Eastwood Education

During her teaching career Helena has developed multisensory teaching materials designed to support child-directed discovery learning. She has already presented most of this compendium of didactic teaching materials, games and creative experiences as a data base of resources that are now being compiled on theEastwood Education website. Helena hopes this website will encourage and support those who would like to use her methods within their own home and working environment.

The true master successfully supports others to discover for themselves what s/he can already do with natural ease. The apprentice thereby learns, over a period of time, to achieve his own potential of excellence through interrelated skills of attention to detail, authentic passion and genuine understanding.

Many of the Eastwood games and activities presented can be simplified into smaller steps or stages to suit different age groups and levels of ability. Some of the activities are presented with optional levels of complexity and challenge. Never the less the Eastwood approach promotes an open ended potential for discovery learning and therefore the level of stimulation and challenge is only considered too much if a participant is unwilling to participate from their own personal incentive. The Eastwood approach does not demand correct answers but creatively incorporates suitable aspects of any person’s contribution. The focus is on trusting that participants will learn to tailor random and misguided responses through their exposure to correct examples from other participants. The creative elements in the activities encourage inclusion of all aspects of response, from all contributing members. The more able players are thereby encouraged to identifying wrong answers and design a way to appropriately omit or accommodate these contributions correctly as the game continues. This inclusion of different levels of ability and participation, can offer an important extension to any individual’s own level of learning and communication skills. Working compassionately with mixed ages and levels of abilities can encourage everyone to participate more playfully and thereby dissolve negative social aspects of judgement and expectation that can be very damaging to the learner’s self-confidence. Any learning opportunity must include aspects of failure because all learning includes trying something not already learnt; it takes confidence and courage to try to do something that is new and thereby assumed difficult.

The Eastwood activities are designed to encourage successful learning but do not insist upon or demand a specified correct answer or performance. Just as the young child learns to speak the language or languages spoken to him form birth, similarly the Eastwood approach relies upon learning from example. Just as the parent celebrates the young child’s babbling as important early communication so the Eastwood activities embrace all levels of participation as a positive part a potential for learning.

Natural Play and Learning facilitates:-

• self-correction,
• internal self-discipline,
• the development and mastery of skills,
• co-operative interaction,
• broad spectrums of aesthetic appreciation and creativity.

Creative and imaginative aspects presented in learning activities encourage trial and error and thereby support the development of conceptual understanding.

Multi-sensory, self-directed learning can inspire creative experiences, activities and co-operative games.Multisensory integration creates depth and richness to our interaction with the world through the heart and soul-spirit. The Eastwood approach presents that multisensory creativity and co-operative interaction are the foundations of successful learning.

Did God fall ill? Or is He on holiday? Searching for somewhere playful and light hearted. For even I can see how clouded with heaviness humanity now seems to be. What is it that dulls the sweetness of our potential? Is it only a road of hardship and chaos that can soften our hardened hearts? And dissolve the necessities of our officious life-styles. Fortunate are we that the sweet songbirds still sing even when we don’t listen, And morning rays of sunshine reach tentatively into our visionless dreams and mundane offices. Has our industrialised world of efficiency drowned our association with nature joys? Distorted this noble realm with disruptions that disturb natural balance? Can we awaken from our cocoon like occupations, and again fly in delicate butterfly colours To seek and find the sweet nectar that revives our soul with natural harmonies, And strengthens dulled heartbeats into an audible celebration of nature’s blessings. – Love and light        Helena

Sadly much of our busy and chaotic present day lifestyle presents over-whelming levels of erratic stimulus and abstract demands. Then the chaotic intensity of unrelated stimulus over-whelms any possibility of meaningful learning. Thus enriched sensory integration and structural interaction with sensory information are lost within a Mire of distractions and demands. When multi-sensory presentation creates a sense of over-whelming stimulus or chaos, then foundations of understanding, and appropriate development of skills, can easily be lost.

Our ability to address practical aspects of learning is influenced by our knowledge and understanding of reality. Successful Living and Learning is achieved when ‘willed’ manipulation of our physical environment is combined with creative endeavour and positive social interaction.

The true art of teaching is to creatively present multisensory information and related skills through an integrated spectrum of accurate sensory information and conceptual communication.

Multisensory scaffolding for learning through Self-Directed Discovery could be defined as follows:-

1. Creative activity.
2. Didactic materials that present co-ordinated structures of information.

• Authentic social and physical interaction.

