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.

Children are often more aware of our inner feelings than we are ourselves.  A young child’s safety may depend upon how well he can assess the adult carer’s mood and emotional disposition.  The child’s happiness is directly related to the happiness felt and expressed by his carer.  An unhappy adult who is denying his/her unhappiness is unlikely to be able to sustain the happiness and wellbeing of the young child. Intimacy demands a level of authenticity beyond that needed for everyday living. Authenticity is essential to our ability to relate socially and safely with each other.

3) Trust the child will know the right time to begin learning formal skills. For example children who begin reading later than considered normal, have developed greater comprehension skills and faster reading speeds than other children who learned to read earlier.

4) Ask a leading question instead of giving the answer.

Example: Child: How do you spell sat

Adults: What is difference between sat and bat? Child: Bat starts with ‘b’.

Adult: What sound does sat start with? Child: Sat starts with ‘s’

Adult: 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, 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 thereby becomes increasingly dependent upon the adult’s superior level of ability. When this happens a child/person can feel dissatisfied with his/her own notably lower level of ability, and loss confidence in his/her own learning potential and progress.

5) Show the desired skill/information in concrete form that can be seen and experienced through self-motivated imitation. We need to find ways to share by example instead of verbal description and directions and commands.

6) Avoid presenting verbal interruptions or comments on what the learner is doing.

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

8) Avoid distracting the learner/child away from concentrated focus. It is favourable for the learner to resist help, alternative activities and entertaining distractions when learning is in progress. Frustration is more likely to be expressed when learning is disturbed by outside influences than personal lack of skill.

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

10) Child Directed Learning – the art of adapting the information acquired through previous learning experiences to aid discovery of further information, understanding and skills. Self- directed learning is natural and results are always more satisfying than those acquired through imitative copying and rote learning techniques.

11) Outdoor environments and free play in simple, aesthetically pleasing, 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 and an ‘I don’t think I agree with  …..’ response becomes 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 child restraint, e.g. buggies, car seats, or sit in bouncy chairs and harnesses and other sit-in roll around devices 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.

Examples of over-stimulating environments that do not support natural forms of multisensory 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. sitting in front of a TV screen, supermarkets and shopping precincts, long car journeys.
• Dominating speeds of activity and external work 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, too intense or too heavy 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 seriously 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. Thiscan help promote: physical fitness, mental focus and concentration, intellectual potential, and a calm and assertive attitude towards learning through play.