The National Day holiday coincides with the trial operation of the newly settled Montessori Early Education Park opposite the community. I couldn't stand the repeated invitations from my neighbor Ma Bao, so I took my children to see it.

It is a well-known early education institution. On the first day of trial operation, it attracted many parents to understand. Even in the bustling crowd, I saw my familiar friend kitten. She and her husband are both only children, and now their parents and four old people are here to help them look after their children over two years old. It can be said that there are enough people to look after the baby. I saw that she consulted seriously, and she seemed to have signed up, so I asked her, "Do you want to sign up for Xin Wei? Four old people are here, how nice it is to bring them at home. "

The kitten said, "if you take it home, you will only eat, drink and be merry, and you will learn nothing." You have to do something. You have lost at the starting line before you go to kindergarten, so you must get it. " But early education classes are really expensive, and they are charged according to class hours. Hundreds of classes, I am also very sore ... "

As a parent, I understand the anxiety and entanglement of kittens: in today's very popular early education, you should not go up, so as not to drag your child's hind legs, let him lose at the starting line and fall behind others early; Come on, the cost of early education for hundreds of classes is daunting.

The main reason for our entanglement is that we don't have a correct understanding of early education, mistakenly equate early education with early education classes, and think that early education must be carried out under the leadership of teachers in early education classes. In fact, this is all wet. The purpose of early education is to develop children's potential intelligence, physical fitness and thinking ability, while the early education class is only a venue and the teacher is only a guide. If you want to hand over the task of early education to early education classes and teachers, you must pay for the venue and manpower.

It is said that family is a child's first school and parents are a child's first teacher, which also applies to early education. As long as parents are willing to take the time to learn the knowledge of early education, persistently educate their children correctly, and be willing to accompany their children attentively and integrate early education into all aspects of daily life, even if they take it at home every day, you will reap a straight-a child who is no less than going to and from early education classes every day.

So, what do you need to do early education at home?

0 1. Cultivate children's metacognitive ability

Cheetah CEO Fu Sheng once said: "The most essential difference between people is the cognitive gap." The cognitive gap between people depends almost entirely on the strength of metacognitive ability.

What is metacognitive ability? It refers to the cognition and understanding of one's own thinking process, so that one can not only think positively, but also know what one is thinking, and then judge whether one's thinking mode and result are correct and reasonable, so as to correct one's wrong thinking mode or result.

For example, when reading a book, some people read it as if they had never read it. Some people will analyze the author's writing ideas, logical thinking framework, how to set the characters, how to develop the plot, and what is the author's point of view? This ability of active thinking and reflection is metacognitive ability.

People with high metacognitive ability will think about the hidden meaning through superficial phenomena, constantly reflect, check and improve, so as to draw inferences; People with weak metacognitive ability can only see mountains and water, and their understanding of things stays at the most basic level.

This is why there is little difference between learning based on basic recitation and relying solely on memory in the lower grades, but the gap is obviously widened after entering the higher grades based on understanding and analysis.

To put it bluntly, metacognitive ability is the ability to actively learn and be good at using the brain, which needs to be cultivated from an early age to gradually form. Through the following three points, children's metacognitive ability can be effectively cultivated.

00 1 Ask children heuristic questions frequently.

It is very important to guide children to think by asking questions and cultivate the habit of independent thinking.

For example, after reading the picture book Little Red Riding Hood, we can ask the children: Why the wolf hasn't woken up after his stomach was cut open, why he can go to the river to drink water without dying, and so on. Through this kind of guided questioning, children can find some loopholes that obviously violate common sense and form critical thinking. In this way, by asking a few more questions, children will gradually cultivate their ability to find problems and think independently, instead of staying in the stage of trusting books.

It should be noted that due to children's young age and weak language organization ability, they may not be able to form a complete answer to the question for a while. Even so, we should insist on asking questions, because the fact that he can't answer doesn't mean that he hasn't thought, but the process of thinking itself is the result we want.

002 guide children to draw inferences from others, learn and use flexibly.

Confucius once said to his students: "Take a corner, not three corners, and there is nothing." It means: "I'll give you one aspect, and you should be flexible in thinking of other aspects." If you can't, I won't teach you again. "

This is exactly the same as the idiom "draw inferences from one instance to another": to learn one thing, you should think flexibly and apply it to other similar things.

The most effective way for children to learn before thinking and realize after thinking is to draw inferences from others and use them flexibly.

