Thursday, December 11, 2008

Fertile Minds-Extra credit

What's going on in this article?
New brain research has shown that brain activity starts a lot earlier in an embryo than previous though. Neuron activity is taking place at an amazing rate of speed. Children's brains are also more active at a young age, so it's important to continuously teach children in their early years, because they're more able to adapt to new situations and environments. No wonder it's so easy for little kids to learn a language at first.
So what?
Since the first 3 years are the fastest for rapid brain growth, it's important for parents to feed childrens' brains with good experiences. Children can often experience trauma due to how they were treated in those first three years of mortality. It's also important to stimulate the brain in a variety of activities: playing with children, as well as singing and talking to them. It's also important for these children to play. The whole experiment with the labrats was interesting, because the labrats who had the toys in their cages were more likely to have better brain activity. Daycares aren't the best way to raise kids, because it takes them away from an environment that i s critical to them learning with their parents.
Now what?
In the very end of the article it talks about how children should learn foreign languages when they're younger. Brain activity at a young age helps children learn something even advances as a foreign language. The brain is growing at such a fast rate that the best time for foreign language learning would take place at the age of six. That's incredible!

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