1. Co-operative games.
2. The organic development of experiential projects of enquiry.

Those responsible for the learning environment would ideally provide a harmonizing balance of care and encouragement in the form of:-

• Personal interaction : Compassion
  Boundaries
  Authenticity

• A safe physical environment with freedom to : Explore
  Experiment
  Creatively manipulate environmental resources

• A safe social environment whereby free play, creativity and child-directed learning are positively supported through : –
  Sharing and caring
  Reflective and complimentary interaction
  Independent and co-operative play:

Scaffolding learning from a multisensory perspective comes from the heart and soul-spirit connection. From this sweet place activities and interaction embraces a natural balancing of mental and physical activity. Whereby, harmonious combinations of both the abstract and structural aspects of creativity, organically integrate imagination with a tangible expression of creative interaction. Creativity, multisensory learning, aesthetic appreciation and divergent thinking plus some heart magic, is born when ideas, feelings and experiences flow togerther like the water within a stream; where an infinite freedom is contanined within the boundaryies of the geographical terain and the earthly laws of physics.

The approach to games and activities presented as ‘Eastwood Education’ is designed to encourage auditory discrimination, visual perceptual skills and sensory integration. Positive social interaction is an important basis for personal empowerment and self-directed discovery learning.

The work of the psychologist Dr. Rachel Pinney illustrated that learning was more successful with positive interactions than corrective feedback and she cited many outstanding real life illustrations that supported this theory:-

For example one family had two sons with a large age difference. The eldest son was very keen on playing chess and his parents encouraged this skill with extra lessons from skilled chess players. This son regularly competed successfully in chess tournaments against much older contestants.

The younger son was keen to join in this family interest but he was so young that no-one bothered to teach him the complexities of the game; they just let him join in with his pretend play. The older brother used his younger brother’s enthusiastic random and often incorrect moves as a challenging opportunity to practice his advanced skills.

The family travelled extensively to meet the older brothers growing levels of competitive success. The young brother spent a great deal of free time hanging out at the tournaments; his interest and chess playing skills also developed progressively, but his parents were completely focused on the older brothers outstanding levels of competitive success.

The end of this real life story was that the younger brother began to match and sometimes win games with his older brother and his chess playing friends. As he got older the younger brother started to beat his older brother and others at the tournaments. Ultimately this young man became one of the youngest world class chess players. A chess master told his family, after competing with their youngest son, that he used strategies that the world champion had never seen or used in his own games. The youngest son went on to successfully competed in world class chess tournaments against champions from all over the world. Whether this young man ever had any chess lessons the author did not find out from Rachel who knew the family personally. Rachel also travelled all over the world teaching people how to facilitate Child-Directed Learning. Rachel also pioneered Special Time and Creative Listening techniques. On several occasions she was requested to mediate at important discussions related to world peace negotiations.

At present formal academic success is often deemed important for personal happiness. This web site describes, in practical detail, Helena’s journey of learning with children and more importantly from children about children’s learning. It is hoped that the website meets our desires to scaffold foundations for learning; such that ‘multi-sensory discovery learning’facilitates and encourages later academic success and creative expression.

 

Spinning the Wheel of Life

During the early years the child subconsciously selects how s/he responds to environmental stimulation. By the age of three a child would normally have established self-directed play whereby the conscious will can organise how s/he responds to environmental stimulus.

Multi-sensory learning ideally requires environmental scaffolding that inspires:-

• broad spectrums of creativity and aesthetic appreciation,
• development and mastery of skills,
• self-correction,
• co-operative interaction and
• internal self-discipline.

Through our senses we recognise elements of our world that support inner assessment and judgement.

‘….thus you can now comprehend judging as a living bodily process that arises because your senses present you with a world analysed into parts…..Here the act of judgement becomes an expression of your entire human being.’ (Steiner 1996:144-145)

When consciously looking at our reactions and interactions we can consider all aspects of our lifeas part of our way forward to higher levels of consciousness. We can thereby acknowledge a sense of greater responsibility for what and how we experience what we bring towards ourselves, and what interaction we chose to follow.

Sensory integration may embrace a spectrum of intelligence that is unacknowledged by the participant and aspects of learning that may not be directly attributed to a specific aspect of a multi-sensory activity. Multi-sensory activities do not necessarily have a predetermined goal or measure of achievement.

Multi-sensory activities embrace a wealth of sensory experience whereby motivation and focus are intrinsically directed by environmental scaffolding. An expansive relationship with an indefinable potential presents qualities of creative engagement and supports future development of awareness.

Knowledge and skills are secondary to the abstract qualities of enjoyment, social interaction and pleasures of participation; then creative consequences extend like a gift beyond perceived normal boundaries and over-flow into new domains. Thus each individual’s unique human design is nurtured as a tender seedling.

