How physical exercise increases maths scores!

We’ve all heard, somewhere along the line, that exercise is good for us. Every parent would agree, in theory, that children should be encouraged to be physically active. Yet, few make it a family priority. Here is a study that should provide us with the necessary motivation to get moving!

A group of 171 children, aged between 7 and 11 years, who had a sedentary lifestyle and were overweight at the time, were divided into 3 groups. All of them were transported to sport grounds after school, 5 days a week, for a period of 13 weeks.

During their time at the camp, the first group was kept busy with paper-based games and activities that naturally didn’t involve physical exercise. Group 2 exercised for 20 minutes per day and group 3 exercised twice as long, completing 2 separate 20 minute sessions every day. Activities included running games, skipping rope and modified soccer and basketball games. Children were rewarded when they tried to maintain an average heartbeat of 150 beats per minute.

All 171 of the kids were pre-tested and re-assessed afterwards with regards to reading, math and executive functioning skills.

(Note: Executive functioning refers to a child’s ability to stay focused on a task to reach a goal. Have a look at this video to find out more about these skills.)

After 13 weeks, researchers detected no effect on the children’s reading skills in any of the groups. However, there was a very noticeable improvement with regards to the executive functioning skills, and subsequently also in the mathematical achievement, of the children in groups 2 and 3.

What’s even more interesting, is that children from Group 3, who exercised twice as much, benefitted roughly twice as much, compared to those in Group 2.

Have a look at a screenshot below, taken from the published study. The graph shows how Executive Functioning (black) and Math skills (white) improved agter 13 weeks.

Source: Davis, C.; Tomporowski, P.; McDowell, J.; Austin, B.; Miller, P.; Yanasak, N.; et al.  (2011).  Exercise improves executive function and achievement and alters brain activation in overweight children: A randomized, controlled trial. Health Psychology, 30(1), 91-98.

According to the researchers, exercise has such a remarkable effect because it activates the brain in special ways. They know this because they actually conducted fMRI scans on a number of the children that were involved, to get a glimpse into how their brain activity changed over time.

These findings are remarkable and hugely valuable, considering that the exercise that these kids did was purely physical. The activities didn’t involve special games with complicated rules designed to practise and enhance executive functioning and none of the children received extra math tutoring.  

What an uncomplicated, not to mention cost-effective, way to give our children a boost!

*without extra tutoring

Written by Lizette van Huyssteen

"When we know better... we do better." 

Games for Practica Parents

Parents of young babies:

Dear Practica Parents,

You will notice, as you read through the monthly sections of the Practica Parents’ Guide, that we often refer to your baby’s “midline” and what you can expect in terms of him crossing that midline. (The midline is the imaginary line that divides the body into right and left halves.)

During the first months, it’s exciting to witness a baby learning to turn his head all the way from side to side at will. This is an important milestone, as the right hemisphere of his little brain is learning to control the left side of his body and vice versa, and these two hemispheres are initially unable to communicate with each other.

Over time, as neural pathways develop between the left and right hemispheres your baby will get better at coordinating the movements of his hands to explore objects. By the onset of the second half of the first year of life, he will be practising to pass a toy from one hand to the other. At first, this newly emerging ability will make it easier for him handle and turn toys as he explores them. Later on, it will help him to solve a problem.  

Encourage this by deliberately creating situations from about 8-9 months that confronts your child with a problem that can be solved by transferring an object from one hand to the other. When he is holding a snack in his right hand, and you offer him a toy on that side, you’re creating an opportunity for him to learn that he can make the occupied hand available to receive the desired object by intentionally transferring the snack to the other hand.

However, seeing that this post is aimed at parents with young babies, here’s a fun game that is listed for 3-month-old babies:

• Activity 215-216 from the Practica Parents’ Guide:

Produce two very different sounds at your baby’s eye level, one directly after the other. Each of them should last around 6 seconds. You can, for instance, play one note on your xylophone and then scrunch a plastic bag between your hands. Praise your child when he turns his head to look for the source of a sound. When he consistently turns his head, try positioning the xylophone to his far left and the plastic bag to his far right so that he can practise moving his head past the midline of his body as he looks from side to side.

