Brain Gym Exercises – Effective Intervention for Learning Difficulties

‘It is the full activation and balance of all parts of our mind body system that allows us to become effective, productive thinkers
- Carla Hannaford -(SMART MOVES – Why Learning is not all in your head)

Is your child struggling at school?
Are you awaiting a professional assessment for your child?
Perhaps you are already some way down that path of acquiring a ‘professional diagnosis.’ …and after that diagnosis comes the question of what programmes can be put in place to effect progress.

Are you aware that there is something you can be doing with your child, yourself in the meantime that will really make a difference. Dyspraxia, Dyslexia, ADD, ADHD, Autistic Spectrum Disorders and non-specific learning difficulties, can all be helped by performing 2 simple exercises daily for a short period of time.

This article is not overly concerned with diagnosis and labelling, but more with the practical application of effective intervention. While complex and costly programmes tend to command more interest and respect, simple solutions often have the most profound results.

Think back to a time when you marvelled at the simplicity of a wonderful new invention and questioned why no-one had ever thought of it before. Brain Gym Exercises are not new and are used widely throughout UK schools and across the world. The main barrier to their use is the notion that they are too simple to work.

These simple exercises are based on the copyrighted work of Paul E. Dennison, Ph.D., and Gail E. Dennison. Brain Gym is a registered trademark of Brain Gym® International. Brain Gym Exercises are taken from an alternative therapy called Applied Kinesiology.

According to Wikipedia, Applied Kinesiology, along with many other alternative therapies including homeopathy and acupuncture does not stand up to scientific scrutiny. There is much controversy currently regarding the neuro-scientific basis of Applied Kinesiology. To its opponents, its success has been attributed to a

Placebo effect.
(The placebo effect is the measurable, observable, or felt improvement in health or behaviour not attributable to a medication or treatment that has been administered.
Hawthorn effect.
- a term which has been broadened to mean that people’s behaviour and performance change following any new or increased attention.

You know, for me these exercises are a skill-set, that most children have achieved comfortably by a certain age. We have received many children into school who have not achieved their developmental ‘milestones’ at the appropriate age and who have not received any intervention at all.My experiences have demonstrated considerable improvement for hundreds of children in:-

attention
hand-eye co-ordination
non-verbal learning skills
organisational skills
written work
self-esteem.

Even if this success were attributable to ‘new or increased attention’ would that be so bad. These children’s self-esteem and their parents anxiety is considerable. How does science quantify and prove the value and effect of personal interaction I wonder?

I urge you to leave behind your limiting beliefs and give the ‘re-patterning’ Brain Gym Exercises a try.

Minimum effort – maximum gain
Research and evidence over 30 years shows it to have an impact across a range of learning difficulties.
Use just 2 daily movement exercises.
There are many exercises, but using just 2 daily, you will see progress.
Requires no specialist equipment or specialist knowledge
Details are given on my website for Cross-Crawl and Lazy Eights.
Takes just a few minutes daily It can easily be fitted into your daily routine.
One mother and her son did it while his toast was cooking each morning.
Can de done with children of all ages
Parents can do it with babies and toddlers
Can be done individually or in groups
Teachers and teaching assistants can use it prior to any group-work sessions.

I believe strongly in minimum effort – maximum gain. Simple solutions are under-rated. Where is the harm? There is nothing to lose and everything to gain. Time spent wisely together that produces lasting results!

Pauline is a retired Specialis Teacher for children with Special Needs. She has also trained in Applied Kinesiology, Neuro-Linguistic-Programming and is a Life Coach. She used all these extensively in her work and her personal life.

To read more about Applied Kinesiology please visit her website at: http://happinesspages.com/applied-kinesiology.html

For more information about the specific Brain Gym Exercises and how to implement them please visit: http://happinesspages.com/brain-gym-exercises.html

 

Pauline Oliver is a retired specialist teacher and SENCO. She trained in Educational Kinesiology and NLP LIfe Coaching alongside her teaching career and used it extensively in her work.

She is now committed to being happy. By sharing her experiences, tools and reources she hopes to encourage others to achieve their goal of being happy.


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healthybrainandbodybh.com Non Verbal Learning Disabilities
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Learning Toys – What To Look For How To Choose

Learning toys are a hot market, but don’t get caught up in the rush to get the technology that will be obsolete next year.

Keep it Simple

Just about as soon as a baby can hold something in his hand, he loves to manipulate things. Passing objects from hand-to-hand, examining them from all sides, and seeing what happens when they are stacked up – and knocked down – teaches your baby about cause and effect and gravity and enhances hand-eye coordination. Simple stacking toys (blocks of various sizes that form a tower, for instance), or rings that can be stacked on a stationary base are wonderful for your baby’s motor skills. If the stacking pieces rattle or squeak, all the better for baby’s fun.

Babies love to experiment with what goes where, so any toys that involve sorting are sure to please. So long as the pieces are large enough for your baby to grasp and not put in his mouth, toys that fit inside of other toys will delight him.

