Imaginative Play - A Vital Tool for Optimum Child Brain Development

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Hi,
Play and related activities are the sole properties of young children and they are mandatory part of the childhood as well. Play and related activities help your children by giving a wonderful opportunity to play with the surrounding world. While the external world is an important tool in developing your children's personality parameters, the emotional world inside him or her can play a critical role in creating an emotionally stable personality.

With imaginative play, you can help your children develop a number of important positive characters like manipulative skills, social skills, emotional skills, sharing skills, self-confidence and feeling of security and language and communication skills. Imaginative or pretend play can stimulate basic sensory perception, create wonderful opportunities for thoughtful exploration and detailed creative thinking. It also assists your children enhance special skills for maximum intellectual and emotional development. Optimum brain development is possible when you allow your children to play on their own and with their own objects and tools.

Playtime is fun time! It is thrilling as well! Children create their own world by playing with their friends. Imaginative play is an excellent form of activity that can place your child on a very high pedestal of physical and mental development. I hope you have a great week ahead. Take care!

Thought for today:
"The best way to predict your future is to create it." - Anonymous

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Imaginative Play - A Vital Tool for Optimum Child Brain Development
Imaginative or pretend play is an important part of your child's life. Imaginative play will always go hand in hand with your child's mental and physical development. Parents must help their children develop their personality by including a number of playtime activities especially designed for the purpose.

Q1: My son took the WPPSI-III at age 4. He scored:

Composites/composite score/qualitative range/percentile rank:

Verbal/129/superior/97
Performance/129/superior/97
processing speed/128/superior/97
Full/132/very superior/98
General language/135/very superior/99

all the other subtests indicated consistently strong skills in all areas.... Is he missing any opportunities for his development? Would further testing be helpful? Are there any other programs he would benefit from?

A: It appears that your son is already getting quite a lot of what is offered to nurture his gifts. Unfortunately, gifted children are a diverse group. Some may be occupied with what is offered out there, but most would need to satisfy their cognitive urges. In your son's case, since he is the one to suggest for more opportunities, it would be a waste if it is not given. Gifted children learn beyond their years, so when they enter school, it's easy for them to become bored and unmotivated by what their classmates are learning ... Continue to read Dr. Sandhu's answer on Further Enrichment for a Gifted Child here.

Q2: My daughters' CCAT Results (grade 4) were verbal 92 Percentile ; Quantitative 98 percentile ; and non verbal 91 percentile. Her WISC-IV results were:

Verbal Comprehension 79th percentile
Perceptual Reasoning 68th percentile
and GAI 75th percentile.

Concerns: The day she was administered the WISC-IV she was under a double ear infection (taking antibiotics) and had a low grade fever...I simply cannot reconcile the vastly different results from CCAT to WISC-IV results taken within 5 months of each other without taking the condition of my daughter at the time into consideration. What are other reasons for such differing results?

A: It does sound quite strange that the difference gap is rather large for both the test within such a short time frame. Briefly, The CCAT (Canadian Cognitive Abilities Test) is designed to determine a child's aptitude for learning. In short term, the result may be seen as predicting the student's general achievement in school. The CCAT tests the student's ability to learn and indicates his or her IQ; however, it should not be seen as a test of achieved learning or "schooling knowledge." ... Continue to read Dr. Sandhu's answer on Vast Difference in Intelligence Test Scores here.

Play = Learning: How Play Motivates and Enhances Children's Cognitive and Social-Emotional Growth
By Dorothy G. Singer, Roberta Michnick Golinkoff and Kathy Hirsh-Pasek

Play is under attack, argue the child development and learning experts behind this informative anthology. It is a victim of today's trend to focus on a narrow set of cognitive skills, a downed bystander of the Bush administration's No Child Left Behind Act. What has been neglected in this rush to reinvent education, these authors say, is the huge body of research buttressing the relation between types of play, a wide range of learning and school preparedness.

Editors Dorothy G. Singer, Roberta Michnick Golinkoff and Kathy Hirsh-Pasek lament a regression to 19th-century learning approaches, like memorization, in an era with "an emerging creative class that values conceptual knowledge and original thinking." Children must know facts, but it is ironic that teachers now emphasize rote learning at a time when information constantly changes.

A Child's Work: The Importance of Fantasy Play
By Vivian Gussin Paley

"This irresistible book is Vivian Gussin Paley at her very best.... Paley's defense of fantasy play is fuelled by urgency and a passionate interest in children and everything they do.... [A Child's Work also includes] story after powerful story from Paley's magnificent anthology of the imagination, all collected from 'natural born storytellers who create their own dramatic literature.'

The case she makes is convincing because, in generous moves of self-analysis, she shows us her own learning, her own coming to understand." - Mary Jane Drummond, Times Education Supplement; "America's children have in Vivian Gussin Paley an extraordinarily knowing and thoughtful observer - indeed, a resourceful teacher who has so much to tell us about how our country's young people live, learn, grow, in mind, heart and spirit.

Prenatal Learning 'What Is It and When Does It Begin
Health News Digest Apr 26, 2009

Educators and health professionals alike have long stressed the importance of cognitive development for children ages zero to three. While this period of development is undeniably crucial, it is important to note that a baby's brain actually begins to form cells during the third week of pregnancy - a time when the brain is also open to stimulation and learning and a time when such an enriched environment is absolutely necessary in every regard.

Learning with music and movement
Grand Heaven Tribune Apr 18, 2009

While children are busy skipping or hopping to the beat of their favorite nursery rhyme or song, they may not realize that their brain waves are also busy moving.

The dish on fish and mercury: How healthy is your catch?
CNN Apr 20, 2009

Every week, Jackie Kaminer of Roswell, Georgia, buys fish for dinner at the local market. Although she knows it's full of nutrients -- including good-for-your-heart omega-3 fatty acids -- she's careful of the types of fish she brings home.

Successful Childhood Learning Starts With Reading Aloud
CookDojo Apr 24, 2009

Popular theory in the world of education has long been that a young child is an empty slate, just waiting to have information poured into them. That theory has promoted the idea that learning by rote will make a child smarter, and thus more likely to succeed. But studies of the last fifteen years or so have turned such thinking on its ear?

Young children can tell difference between 1, 2, 3
Canada Apr 24, 2009

Researchers of infant cognition have discovered that very young children can tell the difference between quantities of one, two and three. Recent studies of brain activity show that at four to five months, babies can detect arithmetic errors such as 1+1=3, and can perform the equivalent of 2-1=1.

Scholar Urges Teaching Kids the Benefit of Doubt
UT Dallas Apr 21, 2009

Children are bombarded with more information than ever before, but parents can help them cope by raising them to think with a healthy dose of skepticism. According to Dr. Candice M. Mills, developmental psychologist in the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, it is important that children “know when to doubt.

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