Children of today, are the shining light for a better future that may be marked with scientific achievements and some truly great feats in engineering amongst others. To reach such a future we need our children to think critically about circumstances and problems so that when they do come upon such challenges, they may find a solution and even invent a solution.

An invention is something such as a device or process that has been created or made up, or the process of creating or making up something or figuring out a way to do something. An inventor is someone who invents a particular process or device or who invents things as an occupation. Critical thinking leads to inventions and there are a few action-points that can be undertaken to further the child’s interest in it:

Basic understanding of science:

If your child wants to try and explore a new idea, make sure you help them understand the basics of that particular subject. For example, if they want to create an electrical device, the child needs to have a basic understanding of voltage, currents, electrical circuits, and Ohm’s law. This is easily doable as any browser on the internet has options of explaining even complicated concepts to children in a simple and easy-to-understand way.

Nurture their curiosity:

From a very young age, children are keen to ask questions and have them answered. It is important to nurture their innate curiosity across different subjects. You can nurture them towards scientific and critical thinking just by spending some time with them and trying to answer their questions. Children should never feel hesitant to ask the right questions.

Events around the world:

It is important to talk to our kids about the updates around the world. The Famine in Somalia, The War of Afghanistan, etc. are events that they should know about so they may be aware of the services that can provide to those that need them. This builds a sense of humanity in students as well.

Urge them to experiment:

An important hurdle of any invention is a failure. There may be a lot of times when a child fails at the ‘end result’. However, it is important to let them know that that ‘failure’ is a part of inventing and Edison made 1000 unsuccessful attempts before inventing the light bulb. What is important is never giving up even after you fail. By inculcating this belief in your child, you make them fearless to try new things and hence, make them bold and never afraid to fail and always looking to succeed. That, after all, is the spirit of science.

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Aid them in materializing their imagination:

An inventor’s biggest challenge is actually building what they spent so long creating in their heads. Help them realize these inventions, even if it means investing in buying resources or purchasing books that facilitate the culmination of the product or innovative discovery. Doing this helps with leadership skills and cooperativeness. Both of these are important life skills.

Carolina, from technical science expertise to business and leadership acumen, have a range of strengths. Their products such as Building Blocks of Science, Microscope Slide Sets, Science Centrifuge, etc. serve schools by helping the children find their footing in the sciences along with creating a safe environment to nurture critical thinking and experimentation to their hearts’ content.

In addition to serving schools, their products have also been used by scientific and health communities in countries like UAE and USA, with cities like Dubai being at the forefront. If you are based in GCC or UAE and wish to learn more about Carolina’s Smithsonian Science syllabus, visit our website, click on the following link:

Building Blocks of Science

Every year Earth Day is celebrated on 22nd April to create awareness about the rising levels of pollution and to devise strategies to keep our blue planet safe. The need to protect and safeguard our planet is crucial now than ever before. But while there is a buzz created during Earth Day celebrations in schools, colleges, and corporates, it doesn’t culminate into continuous practice and an ongoing agenda for us Earthlings.  

Therefore, schools are now including Environmental Studies as a separate subject for classes IX to XII and for grades I to VIII it is a part of the social science syllabus across progressive cities like Dubai and other regions in the Middle East. The aim is to raise a generation of responsible Earth Keepers, who practice vigilance in their everyday lives and adopt Environmentally Friendly alternatives which are not only sustainable but also contribute to making our Earth greener.  

Projects & Activities that Promote Green Thinking 

Grow Your Own Food:  

Allocating a patch of land to cultivate a school garden to grow seasonal veggies, fruits, & flowers, seems like a fun thing to do. It’s a very hands-on approach and children have to take efforts to ensure proper maintenance of the plants sown by them in the garden. By getting their hands dirty, students learn to take care of plants and start appreciating the food that is on their plates. They also learn why the wastage of food is discouraged. Moreover, organically grown food is much healthier and free from harmful pesticides. Taking back home freshly ripen ‘veggie’ serves as a validation for children and they become torchbearers of change by spreading the message of ‘growing your own garden’.  

Get Creative with Recycling:  

What could you possibly do with all the newspaper heap that gets collected in hour homes at the end of the month? Throw it in the garbage? Nah…instead let’s get creative. Use newspaper for wrapping birthday gifts rather than buying extra glitter paper from a shop. Students can cover their school textbooks with newspaper wrapping, giving it a kind of vintage feel. Alternatively, ‘used plastic bottles’ can be recrafted to become plant holders and can double as a flower pot. The possibilities are endless here; just ask students to use their imagination and be as creative as possible.  

Responsible Trash Disposers:  

Schools can host ongoing campaigns through the year by dividing children into groups – ‘green segregators’, ‘blue recyclers’, and ‘black champions’ – each representing the respective recyclable color dustbin found in our neighborhoods. The responsibility of each team is not only to dispose of waste correctly; green bin – for biodegradable waste such as vegetable skins, blue bin – for dry waste such as plastics, and black bin – for electronic waste & hazardous medical waste, but to propagate the same in their respective residential societies and neighborhood areas.  