The Classics

No doubt you fondly remember the classic toys from your childhood that taught you fine motor skills and spatial relations while you thought you were just having fun. Puzzles and blocks are wonderful learning toys that can be handed down to younger siblings (so long as you don’t lose the pieces). Look for sturdy, non-toxic puzzles that are suited to your child’s age, and blocks that will hold up under hours of use. Legos, for instance, come in a variety of sizes, from large blocks made for young babies to detailed sets for school-aged children.

Hand puppets encourage children to tell stories and to experiment with different voices and point of view. A variety of animal puppets will keep your preschooler happy inventing plots and resolving conflicts.

School-aged children love hands-on learning and experimentation. While you probably don’t want a chemistry set in your basement, bug habitats, ant farms, and microscopes will keep your budding scientist busy in the back yard making predictions and testing hypotheses.

Basic art supplies — markers, crayons, heavy construction paper, and safety scissors – will encourage your child to express himself through the visual arts while also improving fine motor and spatial relations skills, as well as teach about texture, shape, and composition.

Keep it Safe

To ensure your child’s safety, check the manufacturer’s suggested age when selecting toys. A good rule of thumb to follow is that if a toy can fit through an empty toilet tissue tube, it could choke a child under about age three, and is therefore inappropriate for small children.

There have been numerous toys recalled because of their lead paint levels, and many stores post recall notices and remove those toys from their shelves. For a list of recalled toys, check the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s site.

Inexpensive crayons and chalk may also contain lead, so be sure that the products you buy conform to ASTM standards, which should be clearly marked on the label.

Since children learn through play, you don’t need elaborate technology or complicated toys to help them learn. Keeping simple, safe toys available to them will encourage their natural curiosity and desire to learn. Have fun!

Katie Franklin is a researcher and writer on parenting, children and child development. She is a regular contributor at Child Development Media Inc She also contributes at Quality Toys and Hobbies


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Logic Puzzles – Solve a Case like Sherlock Holmes

Have you ever read the mysteries of Sherlock Holmes? He could solve any case with ease by deducing the answer from the clues. He examined the individual clues of the case and then pieced them together to find the culprit. He could even figure out how the perpetrator completed his criminal act. His case solving skills were based largely around logical reasoning.

Logical reasoning is an important skill in many areas of life besides criminal cases. Effective logical reasoning plays a key role in engineering when designing machinery, systems, and logistical procedures. Logical reasoning is also present in event planning, finance, and many areas of science. Logic plays a role in nearly every situation through your different choices. The manner in which you proceed through each item affects the entire product.

Hypotheses and conclusions can be deduced and supported through logic which is an important stepping stone to success. Since logic is such a valuable skill it is essential to build your logical muscle. Historically children have been exposed to formal logic problems at a very young age beginning as early as elementary school. They commonly learn to solve logic problems in their mathematics class. There are many scenarios for logic problems.

Logic problems consist of a set of clues, usually in the form of statements, which students must take into account when solving the problem. For example, a basic logic problem could involve determining the favorite color of five different characters. Enough clues will be given so that the student can match up each character with their correct favorite color. The student does the matching through following the clues and also deducing the rest of the information based on the clues.

Procedures and tips to solve the logic problem are presented. Specifically, a teacher will demonstrate how to set up a grid that contains the character names in one column and the list of colors along a row on the top of the grid. Students are instructed to follow the clues to reduce their list of possible matches. They learn how each choice can affect every piece of information in their solution. It is a game of logic because you do this in a systematic manner and you ascertain information logically or by deduction.

However, it is of great benefit to the student if they attempt to solve the logic problem through their own methods first. This trial and error period of practice helps children become independent thinkers and figure out the problem themselves. Discovering the way to solve a problem will be cemented in a child’s mind if they attempt to solve it on their own first as opposed to just being given the problem procedure and answer.

Logic problems can range in complexity. Beginning logic problems focus on matching up pairs of items based on a few constraints. Whereas advanced logic problems can center on deducing matches with several components and constraints. This allows logic problems to be fun for players of all ages and skill levels. Logic problems can be applied to an endless number of situations so you can never quite master every logic problem imaginable.

You can purchase books of fun logic problems at your book store. They are a nice alternative to crosswords and a great way to spend a rainy afternoon. You will keep your mind sharp and feel satisfied when you correctly figure out the puzzle. You can be a detective, like Sherlock Holmes, from the comfort of your own home.

Steve is a member of the GrandMatrix team. Read more articles, download the latest PC games for free and play thousands of user submitted puzzles, quizzes and word games at GrandMatrix Free Game Downloads


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MBA in India ? A Vast Horizon

Management education is demanding attention from the young generation not only in India but also throughout the globe. An MBA degree is often perceived as the right way to reach the zenith of success. Such notion is not a fantasy but a hard reality. Managing a business has never been a piece of cakewalk and it becomes tougher when global economy is shambling. A manager has to sail the boat to the safest shore even during financial disaster, be it mild or malign. The program of MBA in India is a conscious effort to produce a flock of efficient managers who can help their organizations stand tall come hell or heaven.

