Wired (and Re-wired) to Learn

What does a nerve cell look like? A fried egg provides a great visual of a cell, but needs some modification to look like a nerve cell.  If you're not afraid of a little clean up, try this with your children – put it on the table and smash it with the palm of your hand, splattering it across the table. You should have a many-pointed star. Now take one of the points and stretch it out away from the “body” of the egg, then take your thumb and squish the farthest region of the point you just stretched. You now have a visual representation of a nerve cell, or neuron – two smashed stars connected by a long, thin line. The original smashed piece represents the nerve’s cell body, and the star points are dendrites, while the stretched out region is called an axon, and the starburst at the furthest end is the axon terminal.  Talk about an effective demo, huh?  I can't take credit for this one - it's adapted from John Medina's Brain Rules, from which I also quote below.

Now let's put that neuron into perspective in the brain itself.  You can visualize the real world of two neurons interacting by "thinking of two trees uprooted by giant hands, turned 90 degrees so the roots face each other, and then jammed together. Usually, thousands of neurons are jammed up against one another, with their branches forming connections in a nearly incomprehensible mass of branching confusion.”

“Occasionally, the end of one neuron swells up, greatly increasing in diameter. The terminal ends of the other neurons split down the middle like a forked tongue creating two connections where there was only one. Electricity crackles through these moving neurons at blinding speed…with clouds of neurotransmitters filling spaces between the neuron trunks.” The human brain is learning!

“As neurons learn, they swell, sway, and split. They break connections in one spot, glide over to a nearby region and form connections with their new neighbors. Many stay put, simply strengthening their electrical connections with each other, increasing the efficiency of information transfer.” The brain is constantly learning, so the brain is constantly rewiring itself.

The human brain is only partially constructed at birth, with the majority of construction being finished by the mid-20s and fine-tuning carried on well into your 40s. When babies are born, their brains have about the same number of connections as adults have; but by the time they are 3 years old, the connections in specific regions of their brains have doubled or tripled. It doesn’t last though, as the brain will actually trim back a lot of this expansion and return to adult numbers by the age of 8. Then the process starts again at puberty with connections settling down to adult numbers in the late teens. Though the larger pathways in the brain – the neural equivalents of interstate freeways and state highways - are fairly consistent, individual patterns are evident when you get to the smaller routes – the brain’s equivalent of residential streets and dirt roads. “Whether examining toddlers or teenagers, different regions in different children develop at different rates.”

Here’s the educational application …

Our current educational system, particularly the classroom model, is based on a series of expectations that certain learning goals should be achieved by a certain age. But does everyone’s brain follow that one pattern? Students of the same age show a great deal of intellectual variability. About 10% of students do not have brains sufficiently wired to read at the age at which we expect them to read. And this is not the only subject area for which the brain’s readiness can vary.

Rather than fix your expectations on any particular scope and sequence, present the opportunities and observe your child. In the homeschooling setting it is much easier to vary your approaches and your timing for learning opportunities. If your child does not appear to grasp a concept quickly, consider whether you may be introducing it too early for that child. Pull back and reinforce what they have grasped, or try a different approach for introducing the concept. Incorporate as many of your child’s senses – seeing, smelling, hearing, touching and even tasting – in their learning environment and watch the outer evidence of the brain’s rewiring in action.  What an incredible adventure you are sharing with your child!

Kelly

Exercise Boosts Brain Power

At the encouragement of a friend, I am reading the book, Brain Rules, by John Medina. Just a couple chapters into the book I have encountered information that I simply must share, and this blog seems to be the best way to do so. I feel a series of posts coming on as I mine the valuable nuggets of this book.


Brain Rule #1 – Exercise Boosts Brain Power

We’ve heard a lot about the benefits of exercise for our bodies, but I hadn’t so clearly encountered its benefits for brain power until now. My post titled "Move and Learn" in May addressed the benefit of movement and academics, but this was mostly from the learning style perspective. I’m now armed with even more information regarding the benefits of exercise – or movement – for our brain.

A good bit of research has been done to compare the effects of sedentary and active lifestyles. Exercise can result in sometimes astonishing elevation in cognitive performance compared with those who are sedentary. Exercisers outperform couch potatoes in tests that measure long-term memory, reasoning, attention, and problem-solving. That’s fine, you may be thinking, but that’s not been our habit up to now. Hang on though, all is not lost. When normally sedentary people are enrolled in an aerobic exercise program, all kinds of mental abilities begin to come back online for young or old. In a recent study, children began a program of jogging for 30 minutes 2-3 times a week. After 12 weeks, their cognitive performance had improved significantly compared with pre-jogging levels.

Dr Antronette Yancey’s studies found that exercise improves children. Physically fit children identify visual stimuli much faster than sedentary ones and appear to concentrate better. Brain-activation studies show that children and adolescents who are fit allocate more cognitive resources to a task and do so for longer periods of time.

