Early intervention supports academics

  

Digestive system in clay

   Can’t stress more on early intervention! Working with Prisha in the first 5 years was very enriching as well as exhausting, yet I see the benefits of it over the years. Talking to her in rich language while showing her things around me, bringing in details, stressing on important parts of speech etc and also always pushing her to think and make a decision, helped us a lot in her skills she has developed today. One such example is in the picture below.

    For biology, she needed to make a 3D model of the digestive system in clay. Now I have always encouraged my kids to use the resources around instead of rushing to shop which is an easy option but it saves money, time and is easy on the environment. She looked into the deep well of her resources in the cupboard and found some left over clay from her previous school( 2.5 years old now, yet good once soaked 😉) and a bag of red wax clay( again 2.5 years old left unused). She rattled off on the phone about it while I did my groceries. I don’t give suggestions anymore as I believe in self empowerment and self help. Due to intense hands on work all these years, she found solutions to problems like...lack of enough raw material, alternatives, finding ways to work with old resources as they were dry, finding the right material that’s plastic coated to avoid sticking, etc. The red wax was new material she worked with and instructions were in Bahasa. So she found ways to work on it. By the time I returned and did the rest of my work through the day...she worked behind closed doors(to avoid me walking into a messy room and blowing my top off) and by night she presented the model to me! Look at the details... the way the organs are piled up like they do in our bodies and then color difference that served two purposes...avoid buying another pack of clay and then shows the difference between organs and the intestines. Bonus... looks beautiful and above all...she learnt about the digestive system in a very creative way! True work of art! 

     Now tell me why art isn’t important....why creativity is for selected few and only academics are important.  We are born creative and art should come naturally. It brings extra zest to learn the subject besides relaxing the mind from the learning pressures. Encourage kids to self learn, take away the pressures of learning by helping them develop their creative sides and help them become problem solvers through this journey. They also feel more pride as it’s their work of art. They also feel good that their parents trust them with their skills and get more confident about themselves. They learn to take failures better and through small victories learn to be self motivated as they grow. Never ever too late....resist spoon feeding, instead let them experiment, fail and find their path to success!! I shall be uploading the project once completed. Hope this post helps someone to see how early intervention supports kids life long.