………a new understanding of life and how it might be most joyfully and wonderfully experienced. Life will not be lived with an eye toward the Afterlife, but with an eye toward what is being created, expressed, and experienced at many levels of perception in the Holy Moment of Now. Humans will become increasingly aware that “now” is The Only Time There Is (TOTTI). [What God Wants by Neale Donald Walsch; Hodder Mobius, 2005:159]

Imbalance slows the wheel and thereby allows for:-

• a change of speed and direction;
• spring cleaning, maintenance, and repairs;
• safe systems of releasing unwanted baggage.
• Creativity is the gift of movement,

Joy is the gift of love.
Happiness is the gift of being present,
Peace is the gift of calm contemplation.
Gratitude is the gift of sharing,
Devotion is the gift of life.
Reverence is the gift of humility,
Patience is the gift of time.
The Interactive Wheel of Life
The way we energetically engage (give attention to) different aspects of the sensory stimulus presented by our environment could be described as three energetic choices of  interaction –

1)Reflective: Reflective experiences are those that are similar, or the same as, something related to us in person. Same or similar; ‘what is put out, comes back’ and ‘like attracts like’; negative attracts negative and positive attracts positive.

2) Complimentary – Complimentary experiences are those that are found on either end of theissue, whereby the centre point presents balance. Complimentary experiences can be seen as influences that aid harmony, balance and holistic perspectives. For example,Yin and yang: opposites, day and night, happy and sad; attraction to love and avoidance of danger. Complementary differences can bring neutral status or balance, such as: action and reaction; cause and effect; magnetic polarisation; abstract and concrete; thoughts and feelings; creative talents and practical skills

3) Associative: The will – the ‘ego’ the ‘I’, has an authoritative power over what association we seek and how we engage with these chosen areas of sensory perception and responding interaction. What gains our attention and subsequent interaction initiates our human capacity to interact and contemplate. The human powers of association are pre-dominantly guided by the three levels of consciousness: subconscious, conscious working mind and higher consciousness.

A simple example of the above 1-3 can be observed if a person notes what catches his/her attention when walking through a crowd of people.

1. Reflective: We may notice a particular person’s dress colour because it is a colour that we like and have chosen to wear ourselves, (reflective of our personal choice).
2. Complimentary: We may also note the sad expression on a person’s face because it presents a contrasting opposite to our own happy disposition, (illustrating a complementary opposite).
3. Associative: Alternatively something that aesthetically pleases may bring us to a pause for a few moments of internal contemplation and deeper focus, (internal association).

Our lives are suspended in an ocean of potential for interactive experience.

When we experience things that happen in our environment as impersonal and unrelated to our personal growth, we may miss opportunities that can help us attain personal empowerment and invoke our humanitarian potential–that of:-

• How we use our free will,
• Develop our intelligence
• And relate to the natural resources presented on this our planet earth.

Our lives are suspended in an ocean of interactive experience. The three types of interaction previously described are ‘key’ to all our interactions and relationships. They are like three spokes on the wheel of life. When these three spooks are evenly distributed and of equal strength, the wheel spins with balance and a steady momentum that supports our sense of wellbeing and encourages patience, creativity and harmony.

If the three spooks are uneven in their influence, the wheel can become very wobbly and thus lose its stability, momentum and versatility.
For example:-

• Reflective The Autism spectrum could be considered a predominance of a reflective relationship with the environment which leads to a focus on imitative and obsessional behaviour patterns. The dominance of copied repetitive forms of behaviour excludes the possibility for successful development of self-directed learning, creative expression and personal independence.
• Associative A parent can share authentic imaginative play and creativity with their child. However, if this imaginative play becomes the main style and focus of interaction, the parent could ultimately lose contact with their adult carer
• Complimentary When an adult partnership within an intimate relationship, involves a predominance of opposites their styles of interaction, strengths and issues of priority, may be felt as a form of separation. The couple may therefore over a period of time suffer from a lack of confidence in themselves as individuals. When we can share things together from a similar perspective this helps us to appreciate who we are and we can gain a comfortable feeling from those aspects of life that are easiest and familiar.

When I feel love I see beauty.

When I feel grace I hear comforting sounds.

When I feel gratitude I perceive mercy.

When I have faith I feel the compassion of His love.

12 Points for Encouraging and Scaffolding Child-Directed Learning

1) Encourage exploration and personal discovery rather than showing the learner how to do something or giving the answers.

2) The Emotional environment is as important as the intellectual environment.

3) Trust the child will know the right time to begin learning formal skills. For example children who begin to reader later than considered normal often develop greater comprehension skills and faster reading speeds than theirpeers who learnt to read at a younger age.[Helena Eastwood considers that ideally seven years is the earliest and fourteen the latest age for optimum development of comprehensive reading, writing and spelling skills in one’s native language]

4) Ask a supportive question that encourages discovery learning instead of giving the answer. For example if the question is ‘How do you spell sat?’

