1. Hands-On is Brains-On by Janelle Durham, MSW Parent Educator at Bellevue College
When set up projector, instead of saying to duplicate it on other screen, choose extend. Then under slide show, click “Use Presenter View”
Note: Cannot do ANYTHING that is not included on the slide!! This took one hour ten minutes when first presented, without showing the 5 minute video clip on play-based learning.

2. How does the brain develop
Gotta fit through the pelvis. Fourth trimester
A newborn’s brain is 25% the size of an adult’s. By 6 years, it’s 92%. That’s a lot of brain growth.

3. How does the brain develop
Neurons are brain cells
A baby has as many as an adult: 100 billion
In nature vs. nurture, this is nature – the raw material
Few connections, mostly in brain stem
Connections are strongest in the brain stem, which is responsible for things like breathing, digesting, and eliminating. This ensures that at your birth, your baby had the reflexes necessary to keep her airway clear and to seek food.

4. How does the brain develop
It’s in the handout. Don’t spend time on it.
Do mention there’s a predictable order to development, and sensitive vs. critical time periods.

5. How does the brain develop
Synapses are connections between neurons
By age 3: 500 trillion
In nature vs. nurture, this is nurture
Connections built through experience
5 Senses
Novelty
How do those connections build? Through experience. Through hands-on, in-person, multi-sensory experience where sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch are all activated.
A young baby is making connections all the time: up to 3 billion connections a second! Every sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch is being filed away for future reference. This is why children can be so over-stimulated at the end of a busy day. They need time to rest quietly and process all that new information.

6. Learning in Process - Novelty
Share an A-Ha! Moment
Indian restaurant and So Big

7. How does the brain develop
Novelty builds connections
Repetition reinforces and builds more connections
How do those connections build? Through experience. Through hands-on, in-person, multi-sensory experience where sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch are all activated.
A young baby is making connections all the time: up to 3 billion connections a second! Every sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch is being filed away for future reference.

8. Learning in Process - Repetition
Share a story of repetition to mastery
Cat in the Hat

9. How does the brain develop?
Myelination – insulated nerve fibers transmit quickly
Built during sleep.
Sleep matters! So does nutrition!
Avoid overstimulation
As the brain cells mature, they become surrounded by a myelin sheath. This is a dense, fatty substance that insulates the nerve fibers, and helps with clear, efficient transmission of nerve messages. Infants and toddlers don’t have much myelin, and that’s why they seem to process information so slowly at times.
Continues into their 20’s

10. Learning in Process – Rest
Share a story of how you know when your child is overstimulated and needs a break OR
Share a story of how you make sure your child gets some down-time
Cat in the Hat

11. How does the brain develop?
Emotional Context of Learning
If frightened or stressed – adrenaline - survival mode
Can’t learn, except how to avoid threat
If feel loved and safe – oxytocin – neuro-plasticity – open to learning and will want to repeat
To think about: What does this tell you about effective discipline?
Children build huge numbers of connections. At their peak (around 4 – 8 years old) they may have twice as many synapses as an adult! But at that point, things have gotten kind of cluttered and tangled, and there are some connections they’re really not using, so they start pruning those away to focus on the really essential connections.
The phrase “use it or lose it” is often used to describe this process. Children do a lot of pruning around age 10, so if there are things you want them to remember from their younger years, this is a great time to reinforce them.
When we are stressed or frightened, our brain goes into survival mode – fight or flight – and we are less open to learning. We can learn when stressed… but much of what we learn at that time is how much we want to avoid having that experience again. Children typically don’t want to return to a task that was unpleasant to learn.
When we’re feeling loved, and cared for, and safe, our system floods with oxytocin (the “love hormone”) and our brains have a high level of “neuroplasticity” – we are open, flexible, and primed for learning. And we want to remember the things we’re doing, and repeat them over and over, which reinforces that learning.

