Thank you teachers ……. Innovate for better future

Teacher’s Day is celebrated with great enthusiasm in many parts of the world. The day is dedicated to teachers, who play an important role in the life of their students. Teachers act as the guide for life, show path towards success and enrich the personality of their students by teaching ethical and academic knowledge. They bring out the natural talents of their students and sharpen it in order to bring out the best results. Teacher’s Day is a tribute to the hard work & devotion of the teachers, to educate a child.

Dr.Radhakrishnan believed that “Teachers should be the best minds in the country.” On this day we gratefully remember the great educationist apart from honouring all the teachers who have made our lives much more knowledgeable and fulfilled.

Quality education is the only way towards a well-developed country. Teachers, trainers, mentors, coaches play a vital role in the development of a country at large. Just like any industry uses innovation and creativity as weapons to fight   the competition, educationalists also need to come out from the age long process and try to implement new and innovative teaching techniques.

The main factor which needs attention is methodology of teaching. In today’s world, we have innumerable attractions for children. The educationalists should be able to make a class room even better & interesting.

“If you want to think one year ahead, Plant Rice;

 If you want to think ten years ahead, Plant Trees;

If you want to think hundred years ahead, GIVE EDUCATION TO PEOPLE.”

Importance of Appreciation

The word “appreciation” means really seeing something for what it is- an awareness of how special, how lucky, how unique, how blessed, how big, wonderful or awesome something is. Appreciation is a recognition not based on comparison, but based on the intrinsic value, character or immensity of a thing or state itself.

Teaching your child to appreciate starts at birth with your loving regard toward him or her and continues throughout the life of your relationship. As they observe the way you view and deal with people, things, and situations, they will no doubt learn to appreciate also.

v     Gratitude is one form of appreciation that is easier to express. Thankfulness is part of our religious and cultural heritage and the antidote to selfishness and complaining. It can come in the form of praise, recognition or humility.

v     Another form of appreciation is respect toward someone or something valued. In relationships this translates as care, concern, fair treatment and courtesy.

v     Nature is a major doorway to appreciation. The unarguable beauty and power encountered in natural places inspires a young child’s appreciation. The sound of a bird in the tree overhead, the rustling grass as the wind passes by, a butterfly lighting briefly on a blossom- all are breathlessly beautiful and awe-inspiring! Take frequent forays into wild places. Let your child experience the wonders of nature through their senses. Walk through well-tended gardens and notice the colors, shapes and smells you encounter. They will see your obvious pleasure and join you in your appreciation. Share what you’ve experienced later by reviewing the experience.

v     Care is an important aspect of appreciation. Help your child take care of their things. Teach them to respect their belongings and the property of others. Demonstrate an attitude of thankfulness for what you have and for your life together. Prayer, celebrations and shared reflection are simple ways to express your gratitude.

v     Affection is a powerful way to express appreciation. Hugs, kisses and loving words show your child how much you value him and others. Simple thank-yous given often and sincerely introduce your child to the graciousness of appreciation. There is no more powerful teacher than your own example!

Main points to address:

 

•Being close to nature brings out appreciative feelings, as this activates the heart. This is accomplished through the senses.

•Teach your child how to care for and respect their belongings.

•Show thankfulness with prayer, celebrations and simple reflection.

•Hugs, kisses and loving words are powerful expressions of appreciation. Use them often along with sincere thank-yous.

 

4 Things You Can Do To Improve Infant Brain Development

 1. Talk to your baby.

Language skills are vital to your baby's ability to learn and think. Obviously, these skills also have a significant impact on overall educational experience. Many studies have found that children who are good listeners are normally good readers. And children who are slow to speak are often slow to read.

But, only live language helps children develop these language skills. Stated differently, television will not develop the same skills. This is because babies relate what happens around them to the language they hear. In short, your baby learns faster and better if you talk directly to him/her.

A few everyday things you can do to make talking to your baby easier:

• Tell your baby what you are doing when performing ordinary household chores
• Use proper words to describe the objects around you, whether you're in the house or even taking your child shopping
• Use simple words and sentences and then gradually introduce more descriptive words

2. Often read to your baby.

Some scientists see reading as a more structured form of talking to your child. Obviously, since your baby learns faster and better by relating words to pictures, it is vital to use picture books or magazines when reading.

Here are a few useful guidelines:

• Point to the pictures, look at your child and describe what you see
• Also say and describe the words on everyday objects such as cereal boxes, stores and household equipment
• Describe the activities in your everyday routine, regardless of what you do

3. Playing with educational toys.

Educational toys are nowadays designed to encourage infant intellectual development through a range of ways. Activity centers, rattles, mobiles, textured and soft toys are all great for starting stimulation, learning and fun.

We suggest very specific toys to encourage and stimulate certain development areas.

