Trousses de science

By manipulating pieces and fitting them together, children improve their dexterity, which prepares them to perform actions requiring more precise movements. A variety of activities help develop dexterity. Threading, drawing, cutting and manipulating various modelling clays gradually helps acquire the skills needed to master everyday gestures such as buttoning, lacing and zipping up and prepares children for writing. Preschoolers who do these types of activities will find it easier to trace letters.

Sensory, short-term, long-term: there are different types of memory, which all work together. Sensory memory very briefly retains the information gathered by the senses, just long enough to store it in short-term memory. Short-term memory then only lasts a few seconds, but it allows you to process and retain information to store it in long-term memory for days, months, or even your entire life to retain significant events, the meaning of words, manual skills, etc. If you want play and memory development in children to go hand-in-hand, remember this: observation is important for memory development. You must limit the amount of information that a child must retain at once and make connections between the game he or she is playing with you and his or her past experiences (a visit to the farm, a party, or a book, for example, exercises his or her long-term memory and can enrich the activity you are doing).

Logical thinking develops as children interact with their environment. Initially, they develop their reasoning through observations, comparisons and classifications of objects to then establish what distinguishes them or what unites them. Several activities require logical reasoning: solving a 3-D puzzle, doing a scientific experiment, building a model using instructions or playing chess. All of these activities require reflection and concentration and even call upon the ability to develop hypotheses and deductions in order to develop strategies. Exercising reasoning promotes the development of the ability to solve all problems.

Learning to identify written words and understanding their meaning is a major challenge for a 6-year-old child. Reading is a process that begins in first grade and is perfected throughout primary school. More than a visual decoding exercise involving knowledge of the alphabet and the ability to recognize words in general, reading requires that the child develop strategies to understand the meaning of the text. In addition, understanding texts is very important in learning all other school subjects. Producing a text calls upon several skills that must all be used simultaneously but which are gradually acquired during primary school through lessons in writing, spelling, grammar and punctuation.