Nathan Wallis - The Developing Brain from 3 - 7

Last night I went to hear Nathan Wallis talk about neuroscience and brain development in children aged 3 - 6 years old. He had so many amazing things to say and was hilariously funny too!

Some things to note:

• The first 1000 years of a persons life are the most important for brain development. Face to face contact, smiling at your baby, and lots of talking help your baby to collect all the data they need for life.
• Through the years of 3 - 6 the most impt thing for children is to play, play, play.
• Chn don't need to spend time at kindy getting ready for school. That's what school is for!
• Us first born females rule the world haha! We get a lot of face to face time with our parents as there are no other children yet. Birth order importance doesn't matter if you're not the first born in terms of success.
• Male frontal lobes not really fully developed until 26 - 32. Females between 18 - 24. Average is 26. Of course, it sways either way too in terms of averages.
• We mostly measure success in children on language, not motor skills for example. One lady asked "How do you get a 5-6 year old boy to focus?" and Nathan answered that his focus was probably motor skills. If you asked him to be a transformer with his body for half an hour, he could probably focus. In reading or writing however, he might struggle with those tasks. Developmentally they might just not be ready.
• Stop expecting 5 year old boys (especially) to act like 7 year olds etc. And don't compare their development to girls, as it's not a fair comparison.
• Having children saying sorry - Often it might be a chuck away 'sorry' and doesn't really change anything. Instead asking the child "How are you going to repair this relationship?" makes them take more ownership. He also said that for a 2 year old, you'll have to do about 90% of helping them with the apology. When they're 5, you might help 70% of the time etc. Students need your help in these situations.
• Be kind to children and don't push them too hard too fast. Children will learn to walk and crawl when they are ready. By us standing them up before they are ready doesn't help them. It's the same with reading/learning etc. 

Thoughts on my future practice:

• It's really interesting seeing boys in my class who I can identify as just needing to play still, even though they are 7 and 8. I'm wondering how I could possibly incorporate more play time in for them during the day. I do let them have developmental around once a week, but am wondering where else I could fit it in. Lots of the boys in my class still love the blocks and equipment.
• It's a really hard balance in our current education system to fit in play,  as parents and the community want to see us 'teaching' and that is measured in language mostly. The National Standards should apply before Year 3, in my opinion as it is just not fair, espcecially as then students who are below hear that they are below for 2 years, which is not going to help their learning either.