• Tip 1: The constant background noise of a television or radio makes it difficult to develop a number of important listening skills. Therefore, eliminate background noise when you play this game. Turn the television off altogether.

• Tip 2:  Music is brain food, so enrich your baby’s day with listening to various genres of music. However, divide the experience into shorter sessions of about 30 minutes each - to make sure that he doesn’t learn to disregard music as background noise. Also, from time to time, help focus his attention on the music by tapping the beat on his back, singing along and dancing to the music while holding him.

This activity also develops important listening skills. This is significant because, the very same regions in our brains that are being wired to process everyday sounds gradually become more and more involved in helping to process music and speech sounds.

Naturally, for these regions to be wired for future learning, babies need to gradually develop a number of interesting abilities: not only do they need to learn to pay attention to important sounds and ignore others, they also need to learn to notice differences between certain sounds, remember these differences, attach meaning to them and learn to reproduce them.

During the second year of life, you will catch your child doing increasingly clever things that involves using both sides of the body – like holding a bottle with one hand and dropping little objects into its opening with the other. He will eventually learn to catch and throw balls, thread various kinds of shapes from his Practica box onto laces, and, when he is around 4 years old, you will be amazed at how smoothly he turns a piece of paper with his non-dominant hand whilst simultaneously opening and closing the blades of a pair of scissors with his dominant hand. What a feat! 

You will be encountering numerous activity ideas aimed at developing “laterality” as you progress through the pages of your Practica Guide. This is a term that we use that encompasses what many therapists refer to as “bilateral integration” – in other words, learning to coordinate the two halves of the body.

Written by Lizette van Huyssteen

"When we know better... we do better."

Games for Practica Parents

For Practica Parents with 2 to 7 year old children:

Do you routinely ask questions like “Can you name this colour?” or “How many ducks do you see?” when you’re around your child? If the answer is yes, you may be slipping into the role of a test administrator instead of having fun as a parent! The good news is, you can turn just about any opportunity into a fun experience by taking turns with your child.

Here’s how!

•  Take turns to facilitate learning:

For example, instead of pointing to a block and asking, “Can you name this colour?”, introduce a game where the two of you take turns to add a block to a tower whilst stating the colour of every block as you place it.

Or, instead of saying: “How many ducks do you see?” introduce a game where the two of you take turns to point out things that are in groups of three (or whichever number you choose for the day)

• Introduce a ritual to teach a skill:

Instead of appearing as if out of nowhere with juice in hand after your child asked for something to drink, invite him into the kitchen. Once he is there, routinely hand him two tumblers before pouring the juice. Say: “Hand me the blue (or green, or yellow) tumbler, and I will use it to give you what you need”.

Or when snacktime comes around, routinely encourage your little one to sort pieces of food into “groups of two” or “groups of three” on a breadboard before eating his own little arrangements.

How can I extend this advice to using my Practica box in new ways?

Build towers with counters from the Math Set to create “skittles”. Then play a fun bowling game where you and your child take turns to roll a tennis ball to see how many skittles you can knock over. Encourage your child to routinely follow a ritual by counting the fallen skittles one-by-one as he stands them up again to re-set the game for the next round.

• For kids aged 20 – 40 months: Build skittles of similar height and count out loud, one-by-one, as your child re-sets them for the next round.

• For kids aged 3½ years and older: Build skittles of varying heights. Ask your child to help you count the counters in each skittle and fit a number indicator onto each of them to indicate the number of counters in that skittle. Then see who knocks over the highest number. Start off using only small numbers and gradually include higher numbers as your child’s number concept develops.

Why are these teaching strategies so effective?  

The strategy of routinely following a ritual that aims at developing a specific skill is effective simply because it leads to repetition and “practice makes perfect”.

