How To Unleash Your Child's Creative Potential During Covid-19 | Sakshi Sharma

The second wave of pandemic has once again convinced us all to our homes. Once again everything has shifted online. 

Children are creative geniuses by nature. The kids go to school where the creativity of children get exposed through play and other ci-curricular activities. But we have all seen how pandemic has killed children's creativity. The creativity in early childhood gets confined in the online world. However, we need to encourage creativity in children. We need to adopt method to develop creativity in kids. Sure, the pandemic kills creativity of children. But we can prevent that. 

Ezyschooling has partnered with unlu and Arwachin Public School to stress on creativity in children, with a panel of esteemed experts. Their session on 'How to Unleash your child's Creative Potential during Covid-19' is now available on YouTube for viewing.

Let’s break down what reading is on a very basic level… Your eyes must follow a line of text taking in the letters of each word in the right order, you automatically recognize a word, and then the meaning and comprehension of the phrase is stored away in the thinking brain.

Look at that first action: ‘eyes must follow a line of text.’ That’s actually a fine motor skill. Your cerebellum is coordinating your eye muscles to fluidly move across the page. There is a firm connection in the neuroscience world between early motor skill development and school achievement.

This is a major reason why.

If a child hasn’t developed the motor skill of eye tracking, what happens to their reading process? Just like when riding a bike, the movement shifts to the thinking brain.

The eyes cannot smoothly follow the line, so they’re bouncing up and down and back and forth. Often children with this challenge use their finger or a ruler in their attempt to enable their eyes to follow the words. The thinking brain then has to put in the effort to disentangle the words. Finally, once the child has interpreted the word, it must be stored in the thinking brain – and then the process starts again with the next word. So by the time the child reaches the end of the sentence, the brain is so exhausted, the words at the start of the sentence have been lost so that comprehension goes out the window.

That’s because every bit of the activity had to be accomplished by the thinking brain.

If the cerebellum hasn’t created hard wired skills to relieve the thinking brain, your child is never going to enjoy reading and will be worn out long before their classmates.

Unlocking Your Child’s Potential
At this point, you’re probably thinking “This is all well and good, but how can I help my child?” The reason that it seems like your child’s difficulties aren’t being addressed in the classroom is not from lack of trying.

Despite many professionals urging universities to bring neuroscience into teacher education, we haven’t quite made it there. That means your child’s teachers aren’t given the resources they need to address it.

In primary education, and at home as well, we try to address reading problems like throwing a child into a pool and hoping they learn how to swim. That’s not how you teach a child.

Swim instructors start with basics, like floating and gliding. Then they address kicking and arm strokes. Once they’ve mastered the mechanics, swimming can become muscle memory. By starting small, you aren’t stressing the child, causing them to hate the water.

Unfortunately, modern education uses the first method. We might give them metaphorical floats like a ruler to draw their eyes to the line, but that doesn’t cut it for many students.

If an older child was struggling to swim, you wouldn’t have them swim laps. You take them back to the basics. If an older child is struggling to read, you shouldn’t shove a book in their face and force them to struggle. You need to go back to the basics, which starts in the cerebellum.

In essence, children are worn out from treading water. They get so exhausted from trying to battle with their brain that reading becomes stressful. They can’t comprehend, they can’t concentrate, and they can’t keep up with their peers.