The early years of a child’s life are very important. The things happening around the child shape his/her personality and thinking. The development of a child’s brain is very critical in his/her overall development because as a human grows, the ability to adapt reduces. The parents, at this stage, need to be extra cautious and vigilant in making sure their child develops the cognitive abilities they need in the early years. At this stage, a child makes approx. 1,000 neural connections every second.

Cognitive development helps the brain to think, read, learn, reason, pay attention and remember. These skills help process incoming information and distribute it to the appropriate areas of the brain. It provides children the means of paying attention to thinking about the world and activities around them. Whatever happens, every day impacts a child’s cognitive development. Cognitive development encompasses a child’s working memory, and attention, as well as a child’s ability to manage and respond to the experiences and information they experience on a daily basis.

Early childhood means the period from birth to age 5. A child’s cognitive development, during early childhood, which has fluid memory,  includes skill development such as pre-reading, language, vocabulary, and numbers. 

Though learning is lifelong yet It is the fastest during the early childhood years!

As a child grows, this development means the ability to think and reason. Children ages 6 to 12, usually think in concrete ways. This can include things like how to combine, separate, order, and transform objects and actions, logical thinking and reasoning. Other complex activities like evaluation and analyzing skills, ability to make comparisons, explore and understand ‘cause and effect’, Critical thinking, and higher level thinking etc. also develop during these formative years.

Therefore, we must keep the following points in mind to help children develop cognitive skills 

• Encourage them to be curious by offering materials/situations in new ways
• Offer opportunities challenging enough to be interesting and ignite curiosity.
• Introduce techniques that help children increase their focus and avoid distractions.
• Encourage problem-solving habits in your children and encourage them to make their own decisions.
• Provide opportunities to learn, categorize, match, sort, compare, and contrast so that the child develops their cognitive skills.

At The Blue Bells School, Gurugram, we emphasize on the interconnected nature of different subject areas and believe that integrated learning becomes a positive influence for cognitive development. Here are some of the ways by which a meticulously designed integrated learning curriculum aids cognitive development: 

• Integrated Learning Methodology: The ability to find an interconnect thread between all taught subjects at school, while being faced with multiple challenges that every subject brings forth, enhances critical thinking.

• Globally acclaimed learning methods: The Integrated Learning curriculum picks the best features from the highly acclaimed global learning methods and uses them to promote exploration, inquisitive thinking, and application among children.

• Comprehensive Health & Wellness program: Learning can not only be about absorbing information, but also include a structured and holistic approach for mental and physical well-being of the learners 

• Scientifically informed school infrastructure: Children are introduced to conducive learning ambience with well-equipped classrooms/learning pods and community spaces to enable learning 

The Integrated Learning curriculum strives to impart knowledge to children in an engaging manner through the use of phenomenon-based lessons, brainstorming, and self and peer evaluation. This methodology of learning encourages an interconnected understanding of the world and helps the bright minds of tomorrow to boost their cognitive development.