Effective early learning should not be a race, but instead a long, pleasant walk. Pushing children too hard or too fast is not the appropriate method to stimulate their curiosity. Attention and concentration skills have to be trained patiently, with a lot of encouragements, cheerfulness, smiles, laughs, digressions, anecdotes, and jokes.
The teacher, as a model of patience, has to keep cool in any situation. Does the child look tired or bored? Then the child needs a break (a few minutes is enough; having a break does not mean the session has to be postponed or cancelled). Is the child crying? The child needs a break. Is the teacher shouting? The teacher needs a break. Smacking? Any form of violence is blatant evidence of incompetence in education and a sure way to discourage any child from learning.
Whatever their behavior, children are never clumsy or stupid or bad. They learn by trial and error and when they fall, they don’t need admonition but instead a hand to help them to stand up again, and to climb higher. The master words in early teaching are love and patience.
Image: The Chicken – Number 9 / ChildUp.com
