut

Selasa, 30 Oktober 2012

Fairy Tales

Sleeping Beauty

Snow White

Bluebeard

Rumplestiltskin

The shoemaker and the elves

Cinderella

Jack and The Beanstalk

The Match Girl


Selasa, 2 Oktober 2012

Puzzle Play Helps Boost Learning Math-Related Skills


ScienceDaily (Feb. 16, 2012) — Children who play with puzzles between ages 2 and 4 later develop better spatial skills, a study by University of Chicago researchers has found. Puzzle play was found to be a significant predictor of spatial skill after controlling for differences in parents' income, education and the overall amount of parent language input.

In examining video recordings of parents interacting with children during everyday activities at home, researchers found children who play with puzzles between 26 and 46 months of age have better spatial skills when assessed at 54 months of age.
"The children who played with puzzles performed better than those who did not, on tasks that assessed their ability to rotate and translate shapes," said psychologist Susan Levine, a leading expert on mathematics development in young children.
The ability to mentally transform shapes is an important predictor of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) course-taking, degrees and careers in older children. Activities such as early puzzle play may lay the groundwork for the development of this ability, the study found.
Levine, the Stella M. Rowley Professor in Psychology at UChicago, is lead author on a paper, "Early Puzzle Play: A Predictor of Preschoolers' Spatial Transformation Skill," published in the current early view issue of Developmental Science.
The study, published February 17, is the first to look at puzzle play in a naturalistic setting. For the research, 53 child-parent pairs from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds participated in a longitudinal study, in which researchers video-recorded parent-child interactions for 90-minute sessions that occurred every four months between 26 and 46 months of age.
The parents were asked to interact with their children as they normally would, and about half of the children in the study were observed playing with puzzles at least once. Higher-income parents tended to engage children with puzzles more frequently. Both boys and girls who played with puzzles had better spatial skills, but boys played with more complicated puzzles than girls, and the parents of boys provided more spatial language during puzzle play and were more engaged in play than the parents of girls.
Boys also performed better than girls on a mental transformation task given at 54 months of age.
"Further study is needed to determine if the puzzle play and the language children hear about spatial concepts is causally related to the development of spatial skills -- and to examine why there is a sex difference in the difficulty of the puzzles played with and in the parents' interactions with boys and girls." Levine explained. "We are currently conducting a laboratory study in which parents are asked to play with puzzles with their preschool sons and daughters, and the same puzzles are provided to all participants.
"We want to see whether parents provide the same input to boys and girls when the puzzles are of the same difficulty," Levine said. "In the naturalistic study, parents of boys may have used more spatial language in order to scaffold their performance."
Alternatively, the difference in parent spatial language and engagement may be related to a societal stereotype that males have better spatial skills. "Our findings suggest that engaging both boys and girls in puzzle play can support the development of an aspect of cognition that has been implicated in success in the STEM disciplines," Levine said.
Levine was joined in writing the paper by Kristin R. Ratliff, project director for research and development at WPS Publishing; Janellen Huttenlocher, the William S. Gray Professor Emeritus in Psychology at UChicago, and Joanna Cannon, New York City Department of Education.
The research on puzzle play is part of a series of studies based on observations in naturalistic settings Levine has led. In previous papers, she and colleagues have shown the importance of using words related to mathematics and spatial concepts in advancing children's knowledge.
The study was funded by the National Science Foundation (Spatial Intelligence and Learning Center)and by the the National Institutes of Health/National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

Why Puzzles Are Good for Your Child’s Development


Why Puzzles Are Good for Your Child’s Development

You’ve probably heard that puzzles are good for your child’s mind and cognitive development; in fact, you may have received puzzles as baby shower or new baby gifts. But why are puzzles considered helpful to a child’s mental development? Here are some reasons.
The World Around Them
Psychologists have determined that a child’s brain development is influenced significantly when a child acts on or manipulates the world around him or her. Puzzles provide that key opportunity. Children learn to work directly with their environment and change its shape and appearance when they work with puzzles.
Hand-Eye Coordination
When children flip, turn, remove, etc. pieces of the puzzle, they are learning the connection between their hands and their eyes. The eyes see the puzzle, and the brain then envisions how the puzzle needs to look or what piece needs to be found and placed. Then the brain, eyes, and hands work together to find the piece, manipulate it accordingly, and fit it into the puzzle accurately.
Fine Motor Skills
Similar to the way hand-eye coordination is achieved, puzzles provide the opportunity for children to develop fine motor skills. Not to be confused with gross motor skills such as walking, fine motor skills require small, specialized movements that puzzles provide. Fine motor skills are necessary for handwriting and other important achievements.
Gross Motor Skills
For babies and young children, gross motor skills can be enhanced with stacking blocks and other large, easily-manipulated puzzles.
Problem Solving
The skill of effective problem solving is a valuable and important one. As a child looks at various pieces and figures out where they fit or don’t fit, he or she is developing this vital skill. A puzzle, after all, can’t be completed by cheating! It either works and fits or it doesn’t. So puzzles teach children to use their own minds to figure out how to solve problems and think in a logical way.
Shape Recognition
For young children – even babies – learning to recognize and sort shapes is an important part of their development. Puzzles can help little ones with this, since the pieces need to be recognized and sorted before they can be assembled.
Memory
Simple jigsaws and other types of puzzles may help enhance a child’s memory. For example, a child will need to recall the size, color and shape of various pieces as he or she works through the puzzle. If a piece doesn’t fit, the child sets it aside; but he or she will need to remember that piece when it is needed.
Setting Small Goals
As a child works on a puzzle, he or she will often develop a strategy to work the puzzle faster and more efficiently. He or she may do all the edge pieces first, for instance, or sort all the pieces into piles according to colors or shapes. This helps a child learn to achieve small goals as a means toward a larger goal.