A few guidelines for getting the most from educational toys:

• Describe the toy to your baby while you're holding it in front of him. Give to him to touch and further explore
• Choose toys with bright, bold colors for visual stimulation
• Choose toy types which are useful and can still be enjoyed even if part of it is lost
• Some of the best value for money toys you will ever buy is one which can be grown, added to or expanded... like wooden blocks or construction toys
• Give 3-5 toys at a time. Exchange them for others as soon as you notice he becomes bored

4. Listen to music.

  Music is another powerful way to stimulate and encourage hearing skills and other more subtle infant intellectual developments. Chimes, tunes and sounds are often included in baby toys for this very reason. Of course, you can also pick from your own music collection. But there are also many tapes and CD's on the market which encourage early learning. Or try out one of the traditional children's song tapes.  But there is one caveat though... do not play the music too loudly.

Brain improvement can be done through a variety of skills.

To help you succeed in your quest to effectively sharpen your mental skills consider the following ideas:

1. Keep Your Body In Shape





Having a health body helps the brain function at it's top potential. This is one of the most important things you can do to help your mind. The energy your brain needs comes from your body. Making your body weak through factors like stress, lack of sleep and bad eating habits, not only slow your body down but it also impedes the functions of your mind.

So it is important before you begin mental exercises that you get your body tuned up and running effectively.

Try to stay away from stress, eat healthy and get enough rest each night. This will help to maximize your potential.

2. Get Your Mind Working

Get your mind stimulate buy engaging in topics that interest you. Visualizing your new ideas helps engage your mind fully and will hold your attention longer. Try reading a new book or try a crossword puzzle.

3. Research Things You Are Interested In

Thought affirmations are very effective. You can make your self feel more intelligent by believing that you are more intelligent. Use positive reinforcement to help with this.

Taking positive action is even more helpful. You can begin by researching topics that interest you therefore expanding your horizons. So dive in and become more creative instead of just thinking that you are creative.

4. Try Writing about Things

Writing is a very good way to learn to increase your ability to remember things. You can also learn a great deal of new information. It makes your brain learn to clarify and bring ideas together in a coherent manner.

To give your brain a good boost you can try jotting down some notes, keeping a diary, writing daily journal entries, or try dabbling with some poetry. Not only will you become more analytical you will also become more creative.

5. Listen to Classic Music

According to Studies listening to the right type of music will allow your brain to process information better and become more receptive to that information. Listening to classical music composed by Mozart or Beethoven is highly recommended.

6. Aromatherapy can help

Using aromatherapy, as many people claim, makes your mind relax allowing it to be more receptive to facts and ideas. One herb that particularly helps the brain is rosemary. Studies show your brain function actually increases with this herb.

the top five milestones in vision development of an infant

Infants are born with a complete visual system, but must learn how to see. A child's vision will develop throughout the first year of life. Your child's vision development will be monitored at each well-baby appointment, assuring important milestones are met. Below are the top five milestones in vision development.

1. Focusing ability

Most infants can focus accurately by two to three months of age. The ability to focus requires special eye muscles to change the shape of the lens in order to form clear images. Before two months of age, an infant is capable of focusing objects both near and far, but not very well. It takes time for the eye muscles to learn how to avoid focusing "too close" or "too far away" from near or far objects.

2. Eye Coordination and Tracking

A baby usually develops the ability to track and follow a slow-moving object by three months of age. Before this time, an infant will follow large, slow-moving objects with jerky motions. A three-month-old can usually track an object quite smoothly. A baby should begin to follow moving objects with the eyes and reach for things at around four months of age.

3. Depth Perception

Depth perception is the ability to judge objects that are nearer or farther than other objects. Depth perception is not present at birth. It is not until the third to fifth month that the eyes are capable of working together to form a three-dimensional view of the world.

4. Seeing color

An infant's color vision is not as sensitive as an adult's. It is hard to tell if babies can distinguish colors because their eyes might be attracted by the brightness, the darkness, or the contrast of an object against its surroundings, and not by the color alone. By two to six weeks of age, however, a baby can distinguish two highly contrasted colors, such as black and white.

5. Object and face recognition

An infant is born with the ability to see facial features at arm's length, but is attracted instead to high-contrast borders of objects. For example, a baby will gaze at the edge of a face or the hairline when looking at a human face. By two to three months of age, a baby will begin to notice facial features, such as the nose and mouth. By three to five months, most babies can differentiate between mother's face and a stranger's face.

Are Movie theatre for infants ???

Any responsible parent would not bring their baby to the movie theatre. Being a parent to a new- born means some sacrifices have to be made and going to a movie theatre should not be considered till the baby is big enough to understand the purpose of sitting in a movie theatre. Being a responsible parent means putting the safety and well being of the baby above everything else and going to the movie theatre should be put on hold for 4-5 years.

There are no special arrangements in most movie theatres for babies. Parents either hold their babies or keep them in push chairs (Provided there is space).It would be foolish to assume that the baby will sleep though the movie. On the contrary the loud noise from the speakers and the light from the movie screen can scare the baby. Parents won't be able to pay attention to the baby, as they would be watching the movie. Inside the dark theatre they will only notice the baby when it starts to cry. One parent will have to take the baby out of the theatre and will miss a good part of the movie. The other parent might watch the movie but they would not enjoy it as their partner is missing. Both parents will be stressed in such a situation and the whole purpose of going to the movie for entertainment is defeated.

