Every parent dreams of their child being brilliant, of being just that one step better then they are and keep their family and community progressing upwards to allow them to feel proud parents.

The reality is with the fast speed of living in the modern world – the rat race, that dream is probably achieved by less than 2% of the population.

There is a common perception that exists amongst the majority of parents – that you need either a lot of time to devote to your children or that you need to be wealthy enough to afford and essentially ‘outsource’ this task. Being in the rat race makes you focus on the two essential currencies in this race – time and money – trading your time (knowledge and skills) to earn the money to keep a roof over your head !

We spent a lot of time in our earlier years to acquire knowledge and skills to allow us to better trade our time in the future and earn a better rate.

Being conditioned in this way affects the way we think our children should be too. If a child could be made to rise above this with some special quality or gift, then perhaps they can get out of this rat race.

Can you help your child achieve their potential and do great things with their gifts, abilities and confidence, whilst you are working and have a tight budget? Well, the short answer is a resounding YES. You do, however, need to put some thought and planning into this, and then add a dose of discipline and commitment, and stir with a lot of love and patience.

If you can see this as being blindingly obvious, then you have the right mind set to see that there are definitely low cost, time efficient and effective ways to boost your child’s brain power, abilities and confidence, and are ready to start on this journey.

By making a few minor adjustments to your lifestyle and routine, you can make a huge difference in your children.

To start the process, we encourage you to get a notebook to do the following:

a) jot down what you do now – your daily or weekly timetable

b) how of that is time spent with your children and what is that time spent on

c) jot down how and the manner you interact with your children and be honest in assessing how motivated you are.

d) start thinking about where you can improve your interactions and find ways to make your children think differently.

We will be posting further tips on this, so look out for them for more ideas.

www.mybrilliantkidz.com

In 1956, Benjamin Bloom, a professor at the University of Chicago , shared his famous “Taxonomy of Educational Objectives” which has become known as Bloom’s Taxonomy.

Bloom’s Taxonomy identifies six levels within the cognitive domain of learning which can be thought of as an order of thinking skills.

At the lowest levels are knowledge and comprehension, moving up to more complex and abstract mental levels of analysis, application, synthesis and evaluation.

For many educators, Bloom’s taxonomy serves as the basis for what are now called higher order thinking skills. Generally the concept is that higher order skills are complex combinations of lower skills.

1. Knowledge – Gathering Information

2. Comprehension – Confirming or understanding

3. Application – Making use of knowledge

4. Analysis – Taking apart

5. Synthesis – Putting together

6. Evaluation – Judging the outcome

Thinking comes naturally to children, and this approach is said to encourage Higher Order Thinking (HOT) . . .

This still is used today, albeit in an adapted form by many classroom teachers, whilst others prefer the more traditional route.

This is one of the approaches that we will be exploring in later posts…

www.mybrilliantkidz.com