How Children Learn

How do children learn?

This is a topic of debate among people during casual conversation.  Educators even differ in their beliefs.  To really know how children learn there MUST be some research available, right?  There is, but it is often ignored.  Instead of pointing out the findings in psychology, brain research, motivation, and education, I challenge you to simply stop for a moment and reflect on these questions:

• How did your child learn to sit up?
• How did your child learn to cry to get attention or have their needs met?
• Who taught your child to babble and make sounds?

At first, people often answer, "I did!" to these questions.  But... did you?  Would a baby start to babble on its own?  Studies in some of the worst orphanages prove that even babies with little to no human interaction start to make sounds.  

Don't babies naturally try to roll over and move around?  Eventually, babies lift up their heads and use neck muscles to look around.  They want to do what they see us do so they start to pull themselves up using furniture.  They mimic sounds and facial expressions we make.  They learn early on that if they make sounds, we respond.  Crying gets them attention and it's how they tell us they are bored, lonely, scared, tired, hungry, or wet.  If we respond to those cries they learn to trust that their needs will be met.  This is how attachment is formed and relationships develop.

In reality, no one teaches children how to do these tasks.  They are natural, inquisitive problem solvers.  If a child wants something they can get very creative in obtaining it.  For example, one day I was at my mom's with my 3 children.  The youngest at the time was one and a half.  He wanted to go outside.  I know this because we had just come inside and yet he kept walking over to the front door and pointing to the door handle.  My mom told him, "We can't go outside right now, Wes.", but that didn't please him.  Soon, he found a child sized chair and pushed it over to the door, climbed up, and attempted to open the door himself while standing on the chair.  What does this tell us?

1. Wes knew he needed to use the door handle to open the door to get outside.
2. He knew that he couldn't reach the door handle (so he's really thinking here!)
3. He knew where to get a chair, how to move it, and pushed it over to the door. (This is critical thinking and problem solving!)
4. He was able to climb up onto the chair to reach for the door handle (problem solving again).  
5. If we would have allowed him to continue he would have learned that stepping off the chair would cause him to fall (discovery of cause and effect, gravity).

No one taught him how to do this so why did he?  

It comes down to experiences that Wes had in the past.  I believe, in fact, this experience in particular:

One day Nolan (age 4) was making a toilet paper tower.  When he couldn't reach the top, he climbed onto the table.  What did I do?  Take photos.  Soon, Wes came over and climbed up too discovering some toys he just needed on the table.  

Every time we experience something we learn from it.  You can tell a child something is hot, for example, but they don't know what "hot" is until they've touched or felt something hot.  Once they have that hot experience the brian now knows what the word "hot" means.  They connect that word to their past experiences.  This is how children learn.  

The MORE EXPERIENCES children have, the more they learn.  When a child experiences something they are using all their senses to gain information.  When a child interacts with a sprinkler, for example, they learn how the water flows out of the sprinkler, how much they can hold in a container, the temperature, smell, sound, and taste of the water.  

  

Experiences are so important.  Children with more experiences have more background knowledge in their brains about those things they experienced.  Later on, when they are reading a book or hearing a story about a sprinkler, for example, they connect that prior experience to what they read or heard.  Now, it makes sense!

If I asked you to picture a Smidgeit you would probably struggle, right?  

What if I asked you to draw or tell me about a Smidgeit?  Could you do it?  No, and you would probably get frustrated.  You may shut down, get annoyed, or just guess.  You don't know what a Smidgeit is.  I could explain it to you, but you would only know what I told you.  

Could you tell me about a car steering wheel, though?  

How do you use it? What does it look like? What does it feel like?  That would be a lot easier for you to explain because you have prior knowledge that you connect with steering wheels. You're not only thinking of your own, but every steering wheel you've seen.  You know that they come in different sizes, materials, etc.  You know a LOT about steering wheels!  

It's not that the brain ONLY learns from experiences, but that it is so much easier to really understand something if experiences are connected to it.  It becomes meaningful.