Parents intending to take their babies to theatre should also bear in mind the disturbance their babies could cause to others watching the movie. People pay money to watch the movie and are not there to hear your bundle of joy scream. People are quick to let their displeasure known and more often they are not very polite. In such case too parents would be forced to leave the theatre.

Parents should also bear in mind that they would be putting their babies health at risk. People cough and sneeze and the atmosphere is full of germs inside the theatre. Babies don't have a fully developed immune system, so their chances of getting any infection is more when sitting in a closed space surrounded by a crowd. Also, the temperature inside the theatre may not be suitable for the baby.

It is therefore better to make arrangements to watch movies at home. This way both parents can relax and enjoy the movie when the baby is sound asleep. Even if the baby is awake there won't be much fuss as babies can be best managed at home. Still if the parents can't resist the temptation then it is better to leave the baby with a carer or an obliging family member. The carer can easily look after the baby while the parents relax and entertain themselves.

Safe decibel level for infants

There is a considerable amount of research documenting the effects of noise on children. The effects are largely negative.

Much of the research on noise and children concerns damage to the auditory system. While the possibility of hearing damage is, and should be, of concern to parents and educators, the non auditory effects of noise on children also deserves attention. The literature on the latter topic falls into three categories; physiological effects, motivational effects, and cognitive effects.

Physiological effects Elevated blood pressure levels in school-aged children is associated with living or going to school near a major noise source (e.g., airport, traffic, trains). Although the blood pressure levels of children exposed to these major noise sources are within the normal range, they are higher than for children not exposed to major noise sources.

These elevated blood pressure levels are of concern for two reasons. 

One, the levels do not habituate with continued exposure, and 

two, elevated pressure levels in children appear to continue this pattern into adulthood thereby increasing the risk for cardiovascular disease. 

The decibel levels in these studies ranged from 95 to 125 dBA peak. In each case the noise exposure was chronic.

Motivational effects Research findings suggest that exposure to uncontrollable noise may make children more vulnerable to learned helplessness. Learned helplessness means that the individual learns that the outcomes of it's behavior are independent of the actions of the individual. Most of this research has been with school-aged children, including kindergartners. One study found that children attending a school near a major airport were less likely to solve a challenging puzzle and to persist at it as well. Another study found that children exposed to noise were more likely to abdicate their choice for a reward to their teachers. The children decided to let the adult pick a prize for them rather than exercise their option to do so. Teachers in noisy schools also report greater difficulty in motivating children in their school work. Children often had less tolerance for frustration.

Limited work has been done with younger children. One study in a residential setting found that 12 month-old infants in noisy homes exhibited less mastery-oriented play behavior with their toys than their counterparts in quieter homes. The peak noise readings in the studies described above was 95 dBA.

Cognitive effects Most of the research on the nonauditory effects of noise on children has been on cognitive effects. The research has looked at memory, attention/perception, and academic achievement.

The research on memory and noise for children parallels that of adults; there appears to be little or no effects of noise on simple memory. This holds true for both chronic and acute exposure to noise. However, if the memory task requires special attention there does appear to be some negative effects of noise. In other words, if the individual has to pay particular attention because of the difficulty of the task, noise may interfere with the memory task. Noise levels in these studies were in the range of 22 - 78dBA.

The research on attention suggests that children exposed to chronic noise may suffer deficits in this area. Children exposed to chronic noise seem to develop cognitive strategies for coping with the distracting effect of noise. Young children (5 years old) from noisy residential environments seem to be better able to tune out distracting auditory stimuli when asked to perform a discrimination task in a noisy environment than children from quieter homes. Four year old children from noisy day care centers performed better under noisy conditions than children from quiet day care centers. These young children seem to be resistant to the distracting effects of noise because they tune out the noise. However, additional research suggests that as children get older (school-aged) this advantage disappears. In these studies older children from quieter environments were better at discrimination tasks done under noisy conditions. These children were able to screen out the noise and concentrate on important cues. Children from noisy environments learned to tune out auditory stimuli but in a nondiscriminatory way and tuned out important cues.

Noise seems to interfere with children's ability to discriminate between meaningful auditory stimuli, especially speech. Background noise, in particular irrelevant speech, interferes with children understanding the spoken word. This may have particular implications for children's academic performance.

Several studies have documented a link between noise and academic achievement, in particular reading. Acute noise appears to have little long term effects on reading or other intellectual activities; however, the research indicates that chronic noise has a negative effect on children's reading skills. There is also evidence to suggest that children from noisy homes and in noisy schools are at more of a disadvantage than children from quieter homes. Children with learning disabilities may also be more susceptible to the negative effects of chronic noise exposure.