1. BOOST YOUR CHILD’S
BRAIN POWER
HOW BRAIN RESEARCH
APPLIES TO EARLY LEARNING
Tressa Parker
The Bear Creek School

2. How is Your Child’s Brain Like a Garden?

3. Provide Rich Soil
• Need a healthy foundation for
learning and memory building
• Cerebral Cortex—higher cognitive
processing
• Enriching environment =
thicker cortex
• Plasticity is the ability to
rewire the brain with nourishment

4. Landscape Design:
Improving Executive Function
• Cognitive Flexibility
• Inhibitory Control
• Self-Control
• Discipline/Perseverance
• Working Memory
• Problem Solving
• Reasoning
• Planning

5. EXCELLENCE IS AN ART WON BY TRAINING AND
HABITUATION. WE DO NOT ACT RIGHTLY
BECAUSE WE HAVE VIRTUE OR EXCELLENCE,
BUT WE RATHER HAVE THOSE BECAUSE WE
HAVE ACTED RIGHTLY. WE ARE WHAT WE
REPEATEDLY DO. EXCELLENCE, THEN, IS NOT AN
ACT BUT A HABIT.
Aristotle, Ethica Nicomachea, 4th century BC

6. Fertilize
• Capture attention
• Children’s brains are engaged when they
are actively involved in their learning
• Three dimensional experiences
• Music, rhythm, and rhyme
• Learning activities
• Dramatic play
• Talking

7. Water Appropriately
• Human brains learn best from familiar humans
• Humans learn from Infant Directed Speech
• Type of Speech Matters
• High encouragement, low discouragement
• Sophisticated words
• Praise for effort
• Humans learn from eye gaze
• Humans learn through imitation
• Humans learn from back and forth interaction
• Humans learn by understanding emotion

8. Prune Carefully
• Neurons that are not used are pruned away
and die off
• From age 4-10 the brain is very active,
learning which connections to keep and
which to discard
• Learning a musical instrument or foreign
language is much easier during this time

9. Encourage Branching
• The brain can sprout new dendrites—grow new
connections between neurons
• Enrichment brings increased branching of
dendrites
• During the first 10 years there is much dendrite
growth

10. Use the Right Tools
• Create a nurturing and mentally stimulating
environment
• Provide a variety of opportunities
• Exercise
• Make sure your child gets plenty of sleep

11. Provide a Trellis
• Activate prior knowledge
• Use the five senses
• Create emotional memory—Release of
chemicals ―marks‖ the experience as
meaningful
• Help your child look for patterns
• Read, read, read!

12. Establish Deep Roots
• Long term memories—years to create
• Attention
• Review
• Repetition provides fixative
• Vision
• Most powerful of the senses
• 10% oral information remembered
• 65% remembered if add picture
• Visual sense—takes up half of brain resources

13. Metacognition: Thinking About Thinking
• Organizing and retrieving
information
• Reflecting on learning
• Understanding that
learning changes the
structure of brain
• Effective use of praise

14. Effective Praise
Fixed Mindset Students
Growth Mindset Students
Believe
Intelligence is set
Believe
Brain is like a
muscle
Goal
To look smart
Goal
To learn
Mistakes
Proof they have lost
their giftedness
Mistakes
Problem to be
solved
Challenge
Fearful: To try and
fail = no longer smart
Challenge
Excited: See as
opportunity to learn
Difficult Task
Give up
Difficult Task
Work harder
Praised for
Being intelligent
Praised for
Effort, process,
persistence

15. Plant in Full Sun
• Use specific praise –focus on qualities or
achievements that your child can control
• Talk to your child about how
working harder makes his/her
brain stronger
• Show empathy
• Emotional Regulation

16. The brain is wider than the sky.
Emily Dickinson
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully
made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.
Psalm 139:14

17. Resources
• Brain Rules, John Medina. Seattle, WA: Pear Press, 2008.
• Brain Rules for Baby, John Medina. Seattle, WA: Pear Press, 2010.
• Education on the Edge of Possibility, Geoffrey and Renate Nummela Caine.
•
•
•
•
•
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Alexandria, VA:ASCD, 1997.
Endangered Minds: Why Our Children Don’t Think, Jane M. Healy. Simon and
Schuster, New York, 1990.
Magic Trees of the Mind, Marian Diamond and Janet Hopson. New York:
Dutton, 1998.
Mind, Memory, and Learning, Pat Wolfe and M. Sorgen. Napa, CA.: Author,
1990.
Teaching with the Brain in Mind in Mind, Eric Jensen; Alexandria, VA:ASCD,
1998.
The Scientist in the Crib: Minds, Brains, and How Children Learn,
Alison Gopnik, Ph.D., Andrew N. Meltzoff, Ph.D., and Patricia K. Kuhl, Ph. New
York, William Morrow and Co., 1999
What's Going On in There? How the Brain and Mind Develop in the First Five
Years of Life, Lise Eliot, Ph.D. New York, Bantam Books, 1999

18. Websites
• www.brains.org
• www.brainconnection.com
• www.newhorizons.org
• www.talaris.org
• http://www.nymag.com/news/features/27840
• ilabs.washigton.edu
• devcogneuro.com