“Kids pay better attention to their subjects when they’ve been active,” Yancey says. “Kids are less likely to be disruptive in terms of their classroom behavior when they’re active. Kids feel better about themselves, have higher self-esteem, less depression, less anxiety. All of those things can impair academic performance and attentiveness.”

Why exercise works so well on the brain – a brief physiology lesson …

When we eat, the body uses teeth, stomach acid and the intestines to tear the food apart and reconfigure it for absorption. Much of our food is turned into glucose, one of the body’s favorite energy resources, and absorbed into the bloodstream via the small intestines. It is then carried to the body’s cells where cellular chemicals tear apart the molecular structure of glucose to extract its energy. Such fierce activity generates a fair amount of toxic waste, primarily in the form of excess electrons, better known as free radicals. If not quickly corralled, they will wreck havoc on the innards of a cell and thus the body. The main function of oxygen in your body is to act like an efficient electron-absorbing sponge. At the same time the blood is delivering foodstuffs to your tissues, it also carries these oxygen sponges which absorb the electrons and transform them into carbon dioxide which is carried back to the lungs for expulsion from the body. The oxygen-rich air you breathe keeps the food you eat from killing you.

Blood acts as both wait staff and haz-mat team, and any tissue without enough blood supply is going to both starve and be poisoned – including your brain. Though only representing about 2% of the body’s total weight, our brain utilizes 20% of the body’s total energy resources. Improving the blood’s delivery system can improve both the brain’s energy supply and waste removal. Exercise does not provide the oxygen and food – it provides greater access to the oxygen and food. When you exercise, you increase blood flow across tissues of your body. As the flow improves, the body makes new blood vessels, which penetrate deeper and deeper into the tissues of the body. The more you exercise, the more tissues you can feed and the more toxic waste you can remove.

Imaging studies have shown that exercise literally increases blood volume in a region of the brain called the dentate gyrus - a vital constituent of the hippocampus, a region deeply involved in memory formation. Early studies also indicate that exercise also stimulates one of the brain’s most powerful growth factors, BDNF, which exerts a fertilizer-like growth effect on certain neurons in the brain. This protein keeps existing neurons young and healthy, and encourages the formation of new cells in the brain.

After presenting this fascinating lesson on brain physiology, Dr. Medina proposes that classrooms integrate more movement, and that Phys Ed programs be increased rather than eliminated. Might be a little harder to sell this in a large school district, but it wouldn’t be as hard to integrate the idea of exercise/movement in our homeschool environment. Maybe you don’t relish the thought of jogging, but you could add some basic calisthenics – jumping jacks, sit ups, running the stairs or around the house, etc. – to get the blood pumping in your home at regular intervals in the day. I daresay that you will discover improvements in both academics and mood. Try it out!

Kelly

The Top 10 Reasons We Homeschool Our Children

As promised, I will finish the list I started with my last post ...

6.  To build intimate and meaningful relationships with your children in order to show them how much you love them.  I learned early on in my homeschooling adventure than one of the side-effects of classroom socialization is that my children thought they needed to spend most of their time with other children their own age.  Little brother just wasn't a 'cool' playmate, and hanging out with mom wasn't ideal either.  But I saw this attitude change as we discovered new aspects of our relationships and we began to enjoy each other's company.  More time together also made it easier to be a student of my children - to observe them and discover their strengths and weaknesses, their likes and dislikes - which made my parenting more effective.

7. To share with your children the common, everyday joys of life and be there when they need you most.  I was there when my younger boys learned to read, I was there when they saw and grasped a new concept in Math or Science - and it was a delight!  I was also there when life handed them disappointments, and I could encourage them to keep seeking, to keep knocking on the door.

8.  To be your children's mentor, spiritual leader, role model, friend, and teacher.  A lot of hats to wear, I know.  Yet consider how hard it would be to fill these roles for your child if you weren't with them throughout the day - or if you were having to undo more negative accumulation from classroom and peer experiences.

9.  To protect your children from the negative influences they may encounter outside the home.  Now don't get me wrong ... I'm not saying to place your children in a cuccoon that completely shields them.  We didn't completely keep them away from negative influence, but were better able to protect them by choosing the venues and balancing their exposure with our guidance and affirmation.  As they grew older, we allowed them greater choice, while providing the sounding board for discussions of what they experienced and the appropriate response to it.

10.  To instill in your children a life-long love for learning and to show them that learning is not boring, but exciting.  This love for learning is, in my opinion, the result of our efforts in #3 - meeting your child's unique needs.  When you help your child identify his learning style, and provide the tools for him to be successful, then your child's innate curiosity and desire to learn isn't squelched, but is rather fueled for the future.

You've made a good choice!  The road won't be easy, and there will be days that you question your decision, but look again at the reasons for the path you have chosen, and be encouraged.

Kelly