Being regarded as a cultural hub to the foreigners, India has always been a destination to color one’s dream in the arena of higher education. Nowadays, students from all over the globe come to India to pursue advanced educational programs. MBA in India tops the list of their choices. This is an index to the fact that management program in India is at par with the global standard. There are many a top-tier management school in India. All the aspiring candidates nourish the dream of joining there, but a few outstanding ones have all the makings to get through the screening tests. New institutes are taking entry into the field of MBA in India. So, the canvas of management education is teeming with many a new entity.

Executive MBA in India is also very popular with the working professionals. This sort of management education is specifically designed and developed to hone up the latent skills of the working adults. The course curriculum of the executive MBA in India does not differ from that of the full-time management program. Such programs generally stretch over three years and require the applicants to have a bachelor degree along with three to five years of work experience. Some institutes raise the bar of eligibility criteria by demanding at least 50% marks in graduation. Instead of joining the regular MBA in India, some young guys prefer to enter into the job arena and after gaining some work experience register into the program of management for the executives. They want to rivet their on-job training with the formal education. Even some professionals in their late thirties are joining the executive management program in order to evolve themselves in keeping with the ever changing needs of the industry.

When it comes to imparting management education in India, distance learning in India is worth mentioning. As the first rated B-schools always distillate the meritorious candidates, therefore the filtered-out candidates often take shelter under the canopy of inferior schools of MBA in India. But it is better if they earn their degrees through distance learning mode. It will help them save a whooping sum of money as well as precious time. Distance learning in India has also gained trust from the professionals as they find no time to join even a part time executive level program. With relaxed eligibility criteria and flexible features, distance learning in India is the rising sun in the horizon of Indian education.

Samantha Desouza is doing her MBA in India from India. For more information on distance learning in India she recommends you to visit http://www.rdi.co.uk/


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Keith Grochow, Steven L. Martin, Aaron Hertzmann, Zoran Popović We present an inverse kinematics system based on a learned model of human poses. Given a set of constraints, our system can produce the most likely pose satisfying those constraints, in realtime. Training the model on different input data leads to different styles of IK. The model is represented as a probability distribution over the space of all possible poses. This means that our IK system can generate any pose, but prefers poses that are most similar to the space of poses in the training data. We represent the probability with a novel model called a Scaled Gaussian Process Latent Variable Model. The parameters of the model are all learned automatically; no manual tuning is required for the learning component of the system. We additionally describe a novel procedure for interpolating between styles. Our style-based IK can replace conventional IK, wherever it is used in computer animation and computer vision. We demonstrate our system in the context of a number of applications: interactive character posing, trajectory keyframing, real-time motion capture with missing markers, and posing from a 2D image.

Lsat Logic Games How Can This Have Anything to Do With Law School?

Here’s a typical LSAT Logic Games question:

Nine housewives – Alice, Barbara, Carol, Delores, Evelyn, Francis, Gertrude, Hillary, and Ingrid – will be shopping at Safeway this week. They may shop on either Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday. Exactly three housewives will shop on each of these days. The following conditions apply:

1. Barbara will shop on Tuesday.

2. Carol and Francis must shop on the same day.

3. Alice and Evelyn must shop on the same day.

4. Gertrude and Hillary cannot shop on the same day.

5. Barbara and Ingrid cannot shop on the same day.

6. Carol and Ingrid cannot shop on the same day.

If Alice shops on Tuesday, and Carol shops on Monday, which of the following must be true?

A. Gertrude shops on Monday.

B. Gertrude shops on Wednesday.

C. Hillary shops on Monday.

D. Delores shops on Wednesday.

E. Francis shops on Wednesday.

I’m not going to waste all of our time by explaining why, but the correct answer is D (Delores shops on Wednesday). I have neither the patience nor the expertise to teach you how to reach this solution, but if you want to excel on the Law School Admission Test (LSAT) you had better be able to answer any question like that within 30-40 seconds.

Is this really possible? Yes, by seeking professional instruction and taking hundreds of LSAT practice tests, you can master the LSAT Logic Games.

Which brings us back to the question posted in the subtitle: How can this have anything to do with law school?

Well, I don’t have any inside information, but the LSAT in general is designed to address skills and abilities that are considered vital for success in law school (note, not in the legal profession). The Logic Games section in particular addresses the prospective law student’s ability to comprehend complicated factual scenarios, analyze arguments and reach reliable conclusions – largely by elimination weaker positions.

I can attest that these skills are indeed important to your law school success. Obviously, facts like those in the question above have nothing to do with law school or legal practice. The intellectual ability to deal with such situations, however, is absolutely necessary.

The thing about law school, and the LSAT, that is fortunate for those of us who may be less-than-brilliant, is that everything you need to know is in the question. You don’t need to know the quadratic equation, the elements in the periodic table or any other background information. You must simply analyze the information you are given and reach the best conclusion.

The practice of law is very similar, but we’ll get to that in a few years…

This article may be freely reprinted or distributed in its entirety in any ezine, newsletter, blog or website. The author’s name, bio and website links must remain intact and be included with every reproduction.

My long time friend and mentor H. Jefferson, Jr. is an expert on on law school admission, having applied to and been admitted by 11 of the top law schools in the United States. To learn more about the the techniques and strategies you can use to get into the law school of your choice, visit lawschoolacademics.blogspot.com


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