Sensory Learning in your backyard! :)

This morning with our homemade touch table.  A radio flyer wagon filled with mud, water, sticks, and bath toys.
See activity at bottom of page.

In early childhood development, we time and time again visit the subject of sensory learning and how creating a learning environment that plays to the senses really enhances a child's learning.  They retain more information through their senses than they do through strict direct instruction.

There are multiple articles to reference this theory and I will list them below........... but also your own senses should tell you that it works for you too! Don't you wish employers spent time creating environments for workers the same way we work to create environments for children to learn?  What a life it would be!

Here is the Activity:

You want to make the start of a day big adventure.  Tell your child you are going to listen to some music and play outside.  Talk through what you are playing for them (what kind of music, jazz, rock and roll, classical etc.) and go to the outdoors!  Here is an opportunity to do Music appreciation and science all together.  Having a background in Music, this was an exciting idea for me.  This morning with my son, I told him "We are going to listen to some music, are you ready?" I put in Mozart's Die Zauberflöte.  Research shows that Mozart is preferred by the listener because the chord progressions are predictable to the brain, however the only studies to link enrichment learning to classical music and Mozart, have shown a temporary jump in spatial reasoning tests. (See link below) If this is the case, I would think it would be perfect for outdoor sensory learning.  I feel another study coming on.

We went into the yard and filled watering cans to water the Garden, we raked, and we filled his wagon with water to use as an exploration table.  I let him choose what he wanted to put in the wagon.  He chose a couple of plastic toys and some natural world too.  He got some dirt, and some sticks and grass.  Our world is so full of plastic, that it seems a natural comparison for a child to make these days.  He stuck his hands in the muddy water and floated his plastic toys while listening to The entire Opera (which is a really long time).  He also detoured and found a caterpillar in the garden.  This was a beautiful green caterpillar looking for a place to cocoon.  We talked about the Little Einstein's video he has where the caterpillars migrate to Mexico.  Any connections to prior learning you can make are preferable and will enhance their experience.  A bee flew by and was studying the plants, so we talked about how he was looking for flowers to pollinate.

Here are some links:

http://www.uwosh.edu/departments/psychology/rauscher/Mozart%20and%20Mind.pdf


http://www.earlychildhoodnews.com/earlychildhood/article_view.aspx?ArticleID=227

http://shamslab.psych.ucla.edu/publications/tics2008-reprint.pdf

Professional development:

online course........   www.ascd.org/pdi/pd.html

Book..........  Multiple Intelligences, By Thomas Armstrong (I read the Second Edition)