Taking turns is also an effective teaching strategy because young children exist in the moment and therefore learn through their senses and bodily experiences. Consequently, they get a much clearer idea of what is expected of them while copying someone else, as apposed to being given a set of instructions.

In other words, every time you take your turn as you play with him, you are literally modelling to him what he should be doing directly afterwards, when it’s his turn to play.

Written by Lizette van Huyssteen

"When we know better... we do better." 

Cost Effective Home-made Baby Food

In our family, raising a baby is a team-sport! Naturally, when my first granddaughter recently reached the age where she was ready to be introduced to solids, we all took notice.

Staying within the framework of “natural, cost-effective and time-effective” seemed the sensible route to follow. We bought some veggies, steamed them, let them cool and ran them through the food processor. We scooped a few teaspoons full into a number of silicone cupcake holders, placed a piece of wax paper on top of each to keep it clean and packed them into the freezer. It was easy to pop the veggie-cubes out once they were frozen, as silicone is naturally flexible and it peels off the sides of the cubes easily.

It may be necessary to introduce a new taste and texture as many as 10 to 15 times before a baby accepts it and starts to actually swallow to the extend that one may call the experience “eating”. Many parents translate the perplexed look on their baby’s face when he tastes something new as a sign that he doesn’t really care for that kind of food. As a result, they give up far too soon. Who can blame them, considering the price tag that typically comes along with every experimental session?

It’s so much easier to defrost only a few teaspoons of the healthy good stuff when you need it.

The three biggest benefits of preparing food in this way are:

• You can control what goes into it.
• You can control the texture – serving everything 100% smooth is not ideal as you want to introduce texture as well.
• You can convert a 1 Kg pack of carrots into 18 servings. That comes to 45c per serving if you paid R8.00 for your carrots at a typical supermarket in South Africa.

I suspect that many other mothers and grandmothers must have thought of this before, but in case you haven’t – I hope this helps.

Best wishes! Lizette van Huyssteen

Written by Lizette van Huyssteen

"When we know better... we do better."

The Magic Word that Motivates a Child to Help

Assigning age-appropriate chores that impart important lessons, is important. Not only do children get to experience their world on a sensory level as they help around the house; they also develop a better working memory as they need to recall steps and attend to detail. They learn to deal with proverbial curve balls and practise managing their behaviour and emotions. In reality, in our digital age, where many children seldom spend time playing with dirt and stones, picking up toys and helping to sort the laundry may be as close as they come to spending time in the real world.

What if your little apprentice isn’t keen on getting involved? Well, there is a magic word that may make a difference, and it isn’t “please”. The word is “helper”. Researchers from the University of California in San Diego report that 3 to 6 year olds are far more likely to get involved in chores when the adult in charge mentioned earlier on that “some children choose to be helpers”.

For this particular study, 150 children from a variety of backgrounds were divided into two groups. Both groups were given the opportunity to play with toys and were presented with four opportunities where they could stop playing and help pick up a mess, open a container, put away toys, and pick up crayons that spilled on the floor.

The only difference between the two groups was in what the researchers said to them before they started to play. Children, who had heard that “some children choose to help,” acted no differently than typical children of that age do when they are confronted with a chore. However, children who had been told that “some children choose to be helpers,” responded differently. They were significantly more likely to lend a helping hand when the opportunity arose. In fact, they seemed to be keen to take on the identity of helpers and ended up acting like real little contributors.

This serves to demonstrate just how easy it is to shape a child’s identity. It emphasizes how keen children are to pursue a positive identity and how much there is to gain from choosing our words wisely.

Read more about the study: Christopher J. Bryan, Allison Master, Gregory M. Walton. “Helping” Versus “Being a Helper”: Invoking the Self to Increase Helping in Young Children. Child Development, 2014; DOI: 10.1111/cdev.12244

Written by Lizette van Huyssteen

"When we know better... we do better."