TOPIC OF THE MONTH-MARCH

PART 1: The rational lesson of German Toddler

Logical Thinking

After being through of the World War I and World War II, Germany has become one of the most advance countries in the world. Other than their famous engineering skill, the contribution of the cultural and art cannot be negligible too, a lot of top professions from different field such as mathematics, linguistic, science, education etc. are come from Germany. In the small town named Bremen, Grimm Brothers have create many well-known fairytales like ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarves’, ‘Sleeping Beauty’, ‘Cinderella’, ‘Red Riding Hood’ etc. to build up the dreams of the kids from all over the world.

Germans are very concern of their culture, education and efficiency, make them won more than 60 Nobel Prizes in science field. Germany is the country for the great mathematician and computer scientist – John von Neumann, and also the pioneer in the engineering and mechanical field.

When we mention about their unique national culture, it always link to their logical thinking training which is essential in their lifestyle. Without realizing, we always use logical thinking to show our wisdom while we are thinking or communicating. Logic is the way for kids to knowing and understanding the world, thus early childhood education in Germany, they have a systematic and unique program to educate their kids.

1st Stage: Build up the right cognition

The basis of cognitive concept is to know and understand the most basic elements of the knowledge which including color, shape, space, quantity, size etc. Sense of sight and hearing are important for infant from 0~2 years old, because their muscle are still underdeveloped, but the learning process is still very crucial in this period. During 0~2 years old, parents can use flash card to stimulate and develop the sight tracing ability, therefore strengthen their observation for future sake. Learning concept from daily life is important, German parents always allow their kids to crawl around no matter at the field, grassland, garden, walkway etc, all of these helps the kids to learn through their own exploring.

2nd Stage: The Basic Cognitive Concept & Hand-on Learning

After getting know the basic cognitive concept, parents need to guide them to analysis, differentiate and understanding through some picture cards. Convert the concepts that happen in daily life into various interesting stories, so that kids able to learn effectively through everyday experiences, at the same time, hand-eye coordination and thinking skill can be developed simultaneously.

Whenever the German kids fell off and cry, their parents won't help them directly and just ask them “What should you do next?”. Therefore the kids will stop crying and start explore and figure out what the next action. It is not difficult to find that in the books for German kids are mostly to motivate them to learning, asking, and explore themselves to solve the problems. Hence, the dejected sense will be reduced when the kids having any difficulty, it also ease the parents and teachers to knowing their learning progress as well. The system of self-solving and self-correction attitude is totally different from our education system which only teach the right or wrong statements or facts without letting the kids to judge by their own.

3rd Stage: The Advance Extension of the Cognitive Concept

As the kids gradually gain their life experience and familiar with the concepts, the learning range should be going narrow and getting deeper to a single topic learning. For example, the learning of the simple things such as food, clothes, family etc can be extended into the study of environment, appliances, facilities. Other than that, to strengthen the memory and hand-on learning skill, the time of learning and difficulty can be increased based on the learning progress. The learning topic can be slowly go into more abstract topic. Through the extension of the concept learning and the wonderfully conversion of daily matter into learning progress, it helps kids to stimulate and enrich their creativity and multiple thinking ability at the same time.

4th Stage: Interaction and Game of Cognitive Concept

For those concepts which the kids difficult to learn during the previous three stages, change it into interesting games to ease them to learn and understand the concepts. With the actual operated toys or material combining with the association concept from the playing cards, kids able to think and making decision on their own, so as to express out their mind too. There sure will have some problems and failure during the learning progress, after a few time of failures, the kids will find out the solution somehow, therefore it gradually smooths the application of logical thinking and problem-solving skill. Eventually, the kids can present their imagination in the logical way and finally become their own creation.

That's how German babies grow in the environment full of learning and training in the fun, interesting and systematic way. Perhaps this cannot consider as “Training” because it is already part of their fun educative lifestyle in German.

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