12. Summary: Keys to Brain Development
Novelty
Repetition
Down Time
Feeling Safe and Happy
Children build huge numbers of connections. At their peak (around 4 – 8 years old) they may have twice as many synapses as an adult! But at that point, things have gotten kind of cluttered and tangled, and there are some connections they’re really not using, so they start pruning those away to focus on the really essential connections.
The phrase “use it or lose it” is often used to describe this process. Children do a lot of pruning around age 10, so if there are things you want them to remember from their younger years, this is a great time to reinforce them.
When we are stressed or frightened, our brain goes into survival mode – fight or flight – and we are less open to learning. We can learn when stressed… but much of what we learn at that time is how much we want to avoid having that experience again. Children typically don’t want to return to a task that was unpleasant to learn.
When we’re feeling loved, and cared for, and safe, our system floods with oxytocin (the “love hormone”) and our brains have a high level of “neuroplasticity” – we are open, flexible, and primed for learning. And we want to remember the things we’re doing, and repeat them over and over, which reinforces that learning.

13. What activities do kids need to learn?

14. Direct Instruction / “Teaching”
Teacher (or Parent) Led
Add information and skills to database
Builds crystallized intelligence
When a parent, teacher or book “teaches” a child, we are adding information to their database – their crystallized intelligence.
Efficient – you teach it, they learn it, can repeat if back

15. Benefits of Direct Instruction
Some skills just need to be taught
Parent teaches skill, then fades back as the child masters it
Great for specialized skills: gymnastics classes, violin lessons...
Good for academic basics and simple facts
Gymnastics classes, soccer classes, piano lessons, and so on
Parent taught skills – frankly the only way they’ll ever learn to tie a shoe

16. Child decides what to do and how long
Guided Play
Teacher creates an environment full of learning opportunities – “play-based”
Child decides what to do and how long
Teacher/parent is nearby but not interfering
Balance of child-led and teacher-led
Teacher has a plan – knows what kids need to learn and provides opportunities for them to learn it
Moves around the room, asking questions, extending thinking

17. Guided Play: Role of the Teacher/Parent
Set Designer: sets up an “invitation to play”
Stage Manager: Get tools, keep it tidy.
Observer. Reflect excitement.
Ask questions. “What would happen if…”
Mediator: Help resolve conflicts and Interpreter: Help children understand other children
Participant in play: You follow their lead. Don’t try to make the game your own.
Project-based (Reggio Emilia)
Scaffolding: Help move to next level
Set designer: Sets the stage. Creates an “invitation to play” that combines familiar objects and activities (for repetition and mastery) with novel objects to explore and discover.
Stage manager

18. Guided Play: Role of the Teacher/Parent
Set Designer: “invitation to play”
Stage Manager: Get tools, keep it tidy.
Observer. Reflect excitement.
Ask questions. “What would happen if…”
Mediator: Help resolve conflicts and Interpreter: Help children understand other children
Participant in play: You follow their lead. Don’t try to make the game your own.
Project-based (Reggio Emilia)
Scaffolding: Help move to next level
Tell less, ask more: Stephen Gillett sit on hands
Refer to questions posters

19. Ask Questions to Extend Learning

20. Guided Play: Role of the Teacher/Parent
Set designer: “invitation to play”
Stage Manager: Get tools, keep it tidy.
Observer. Reflect excitement.
Ask questions.
Mediator: Help resolve conflicts and Interpreter: Help children understand other children
Participant in play: You follow their lead. Don’t try to make the game your own.
Project-based (Reggio Emilia)
Scaffolding: Help move to next level
Mediator: Help resolve conflicts by offering new materials or suggesting alternatives, and modelling the flexible thinking needed for children to interact with their peers.
Interpreter: Help children understand what is meant by another’s words and actions.
Participant in play: You follow their lead, respect their individual style of play. Don’t try to make the game your own. Simply be one of the kids who is playing!
Reggio Emilia – inquiry-based style. When your child demonstrates interest in a topic, you collect resources related to it: books, videos, tools, resources for dramatic play. The child chooses a project and pursues it. You offer support and suggestions as needed.
Scaffolding: When a child has mastered something and is ready to move to the next level, an adult can help them get there simply by giving a hint, asking a leading question, modelling a skill, or adapting the materials or activities then letting the child continue to play.
Stephen Gillette – sit on his hands
Teacher Tom – play with

