Category Archives: Learning

Why Talking to Your Baby When He’s too Young to Understand Gives him a Head Start.

Why Talking to Your Baby When He’s too Young to Understand Gives him a Head Start.   Language comprehension is one of the most important – if not the most important – key to intellectual development.  It’s one of the 14 fundamental areas of development that work together during the first 1000 days of a […]

How to use Instructions to Develop Self-control in a Toddler.

  Children who have learned to follow instructions typically exhibit more self-control than other children, because learning to follow instructions involves practising to act with intent, which is the exact opposite of acting impulsively. That brings us to the question: “How do I teach my toddler to follow instructions?” The answer is: “By physically showing […]

Teach Nursery Rhymes Early for Better Reading Later.

Photo Credit: http://mattnerphotography.com Researchers studied a group of 64 children when they were 3 years old, and the more rhymes they knew then, the better they were able to read 3 years later. They have concluded that this is the case because rhymes train children to be more sensitive to the speech sounds within words. (Read […]

Birth to 24 months: 14 Fundamental Areas of Development

It’s uninspiring when an educational programme considers only the most basic areas of development. Children learn more quickly during their early years than at any other time in life, simply because the plasticity of the human brain decreases with age. In other words, the younger your child, the greater an enriched environment will impact on […]

A Book is More than the Sum Total of its Pages

  Books are often seen as ‘old fashioned’ and parents are tempted to replace them with seemingly more modern stimulation, such as television, DVDs, video games, computers, and battery-operated toys with moving parts and flashing lights… The difference between reading and these ‘new and improved’ types of stimulation, is that reading (and story-telling) will always be the number one activity that […]

Why it’s Better to Read and Repeat

  As parents, we assume that children get bored with reading the same book over and over, but contrary to this popular belief, children actually thrive on the predictability of such repetition. Predictability is one of the most fundamental emotional and intellectual needs of a child and reading is the easiest way for a parent […]

How physical exercise increases maths scores!

We’ve all heard, somewhere along the line, that exercise is good for us. Every parent would agree, in theory, that children should be encouraged to be physically active. Yet, few make it a family priority. Here is a study that should provide us with the necessary motivation to get moving! A group of 171 children, […]

Games for Practica Parents

For Practica Parents with 2 to 7 year old children: Do you routinely ask questions like “Can you name this colour?” or “How many ducks do you see?” when you’re around your child? If the answer is yes, you may be slipping into the role of a test administrator instead of having fun as a […]

How To Improve Your Child’s Memory

How To Improve Your Child’s Memory Do you remember a time when that complicated maths problem in 8th grade suddenly made sense? It was as if the clouds parted and the understanding ‘dawned on you’, changing the way you viewed maths from then on? Or is there another moment when a sudden realisation left you […]

How to demonstrate our love for our children.

The Practica Programme Blog – How to demonstrate our love for our children. Today we introduce our very first guest post – we will be inviting many people who work within the child development field to give us their take on what’s important to know when it comes to your little one! This guest post is written by […]

10 Easy-Peasy Everyday Reading Ideas

Image Source: http://www.thedailygreen.com/ Our last post was about the importance of early reading (if you missed it, go here), and today we’re sharing some simple and inspiring tips that can make practicing reading simple, as long as you recognise the opportunities! 1. Set the scene for Dreamland: Help your child to wind down at bedtime […]

The 3 Secrets of Early Reading

The 3 Secrets of Early Reading I remember as a little girl that I loved to read – I would even pretend to read my mother stories that I had learned to memorise. When I learned to write, my love of words was further extended, and I would re-write by hand poems and songs that I […]

Middle Ear Infection Emergency Kit

The Practica Programme Blog – Middle Ear Infection Emergency Kit In a previous post, we discussed how middle ear infection can affect your child. The effects are often overlooked or unknown, and so we really felt passionate about sharing this with you, as a parent – if you missed the post, go here. Today, we’re looking […]

How Hearing Impacts Learning

  According to Dr Vincent Iannelli of the American Association of Paediatrics, 50% of children under the age of 12 months will experience at least one episode of middle ear infection (otitis media), and between the ages of one and three, 35% of children will have repeated episodes. When we consider how important hearing is to language […]