Playing Builds Brain Development
Katey Kamoku and Kelly Nelson are two women on a mission to bring play into the lives of children. Two moms and teachers who have made it their goal to open a children's museum in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. Between the three of us we have twelve children and over fifty years of teaching experience so we know a thing or two about how important it is to increase creativity and play in a child’s experience for optimal brain development.
Psychologists at the College of William & Mary "Creativity scores have significantly decreased since 1990," she says. Moreover, "creativity scores for kindergartners through third-graders decreased the most, and those from the fourth through sixth grades decreased by the next largest amount."
Which is a big problem because creativity is a huge for brain development in children. I like to think of creativity as a spider web of connecting neural information in kid’s brains. It connects so many different areas of the brain some of which typically don’t always work together such as the salient network, the default network and the executive network. So join us as we are inspired by the story of how Katey and Kelly have made fun play and creativity their mission.
You can find these two amazing women on their website.
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In this Episode of The Rooted Family Podcast...
Creativity scores had significantly decreased since 1990 in kindergarten through third graders. And then the second biggest shift in decline was for fourth through sixth graders with creativity. So we have a generation of kids who are losing creativity and we also know that they're losing their play time as well. (04:16)
So while we think of this as little kids being deprived, the ramifications on what we're seeing as they get further their education is that increase of stress, that increase of anxiety, the decrease in being able to regulate our emotions and interacting with others (11:45)
So they're taking an active role in that learning environment and they're being engaged in meaningful information. In doing those things, they're often interacting in a social context. (13:09)
There are some great statistics out there about how, especially boys form their opinion about education within the first educational experience. And for a lot of kids, that's kindergarten. And so they come to kindergarten and here we are throwing all of these academics at them and then they're forming their opinion about their education that will follow them through the rest of their lives.(14:19)
I think our mom guilt sometimes gets in the way and we think we're taking away from what we're really adding to their experience of seeing what a person who goes after their goals and dreams looks like and they need that in their lives. (32:21)
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After listing to this podcast, what can you do to increase more creative play in your child’s day.
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