1. Brain Development from One to Three
Standard(s): 3.2, 7.4

2. The Role of Intelligence
Intelligence: the ability to interpret and understand everyday situations and to use prior experiences when faced with new situations or problem
Also the capacity to learn
Shaped by heredity and environment
An environment that promotes learning is crucial

3. Methods of Learning
Children learn through everyday experiences and play
Incidental Learning: unplanned learning
Ex. Evan pushes a button on a musical toy and discovers it plays music

4. Methods of Learning, cont’d
Trail-and-Error Learning: when a child tries several solutions before finding one that works
Ex. Krista wants to play with her brother’s robot so she grabs it, he screams, and her mom makes her give it back. Krista realizes that if she offers her stuffed horse to her brother he may give her his toy to play with.

5. Methods of Learning, cont’d
Imitation: learning by watching and copying others
Ex. A younger sibling “copies” everything an older sibling does
Directed Learning: learning from being taught
Joel’s kindergarten teacher helps him learn the letters of the alphabet by showing pictures of items that begin with each letter

6. Concepts Concepts: general categories of objects and information
Young children often over-apply labels
Ex. Toddlers may think that any round food is a cookie
Learn to categorize objects by shape, color, and size

7. Intellectual Activity
Intellectual activity is broken down into seven areas
Development in these areas is remarkable from one to three
Attention: the ability to focus for a time on just selected sensory information or an activity
Memory: the ability to store and recall information learned and events experienced in the past

8. Areas of Intellectual Activity
Perception: the ability to take in information from the senses
Reasoning: the ability to figure things out- what to do, the solution to a problem, why something has happened
Imagination: the ability to think of things in ways different from how reality exists

9. Areas of Intellectual Activity, cont’d
Creativity: the ability to make something concrete from what one has imagined
Curiosity: the inner need to question things that lead to learning more about them

10. Apply Your Learning . . .
With the people at your table, think of at least one activity/ lesson for each intellectual area listed below that you could conduct with toddlers. Your activity should help promote children’s intellectual development.
Attention
Memory
Perception
Reasoning
Imagination
Creativity
Curiosity