Creativity

Everything I needed to know about learning, I learned in kindergarten.

My twin boys are in kindergarten this year –a big milestone for the whole family. As a student of learning, it has been interesting for me to observe the similarities in elementary and adult learning methods.

I have been impressed with the integration of curriculum across all experiences. For example in October, in keeping with a Halloween theme, their teachers introduced curriculum around skeletons. The kids learned about foods to keep their bones strong by eating yogurt, cheese and other high calcium snacks and they cut out pictures of individual bones and glued them together to create skeletons. Great stuff, but I was amazed to find out that in music class (yes… in a public school!) they were singing “the leg bone’s connected to the knee bone, the knee bone’s connected to the thigh bone, the thigh bone’s connected to the hip bone…” remember that one? That week the librarian read them a story about skeletons and in gym class they were reminded that exercise strengthens their bones. By the end of the week they knew an awful lot about the insides of their bodies and were gleefully telling me all about it. They had participated in brain based learning and made their mom proud.

Here is a training tip for you: Think about one of your earliest memories. Can you see it in your mind? What does it feel like? Now, why do you remember this particular experience and not almost everything else that has happened since then? Did this event have a strongly emotional component; was it something that happened with great frequency? Emotional impact and repetition are two techniques for transferring short-term memories to long-term memories. That is one of the ways IdeaLearning Group works to create custom and complete learning experiences that will positively impact your business.