If children learn from experiences, why do we put them in a classroom at desks to listen to a teacher tell them stuff they need to know rather than giving them actual experiences?   Not all teachers only lecture.  Some incorporate amazing hands-on activities.  With high teacher to student ratios, large class, and budget cuts for needed materials, the majority of our classrooms are not currently set up to accommodate learning through experiences.  Sadly, our educational system is very outdated.  Countries all around the world have updated their schools, but not the U.S.  Instead, we seem to be going backwards.  Law makers create more accountability for teachers, raise standards and increase testing instead of simply allowing teachers to do what they know how to do.  Teachers cannot meet each child where they are at with 30 in a classroom.  They cannot change the curriculum as it is often mandated.  Arts, physical education, sports, and field trips are cut when budgets suffer.  For this and many reasons, children are struggling in school.  More and more learning disabilities and behavior problems are being recorded.  Could it be they way we are teaching?  Could it be the school environment?  

Why have we gotten so far away from simply following and engaging children's natural curiosity to learn?

This is why our family owned and operated preschool has implemented a teaching approach from Italy.  

In Reggio-Emilia, Italy children are valued and seen as being full of knowledge and ability.  In fact, they believe that teachers often get in the way of the natural curiosity and learning that occurs when children engage in experiences.  For that reason, the teachers in Reggio-Emilia schools observe and learn alongside the children.  They are facilitators of learning rather than the "giver of the information".  There are so many parts of the Reggio-Emilia approach, but the starting point is self-directed learning.

From 3 to 5 years of age, children at my Reggio-inspired preschool learn through experiences.   And they have SO MANY!  They engage with light tables, study reflection and shadow, explore building materials with all types of blocks, explore the outdoor classroom, participate in gymnastics and yoga, sing songs, play games, and explore so many art materials like paint, clay, collage, wire, marker, oil pastels and more!  They learn to problem solve by working with peers to figure out why the squirrels are eating all the bird seed we put in the feeders.  

 

It's truly an amazing place to teach and learn.  The classrooms are filled with child sized materials that lack the "little kid look" of red, blue, and yellow plastic.  Instead, they explore a beautiful environment in which everything was put in for a reason.  Each inch of the classroom is specially designed for a purpose.  The room is set up to provoke thinking, creativity, communication, problem solving, discovery, and wonder.   There's nothing in the room that should not be touched.  

After 1, 2, or sometimes 3 years in my classroom, children leave us and go to kindergarten.  Year after year, parents tell me how the love of learning has been sucked out of their children once they reach the end of 1st grade and sometimes even kindergarten.  It breaks my heart.  Many families have looked for progressive schools or private schools with project-based curriculums, but these are expensive and often far from their homes.   

Each year more families ask, "Are there any schools that teach like you do?".  Sadly, I have to name only a few.  Their tuitions are similar to that of a college and they are not near our Cleveland, Ohio superb.  Then, they ask, 

"Should I homeschool?"   

And that is the question we've heard more and more.  Interestingly enough, homeschooling has many approaches and curriculums, but the "unschooling" definition is very similar to Reggio-inspired learning.  That is what sparked the idea to create a blog dedicated to Reggio-inspired learning at home.  What's so great about this is that parents are already trained to do it!  Parents are the child's first teacher.  So much of what a child knows comes from their experiences at home.  Just as you naturally begin to babble back and forth with a baby, you were made to teach your child using this approach!

Yes, there is some theoretical information that will aid you in connecting the learning that is happening and making it visible in a portfolio, but we'll get to that.  For now, be confident that you CAN homeschool or unschool with a Reggio-Emilia Approach!  The only requirement is that you realize that learning occurs naturally.  Children are completely capable of creating their own curriculum and learning.  You are there to facilitate that learning.  You will do this by setting up experiences (visits to museums, zoos, historical landmarks, etc.) and uncovering the learning that occurs everyday through everyday tasks (like cooking, laundry, cleaning, caring for others, working outside on the lawn, etc.).  

When children are given the freedom to control their own learning, AMAZING things happen!  Are you ready for your child to LOVE learning again?