© 2008 – 2023 Gwen Dewar, Ph.D., all rights reserved #author-byline-block_fa8928d6cdf63d7d6ad938367ac0d883 .author-byline-text{ font-size: 16px; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); } Science supports many of our intuitions about the emotional and cognitive benefits of play. Playful behavior appears to have positive effects on the brain and on a child’s ability to learn. Want specifics?...
© 2019 – 2023 Gwen Dewar, Ph.D., all rights reserved #author-byline-block_fff5c29951ef49f38e6338a61c224515 .author-byline-text{ font-size: 16px; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); } Fantasy has ancient roots, but it gets a bad rap. Some worry that fantasy fiction may confuse young children. Others dismiss fantasy as silly or frivolous. Should kids steer clear of...
© 2010-2022 Gwen Dewar, Ph.D., all rights reserved #author-byline-block_b4187306e91512f3959b29c621d25340 .author-byline-text{ font-size: 16px; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); } Developmental toys and educational games for kids are relatively recent inventions. Do they work? Throughout most of human history, children got little or no formal instruction. Instead, they learned by imitation, and by...
© 2008 – 2022 Gwen Dewar, Ph.D., all rights reserved #author-byline-block_9b6098fb86bae8ab54c9f1af5bcd649d .author-byline-text{ font-size: 16px; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); } Toy blocks, also called “building blocks,” are solid shapes used for construction play. Some are simple planks made of wood. Others are fancier, like the interlocking bricks of plastic made by LEGO...
© 2009 – 2022 Gwen Dewar, Ph.D., all rights reserved #author-byline-block_622fe03440d70 .author-byline-text{ font-size: 16px; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); } Tangrams for kids: A learning tool for building STEM skills Like building blocks, tangrams can teach kids about spatial relationships. They may help kids learn geometric terms, and develop stronger problem...
Studies suggest the answer is yes…if the game has these particular features. © 2008 – 2022 Gwen Dewar, Ph.D., all rights reserved #author-byline-block_63179b880f58e .author-byline-text{ font-size: 16px; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); } You might not expect much from a preschool board game. Players roll dice, or spin a spinner, and move...
Want to participate in research? Studies posted here are being conducted by researchers in the behavioral and cognitive sciences. As a rule, each project has been approved by a college or university ethics board. However, before you participate, you should always read the information carefully to make sure you are...
© 2009 – 2022 Gwen Dewar, Ph.D., all rights reserved #author-byline-block_6230dcd5b3d75 .author-byline-text{ font-size: 16px; color: rgb(34, 34, 34); } What is “the Mozart effect”? In the popular culture, “the Mozart effect” refers to the claim that listening to Mozart’s music can increase your general intelligence, or IQ. In the scientific community,...
The college domino effect started a few years ago in our house. With five kids, we knew it loomed on the horizon since the days when they were little tykes, convinced that swimming in a plastic pool in the front yard was as close to paradise as one could get. ...
Choosing which type of formal education for our children hasn’t been easy. As a teacher, the cons of the different systems have typically spoken the loudest to me. However, now that we have three school-aged children, I feel like we’ve stepped into a good rhythm with solid expectations for our...
When others hear that we chose to switch from public school to homeschooling pre-COVID-19 (literally months before), I receive lots of questions. First, please understand that what I share and how I share it is not meant to cause anyone to feel like they need to do what we do,...
Months before we got married and years before we became parents, my husband and I sat down and discussed where we would send our hypothetical children to school. OK, technically, I sat my husband down and fired a series of questions at him from a “before you get married” book...
I sat in a student missions training seminar about 6 months ago. What we were facing that week consisted of sleeping on floors, engaging refugee families who didn’t speak much English, teaming up with unfamiliar people, and adhering to someone else’s schedule—which means late nights and early mornings. In our...
Mom, will you play with me? Pause. Something happens when we become adults. We start to think about education, food, paying the bills, serving, and laundry. Oh, the laundry! Summer hits, and many of us don’t have the same luxury to toss caution to the wind and spend endless hours...
Let’s be honest, shall we? Studying the Bible as a family can seem intimidating. As the developer of an at-home Bible survey curriculum for families, Bible Road Trip™, I get emails from parents who find reading the Bible with kids to be daunting. A lot of emails. Most of the...
© 2008 – 2021 Gwen Dewar, Ph.D., all rights reserved A preschool science experiment is an opportunity to introduce children to the concepts of observation, prediction, and testing (Gelman and Brenneman 2004). Exciting? Yes. But it’s also tricky. On the one hand, research suggests that young children don’t think as...