V Da J, a famous parenting teacher, gave a good example: when teaching children to calculate arithmetic 4+3=7, we can not only use hand index 4, then count to 3 to get seven fingers, but also use matchsticks and other tools to simultaneously add 6, 65, 438+0, 5, 2, 4, 3 to make children realize the result.

There are many such scenes in life. As long as you are willing to use, you can find early education materials everywhere.

A child is a blank sheet of paper with rich imagination and unlimited creativity. We should seize this stage and do more exercises to draw inferences from others, so that they can learn from others and spread their ideas.

003 Protect children's innate curiosity and thirst for knowledge

Curiosity is one of the greatest characteristics of children. They always have a hundred thousand questions about why they want to ask. Some problems are taken for granted by us adults, and we never think about why. For example, why leaves have different shapes, why snails can't run fast, why sunflowers face the sun, and so on.

Some questions can be answered at once, while more questions may not be answered. In fact, it doesn't matter if you can't answer, because asking questions is a kind of thinking, and what is more important than answering is the way we deal with problems.

For the question that we can't answer, we can respond to the child like this: The question you asked is very interesting and worth studying, but I don't know the answer. Let's find the answer together. Then go to the library, go to nature or ask more professionals for advice until you get the answer. This careless attitude will definitely make children have the desire to explore the truth at all times.

But if we always treat children's questions as practical jokes or ignore them, it will seriously dampen their curiosity, and they will not ask you questions on their own initiative in the future, because they know what kind of response they will get.

02. Cultivate children's growth thinking mode.

The classic says: "A person's mental model determines his fate."

Mental model, also known as mental model, refers to our deep assumptions, images and stories about ourselves, others, organizations and the world around us, and is deeply limited by thinking, fixed thinking and existing knowledge.

To put it bluntly, mental model is the way we organize and deal with the world, which can make us have different interpretations of different things and produce different emotions.

There are two kinds of thinking in mental model: growth thinking and fixed thinking.

Growth thinking is characterized by being able to constantly discover one's own abilities and actively challenge, solve new problems, have goals and have a positive cycle.

The fixed mode of thinking shows the characteristics of unwilling to explore the world, unwilling to face difficult problems, and always trying to avoid injury, criticism and praise.

Carol Dwek, a professor of psychology at Stanford University, said: "People with a growth-oriented thinking mode are more likely to achieve extraordinary achievements." It can be seen that good thinking is the wealth of a lifetime and is worth cultivating as early as possible. Specifically, we can start from the following points:

00 1 Evaluate children correctly

This kind of appropriate evaluation can let children know what they have done well and what they have not done well, instead of simply attributing the result to talent and falling into the wrong consciousness that they are talented and can work hard, but they are useless without talent.

Dare to let children try failures and setbacks.

What people are afraid of is not failure, but that they have no courage to try.

However, in this world, it is impossible to have smooth sailing forever. You can't escape some difficulties, and you can't escape some setbacks. A person who has never experienced failure and blow will often be at a loss when facing these difficulties. So we should cultivate frustration quotient as early as possible.

For example, children always fail to build Lego models, showing anger or giving up. At this time, we'd better not say, "You are really useless. Why are you angry if you can't make it yourself? " On the contrary, we should show understanding and concern for the difficulties faced by children. "This model is really difficult. Even the matrix can't be made at once. Otherwise, let's try again together. I believe it will be successful. "

With your active mobilization, children will not only know that it is normal to encounter difficulties, but also realize that persistence is the solution in the face of difficulties.

03. Cultivate children's self-control

Gorky said: "Every time you restrain yourself, you will make yourself stronger." This shows the importance of self-control.

Children generally have no resistance to temptation, and they want what they want immediately, not for a moment. This is a child's nature and can also be improved through guidance. The specific method can follow the following process:

Satisfy him emotionally-delay in behavior-make rules, make promises-keep promises.

Emotional satisfaction means that when a child cries for something, we don't criticize him, but love him, let him know that his needs are understood, then tell him why he can't get it right away, discuss with him when he can get it, and take the initiative to honor his promise after the time.

It should be noted that the promise must be fulfilled, and you can't write a bad check. Let the children know that I am rewarded for controlling myself, and then I am willing to control myself. Otherwise, if I lose my child's trust, he will only ask for more.

For young children, we can also let them learn to wait physically through games, such as "one, two, three logs" and "stop at the red light and go at the green light". After learning to wait physically, they will take the initiative to discipline themselves.

We all know that early education is to cultivate excellent children, and excellent children should not only have smart minds, but also have strong hearts and good self-control. As long as we use the right education methods, we can still do early education at home easily, saving money and not running around. Why not?