Movement and manipulation, the basics of early stimulation

The first years of a child’s life are determinants for their good physical and psychological developmentas well as for the subsequent formation of intellectual functions and personality.

Considering the neuroplasticity of the brain in the early years of child development, this stage is a unique and irreplaceable moment to stimulate the child in a timely manner. It is possible to offer you a wide range of experiences that will allow you to lay the foundations for future learning.

It is important that this be done in a few critical acquisition periodsbecause within these there is a continuous maturation process that will make the acquisition take place in a more complete and autonomous way.

the brain is dynamicIt depends on genes, but also on development and experience. At the early childhood stage (from 0 to 6 years old), many children have psychomotor, psychodevelopmental, coordination, comprehension, expression, adaptation, etc. needs; For these reasons, early stimulation is helpful in taking advantage of the brain’s neuroplasticity and early detection of potential problems and solutions.

early stimulation

It is proven that the brain learns through the bodyof the reports with the others, reason and emotions.

Through early stimulation, the activity of the nervous system is increased by means of stimuli. The goal is to promote and strengthen synaptic connections so that they reach an optimal level of development in childhood. In other words, early stimulation can take advantage of the learning capacity and adaptability of the child’s brain.

Early stimulation brings novelty and originality in early childhood education, proven and approved by many authors in the field of education.

How to achieve early stimulation?

It is possible to switch to this method constructivist and manipulative, which goes from the abstract to the concrete, combining it with the traditional methodology, based on the rational construction of knowledge.

The student becomes the protagonist of his own learning: he participates, interacts and develops skills, capacities and abilities based on developing concepts.

The teacher becomes a guide who promotes the student’s self-learning and helps him to develop his critical memory so that, through critical thinking, he can build knowledge. As the Spanish neuroscientist Francisco Mora asserts, the brain only learns if there is emotion.

What activities develop early stimulation?

He has checked that physical training in babies and children creates connections between the two hemispheres, promotes the development of laterality, internalization of body schema, spatial orientation, oxygenation of the brain, increases self-esteem , develops motor imagination and motivates the child to overcome new goals.

It has also been experimented with parts, laminated cardboard cards showing various drawings or photographs. Each drawing or photograph can be used to show a vocabulary word or concept. Take advantage of children’s enhanced ability, meet children’s curiosity, develop children’s attention span, memory and intelligence.

Manipulation and psychomotricity

The innovative activities, presented below, develop early stimulation, and rely on the method Doman:

1. Neuromotor Development Program (NDP):

1. Slide: Development of concentration skills and hand-eye coordination (useful for learning to write and read).

2. Crawl: While crawling, the child will estimate distances in space and observe objects at a distance of about 30 cm (focusing distance used for literacy).

3. Welded step: Walk coordinating the right leg with the left arm and vice versa, marking the movement of the arms well.

4. Standing and running: It begins at the cortical level involving the basal ganglia and the cerebellum.

1. Hanging: Build strength while improving core flexibility, balance and stability.

2. Brachiation scale: It develops the strength of the rib cage and increases the oxygenation of the brain.

3. Scale of numbers: On each step of the ladder, stickers with consecutive numbers will be placed so that, as the students go up the steps, they will say the number of the step on which they are stepping.

4. Hand-eye coordination: Two important aspects of fine motor skills are visuomotor coordination and graphomotor coordination.

5. Tracing pliers: It consists of the voluntary control of the index finger and the thumb to hold and manipulate objects with precision.

6. Admission exam (acceleration, roll, rotation and balance): Promotes psychomotricity.

2. Intellectual Development Program (PDI):

• parts. It is all the data that the brain can store through the senses, briefly presented to children, thus capturing their attention. The most popular songs are:

1. Encyclopedic: They increase children’s wisdom, promote their brain growth and neurological maturation, increase their intellectual possibilities and stimulate their curiosity.

2. Mathematical: They help to correctly apply logico-mathematical skills: centering, seriation, ordering, matching, classification and settling.

3. English: It stimulates the child and makes him learn a new language and its pronunciation naturally.

4. While reading: This activity starts from the concrete (teaching the words that mean something concrete) until reaching the abstract (the alphabet).

By working on graphomotricity and literacy at these ages, the student’s brain plasticity and maturational coordination processes are stimulated. By increasing the stimuli, the neural connections or synapses increase: children are more predisposed to learn, and they do so by internalizing knowledge in a playful way.

It’s about taking advantage of the direct relationship between stimulation, brain development and intelligence. Stimulation which, at these ages, consists above all in movement:

“A child who moves is a child who learns.” Gill Connell and Cheryl McCarthy A child who moves is a child who learns.