21. Guided Play: Role of the Teacher/Parent
Set designer: “invitation to play”
Stage Manager: Get tools, keep it tidy.
Observer. Reflect excitement.
Ask questions.
Mediator: Help resolve conflicts and Interpreter: Help children understand other children
Participant in play: You follow their lead. Don’t try to make the game your own.
Project-based (Reggio Emilia)
Scaffolding: Help move to next level
Scaffolding: When a child has mastered something and is ready to move to the next level, an adult can help them get there simply by giving a hint, asking a leading question, modelling a skill, or adapting the materials or activities then letting the child continue to play.
We do a lot of that here…

22. Free Play Child Led Process, Not Product Creative Spontaneous Fun
Child-Led. Freely chosen. The child is in control. He makes the plan. He decides which activities to do, which toys to play with, what to do with them, and for how long. This self-regulation allows him to “fill his brain” without overloading his brain.
Process, Not Product. Play is done for its own sake, not to accomplish a task. It involves lots of exploring of possibilities, experiments, trial and error, and repetition.
Creative. The child can adapt items, create something new or experience things in a new way.
Spontaneous. It’s flexible and open-ended, and it changes and evolves as play time goes on.
Fun. The player looks happy and engaged. (We learn best when we’re happy!)

24. Learning Benefits of Free Play
Fluid intelligence
Physical competence
Self-direction
Problem-solving
Language skills
Creativity
Conflict resolution skills
Emotional intelligence
Symbolic play
Better memory
Reduced stress
Physical competence. Free play allows a child to practice emerging skills till they are mastered.
Self-direction. The child gets to make decisions, make plans, and see them through. Memory book.
Creativity. Experiments show that children who are taught “the right way” to use a toy will use it in limited ways. Kids who are allowed to freely explore develop many more creative uses.
Problem-solving. When a child creates her own plan for play, she doesn’t foresee challenges that will come up that an adult might see. This offers lots of chances for problem-solving.
Language skills. Play requires asking and answering questions, giving commands and acting on them, and explaining your goals to the person you are playing with.
Conflict resolution skills. There’s lots of negotiation that goes on in cooperative play. Japanese playgrounds
Emotional intelligence. Dramatic play helps children understand emotions, learn how to express emotions, and distinguish between real emotions and “pretend” emotions.
Symbolic play. If a child can use a stick to simulate an ice cream cone, it helps her later understand that numbers on a page represent how many objects they have, and that letters represent sounds, and musical notes on a page indicate where to place her fingers.
Better memory. Kids are motivated to remember things they need to know for a play scenario.
Reduced stress. Play is fun. Children play when they feel safe. We are all more capable of learning new things when we are having fun and feeling safe.

25. Fluid Intelligence, Longer Attention
pedagogical – showed one thing, repeated. Interrupted – showed one thing; Naïve – accidentally finds one function. Baseline – shows it but doesn’t show what it does
Pedalogical repeated what they had learned easily, but played with it for less time than others, and discovered fewer functions

26. Physical Competence
Physical competence. Free play allows a child to practice emerging skills till they are mastered.

27. Problem-Solving and Engineering
Problem-solving. When a child creates her own plan for play, she doesn’t foresee challenges that will come up that an adult might see. This offers lots of chances for problem-solving.

28. Conflict Resolution
Conflict resolution skills. There’s lots of negotiation that goes on in cooperative play. Japanese playgrounds

29. Language and Social Skills
Language skills. Play requires asking and answering questions, giving commands and acting on them, and explaining your goals to the person you are playing with.

30. Creativity and Competence
Creativity. Experiments show that children who are taught “the right way” to use a toy will use it in limited ways. Kids who are allowed to freely explore develop many more creative uses.

32. Rest, Solitude, Boredom Need down time to reinforce synapses
Need solitude (esp. introverts)
Avoid over-stimulation
Boredom can lead to creativity
Rest: Oftentimes, parents and teachers forget an essential component of learning: down time. Kids need a chance to process and incorporate all the information from all their new experiences. For a more extroverted child, they might process while playing with others or by talking to others. They do need lots of sleep to allow their brain connections to build. A more introverted child might need solitude – a chance to be alone for some period of every day to absorb everything.

33. Summary: What do kids need to learn?
Novelty and Repetition
To feel safe and happy
Balance of Direct Instruction, Guided Play, Free Play, and Rest
Hands-on Experiences with all 5 senses engaged