This is Alyssa, the daughter of Mai Neng, who wrote our third entry on chapter 4. Mai Neng said she is 8 months old here, and you can see she already enjoyed books. Or was at least curious about them!
This is Alyssa and her mom when Alyssa was 14 months old, and she wanted Mai Neng to read to her. I wonder if she wanted her mom to read this blog entry to her, too? Happy reading!
I was born in Laos and lived in the mountains, where there is no school or education system and there is no information about children. I came to the United States when I was 11 years old and started school in fourth grade. I grew up not knowing the importance of child development. I used to think that the skill of making connections was not that serious or important. In the chapter, Galinsky suggests some ideas for finding out how children are making connections to things around them, such as objects, space, and numbers. Before I took child development classes, I used to think that sorting objects and scribbling on paper were nothing but child’s play. Galinsky stated, though, that sorting things is one way of making connections to the world, because through that process, children are learning how the world works.
My 15-month-old daughter loves looking through books and wants an adult to read to her every minute. When we are at home, we have to read about seven to eight times a day to her. In addition, though we have about ten books, she will always choose the same three books, and I always wonder why she picks those books. After I read this chapter, I realized that she is making connections to books. For example, it stated in the book that young children’s object sense is like that of adults: If they “see something again and again, they become tired of it and pay less attention each time it’s repeated” ( p. 161). In my daughter’s case, I believe she is working on her object sense; she will read the same books until she gets tired of those books and moves to a new one.
Young children do more than connect to objects. Space also helps children find their way. Galinsky stated that “children learn to make connections using clues that go beyond the geometry of the space; such as color or other landmarks” (p. 165). Children usually remember where their things are by remembering what they have to get through before they get to what they need. For example, my daughter likes to look through books, she knows where her books are located, but she has to go around the sofa and open the drawer to be able to get to her books. This is one way children use their sense of space to locate hidden objects. According to the reading, young children use spaces in their minds to create cognitive maps of their environment.
Adults may wonder why children keep playing with objects and how they understand that they have to go around the table to be able to get to their bottle. In this chapter, Galinsky teaches us that this play serves as a way for them to make connections to objects and space in their environment.
It's true that I'm probably a bit biased toward early literacy issues since I've done research in that area, but you've expanded on some great points about children's use of books. And every parent and teacher is familiar with the young child's love for hearing the same story over and over and over...it may get a little monotonous for us as adults, but the familiarity is incredibly beneficial for children in a variety of ways. It's so fun that your daughter loves books so much! You'll see the benefits of that as she moves into the formal instruction of elementary school, as it is likely to blossom into a love for learning in many other areas, too!
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