Ellen Galinsky, in her book "Developing Mind", identified the skill of "making connections" as one of the 7 basic life skills that every child should have in the 21st century, as well as classifying information and understanding how one thing represents or symbolizes another. defines it as a process that includes
The skill of making connections includes:
-Understanding what is the same or similar
-Understanding what is different
- understanding how they are connected
-By inhibiting the automatic response, thinking reflectively and exploring possible connections. The child expands his knowledge and abilities by establishing connections between the knowledge and representations he has acquired since birth. Many competencies and skills in later ages depend on the child's ability to establish creative connections between representations such as number, space, time, and multiplicity that he begins to develop. In this sense, making connections requires activating the executive functions of the brain and thinking creatively about what is already known and facts, rather than reacting automatically. In fact, all parents want their children to grow up to be happy adults who fulfill their potential. You can lay strong foundations by supporting the development of the "connection" skill in children.
How Do You Support Connection Skills in Children?
"Babies are deeply driven and passionate in their understanding of the world and the people around them. The essence of a baby is to connect to the world."
-Karen Wynn, Yale University
1. Provide children with many opportunities to see connections in fun and playful ways. When you organize the learning processes according to the child's interests and enthusiasms, learning occurs at the deepest level. For this reason, you can start by adding objects and themes that the child is interested in into your daily routines. In her book, Ellen Galinsky writes that because her child was interested in superheroes, they introduced him to the knights of the past and thus enabled him to experience a process in which he thought about them and played games.
2. Accept that it's okay to make mistakes and even part of learning. Making mistakes is a normal and necessary part of the learning process. We reach the right thing by trying and making mistakes. Accepting that it is perfectly normal to make mistakes will encourage you to treat your child's mistakes with compassion, without judgment. Honoring and celebrating the effort and effort of a child who tries to find the truth by making mistakes gives the child the courage not to lose his love of learning and to continue trying. Just like you encourage a child trying to take his first steps and show your baby that you are happy with his effort with the light reflecting from your eyes and your smiling face.
3. Develop an object perception. Provide lots of experience with how things work. Allow the child to work on objects, experiment, and witness the results by manipulating these objects. This could be touching the soil, shaping the soil and leaving it in the sun to see if it will dry out and turn into a clay bowl, or it could be putting various objects in a bucket full of water and letting them take them out and observing the objects sinking into the water or floating on the water. The key
point is, do not forget to follow the child's interests and orientations. Because the deepest learning is the learning built on the child's interests and passions.
4. Develop children's perception of objects, space and numbers by giving them many opportunities to explore and pretend play. Develop their interest by participating as a "guide" rather than as a "boss". It is extremely important for parents to participate in the child's play. But not like a boss, but like a guide with foresight and wisdom. It is possible to support the child by following his interests and directions and by talking about the topics the child directs. Thus, while playing, your child will develop the ability to make connections between different objects and representations, in line with their own orientation and under your voluntary guidance.
5. Use words to describe the place.
Using simple spatial concepts is extremely useful when playing with young children. Thus, during games played in the space, the child both experiences the space and learns to transform his experiences of the space into words. In You will lay the foundations for the ability to use complex concepts and descriptive language. An example of this is using spatial concepts according to the direction of the movement while dragging a small child back and forth inside a cardboard.
6. Play games that involve children finding their way around places.
Spatial perception is very important in terms of the ability to establish connections between different concepts and features. For this reason, you can support this skill by playing games that will support the perception of space. As one of the most well-known games, hide and seek can be a game you can frequently use to support the perception of space. In addition, you can add space sketching games, treasure hunting themed games where you hide objects and try to find them with a map, to your daily game repertoire to improve the perception of space.
7. Talk about quantities in many different ways.
We can explain this as using the language of mathematics in daily life. Concepts that indicate quantity and quantity, and the concrete things that accompany these Concepts, develop the child's mathematical perception and support the ability to "make connections". When you talk about three cookies, your three fingers open means supporting his mathematical perception in a versatile way. Rather than telling a young child "We will come again in 3 days", it is much more developmentally appropriate and appropriate to say "We will come again in 3 days. In other words, after the sun rises 3 times, after we sleep for 3 more nights, we will come here again" and to keep 3 fingers open during this time. It is self-explanatory. He can even make it more concrete after using concrete, observable expressions to understand the amount; You can stick a sun symbol on a designated board every morning, and when there are 3 suns, saying that 3 days are completed and you can go now will greatly support the child's perception of quantity.
8. Assign family chores that involve counting.
There are many things that can be done within the family and in daily routines to improve number perception. Such as how many people will be at dinner, how many plates will be placed on the table, and giving the task of putting 2 cans of milk in the car to be purchased while shopping.
9. Help new students by giving feedback on children's thoughts Support them to make connections.
Verbalizing and putting into words about the experienced situations enables the child to better understand what is happening and to establish connections between different objects and concepts. For example, suppose you are playing a game where you have to group cards by shape and color. Let's assume that in this game you want the child to classify sometimes by color and sometimes by shape, in a way that requires cognitive flexibility. In this game that supports classification skills, when you give the game instructions to the child, giving feedback such as "There is a yellow flower on this card. If we are playing a color game, this card will be with the yellow car. But if we are playing a shape game, this card will be with the red flower." It helps you understand better.
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