INTERNATIONAL TALENT ACADEMY

Early child development research facts

During the first six years of life, the brain absorbs a tremendous amount of information: three times more than during the entire life.  By the age of six, the formation of a human’s brain is almost complete in its development. The information children learn by the age of six will serve as a basis for knowledge and wisdom which will increase during the rest of their life. 

Glenn Doman, How To Teach Your Baby To Read, 1979 

 Karen DeBord, Ph.D., Extension State Specialist for Early Child Development. NC Cooperative Extension Service.

Early experiences, both positive and negative, have a dramatic effect on this formation of synapses. The brain operates on the "use it or lose it" principle. Only those connections and pathways that are frequently used are retained. It is from early infancy to early childhood that these vital connections are made permanent. As we mature, the brain physically changes due to outside experiences. The first three years see the most rapid changes of all of life due to the bombardment of experience (everything is new!). At this time, the brain is most flexible and prepared to learn.

From Neurons to Neighborhoods: The Science of Early Childhood Development . Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 2000.

We need to stimulate the minds of children. We need to activate connections that are important for success and happiness, and we need to give them a workout every day in a stimulating environment. Young children need a variety of experiences; seeing, touching, tasting, smelling, hearing new things, and long play sessions with mom and dad.
For children three years old and older, we must maintain the circuits that they have been building. The best way we can do this is to continue to stimulate their incredible minds. Children's capacity and desire to learn is unlimited.

Dawn Rosenburg Brain Development in Young Children: The Early Years ARE Learning Years, 1997

 “…schools have wasted s great deal of people’s time by postponing the teaching of important areas because they are deemed ‘too difficult’.  We begin with the hypothesis that any subject can be taught effectively in some intellectually honest form to any child at any stage of development…” 

Dr. Jerome Bruner, The Culture of Education, 1960

“Children love to learn. They can learn absolutely anything that can be taught to them in an honest, factual, and joyous way.”  Glenn Doman, How To Teach Your Baby To Read, 1979

While subtle phonetic distinctions might be lost in the first year, children have the ability to learn a second, third and fourth language quickly until about age 10. After that, the brain starts discarding the excess language learning connections. After 10, learning a foreign language is still possible but more difficult.

"Music education can be a positive force on all aspects of a child's life, particularly on their academic success. The study of music by children has been linked to higher scores on the SAT and other learning aptitude tests, and has proven to be an invaluable tool in classrooms across the country. Given the impact music can have on our children's education, we should support every effort to bring music into their classrooms."

U.S. Senator Jeff Bingaman (NM)

  Students who were exposed to the music-based math lessons scored a full 100% higher on fractions tests than those who learned in the conventional manner.

  Source: Neurological Research, March 15, 1999
 

Movement is the key to learning! Movement and dance activities such as crawling, creeping, rolling, turning, walking, skipping, reaching, and swinging are essential for baby's brain development. These specific and intensive motor activities make full use of baby’s complicated nervous system and follow a plan. The nervous system of each new human being must go through a series of developmental stages before the brain can operate at its full potential. Using her whole body, her movements, and all her senses, the baby "programs" her motor/perceptual equipment, her nerves, and brain cells.  This process, called neurological organization, describes the development of the central nervous system, and takes place between birth and six to eight years of age. The first year is critical. By twelve months, many children are doing tasks that are easily recognizable as leading to the development of adult skills, particularly walking and talking. By twelve months, the brain has grown to 50 percent of its adult size.

Anne Green Gilbert, NEW BEGINNINGS, Vol. 18, No. 2, March-April 2001 pp. 44-46

In the first years of life children form extra synapses. In fact, a three-year-old has twice as many connections as an adult. In the second decade of life, as children move toward adulthood, trillions of extra connections are eliminated. But this is not a random process. Those connections that have been used repeatedly in the early years have become stronger and tend to remain; those that have not been used often enough are shed.

 Rima Shore, Rethinking the Brain: New Insights into Early Development. Families and Work Institute, 1977, ix.

Dance as a form of artistic intelligence. It has been said that the first artistic "impulse" is through movement (Anderson, 1986; Martin, 1939). Children first express themselves through their bodies, that is, through facial expression, gesture, and posture. Because our sensory receptors that signal movement are directly connected to that part of the brain that generates emotion, the child's first movements have emotional connotations (Gellhorn, 1964). Even depictive gestures at around two years of age, such as learning to bow, or ritual gestures performed in religious ceremonies, have emotional overtones for children. Following on the heals of depictive imitation, children become quickly sensitive to dynamic-vectorial qualities of movement like direction, force, rhythm, and balance (Werner & Kaplan, 1984). Children's body-gestural skills are consolidated in development through play and ritualized games (Bruner, 1973).