The answer could be ‘Do you know how to spell ‘hat’.

Question what is difference between…….sat and hat?

Could you now have a go at spelling sat?

If the child and adult helper cannot find a successful way of establishing a discovery learning approach to the child’s needs, it would normally suggest that the child is venturing beyond their present learning potential. When the adult does something for the child, without engaging in a shared learning process, then the child moves away from his/her learning potential and becomes dependent upon the adult’s level of ability. When this happens a child can feel dissatisfied with his/her own notably lower level of ability, and loss confidence in his/her own learning and progress.

5) Present desired skills and information in a concrete format that can be seen and experienced instead of verbally describing a way to do it.

For example: when pouring from a jug lift the container up under the spout before beginning to pour then slowly lower the container once the flow of the pouring has been established successfully.

6 Avoid presenting verbal interruptions or personal comments/judgements on what the learner is doing.

7) Encourage the 3 Es’ Enthusiasm, exploration & experimentation.

8) Avoid distracting children away from being fully absorbed and focussed on what and how they want to do something for themselves. Discovery learning will always involve learning by trial and error. A child will not feel happy to immediately stop doing something that is important to their learning, and they will not be happy to accept the adult’s attempt to distract them into another activity.

9) Multisensory delivery of the material and the discovery of information will facilitate a higher potential for learning.

10) Child-Directed Learning embracesthe art of adapting information acquired through previous learning experiences to aid discovery of further information, understanding and skill. It is a natural part of play and learning and results are always superior to directed and copied experiences promoted by rote learning techniques. Self- directed learning is naturally self-motivated and results are always more satisfying than copied rote learning techniques and learning experiencethat has been directed by someone else! [Even if the person is a helpful? expert!]

11) Maximise free play in natural outdoor environments and other simple, aesthetically pleasing, child friendly environments.

When children are over-stimulated they can lose their natural ability to play happily and then adults can find themselves making unwise compromises: When the ‘I don’t think I agree with  …..’ response become a ‘yes, it’s alright,’ and the ‘you shouldn’t really’ becomes ‘it’s OK I’ll pretend I can’t see.’

Dominantly visually stimulating environments are commonly associated with man-made systems of entertainment, confinementandrestraint; e.g. buggies, car seats, or sit in bouncy chairs and harnesses and other sit-in roll around device, and  media entertainment: TV, computer and video games.

In general adult contrived entertainment supports an externally specified repertoire of repeated responses to a man-made environmental stimulus.TV, computer and video games provide visual entertainment which has minimal potential for new learning due to the lack of personal endeavour, i.e. physical and social interaction

Examples of over-stimulating environments that do not support natural development, multisensory learning and self-directed discovery learning:-

• Repetitively reactive man-made toys that are usually battery operated.
• Junk food, sugary sweets, chocolate and coffee and peppermint.
• Theme parks, indoor swimming pools and gymnasiums.
• Prolonged or excessive periods in confined man made spaces with artificial lighting, e.g. supermarkets and shopping precincts, long car journeys.
• Dominating adult speeds of activity and adult schedules.
• Libertarianism, I can do anything I want, and you can do anything you Rigid routines, and mechanical or theatrical styles of response that exclude individuality and authenticity.
• Exclusive forms of play with pre-determined play materials e.g. Small Lego, Barbie dolls.
• When verbal communication is too loud, intense or too heavy and it creates verbal domination and verbal overwhelm.
• Adult initiated/motivated/enforced apprenticeship into clubs and classes, e.g. ballet or boxing. [Only when attendance is genuinely child motivated and appropriate to the child’s ability, personality, age and development will the child develop a genuine empathy, interest and personally valued talent.]
• Adult entertainment-adults social events, cinema, theatre, dining out etc.
• Television, films and computer games

Fortunately the modern crystal screens do not present issues around the subconsciously received fast flickering effects from the conventional television. However, there is still some concern around the young child’s visual perceptual experiences when watching screens. This is because the young child is thought to absorb everything he sees as important to his learning about the world around him/her. S/he is thereby obliged to make some form of relationship between what is seen on the TV and his real experiences; his ability to do this can produce some very distorted perspectives on life. The level of visual stimulus from screen viewing may be so overwhelmingly strong that a child’s natural multisensory learning may become dominated by visual information. Also, the natural balance of physical, mental and emotional integration seen in normal play is disrupted and this may subsequently limit the child’s learning potential.

12)  A good healthy diet can help promote; physical fitness, mental focus and concentration, intellectual potential, and a calm and assertive attitude towards learning through play.