Replacing Plastic Items:  

It’s no secret that plastic is an absolute threat to the environment and every measure must be made to curb the usage of plastics. However, due to its cheap pricing and durable nature, plastic items are unavoidable and are rampantly available in the market due to their high demand. Now the onus lies on us, the citizens of the world to stop the usage of plastic by replacing it with items of other eco-friendly materials. Every classroom should have a practice of encouraging students to shop for household items or toys that are non-plastic in nature and even go to the extent of having competitions where children get a platform to invent things made of ‘biodegradable’ materials, to replace the nuisance of plastics. Like, using wooden toothbrushes and bamboo straws, or even earbuds made of paper sticks, are some good ideas to start with.  

Go Paperless – Create Digital Awareness   

Children can use their graphic design skills to design attractive e-postcards, e-posters, and e-pamphlets and run social media campaigns online. Teachers can opt for the TechnoKids comprehensive module on TechnoEnvironment that has ready-made step-by-step lesson plans and resources to enable students to get started. The in-built templates, paired with good knowledge of graphic design & publishing skills using Microsoft Publisher, will empower children to conceptualize and execute impact-worthy campaigns that appeal to audiences and evoke Environmental Consciousness amongst peers & other audiences. To avail of the TechnoKids digital resource curriculum in UAE or GCC regions, visit our website.

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Early Childhood Assessment is a tool used to gather and provide educators, parents, and families with critical information about a child’s development and growth. Dubai, and some other cities in UAE, licensed early childhood programs are required to include a child assessment component in their programs.  

1. Observe: To observe a child’s performance at school or at home is the best way to learn more about the child’s development. Educators are free to observe the child through all facets of development such as intellectual, linguistic, socio-emotional, and physical development on a regular basis. Through observation, an educator or even a parent can better understand the child’s behavior and mind in certain facets of development and their advantage or disadvantage in any of the developmental areas. 

 2. Make notes: Making notes regarding the child is a helpful way of keeping track through classes. It is a way to record data that is collected through the work, the child has produced over a period of time. The notes can clearly show progress made by the child and is a brilliant way to be constantly up to date with the class happenings on a day-to-day basis. It also helps in creating a bond and understanding between the parents and the teacher, which is ultimately beneficial to the young learners. 

3. Test the children: At the end, all comes down to the performance of the child, and this is objectively remarked upon only by standardized tests administered to the children which clearly show the progress of the child or lack thereof. These tests are scored in a standard manner so every child has equal odds at it, and are often used to assess the performance of children in a program. Many schools in the Middle East, including the GCC regions, have started to organize standardized tests for all grades. 

Assessments provided to children in the early years of their academic life can go a very long way. It offers clarity and evidence to the child’s need for additional support or the intervention of a special educator, to help him cope in school. Also, based on the cumulative performance of all students, educators can plan their lessons more strategically and alter their teaching methodologies.   

 Next Learning Platform or NLP, founded in 2007, is a fast-growing, SaaS-based, technology-driven company revolutionizing the education system. Every day, their innovative products and solutions transform the lives of 10% of India’s private-school-going children. More than 12,000,000 students from various socio-cultural backgrounds study in 12,000 NLP partner schools across the country.  

 NLP’s innovative NextAssessment is a comprehensive assessment management solution that enables teachers to evaluate students on the basis of their ability. It enables periodic assessments from formative to competitive exams for all classes. 

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The world of young children is all about wonder. As they discover new things around them, they ask questions. If you are a parent to a young preschooler, you would know what we mean. It’s very common to be asked questions like; ‘Why is the sky blue?’ or ‘where did the water in our oceans come from?’ or even ‘why does the ball come back to you when thrown in the air?’ Well, thank God for Amazon Alexa, most of your kiddo’s questions would be justified by an answer!   

Asking questions and seeking answers, is a trait of positive development. Never discourage your child to ask questions. In fact, curiosity makes learning more effective and enjoyable. Let us take an example- When the teacher gets a ‘tortoise’ to class, children will admire the little creature and start asking questions. It’s more fun when children enquire ‘why does the tortoise have a shell?’, ‘why did it take its head inside the shell? ‘where does it live?’ and so on. If the teacher had to narrate the characteristics and features of the tortoise one by one without getting the creature to class, the session would be rather boring.  

Curiosity stimulates the brain to learn effectively, however, only when the ‘right questions’ are asked. Do you remember the proverb ‘curiosity killed the cat’! Well, unnecessary questions, and going to the bottom of everything may be a waste of time, and therefore only positive curiosity should be encouraged.  

Here are a few tips that help foster curiosity: 

1. Conduct Excursions and Field Trips 

Learning theoretically in the classrooms is one thing, but actually getting to know more about the ‘place’ or a ‘monument’ by visiting it in person, is a different experience altogether. Schools curriculum has subjects like; History, Geography, Arts and Culture, which can be combined with excursions & trips, so that the child’s curiosity is automatically satisfied by actually visiting the place. At the preschool level, it isn’t uncommon to schedule a visit to the fire station, hospitals, factory, post office, to teach them about community helpers and in turn get their fair of understanding by asking questions to the professionals themselves.

2. Setting-up Classroom Environment 

 Decorate the classroom as per the theme you are teaching that particular month. For example, if the theme is ‘farm animals’ have models of ‘cows’, ‘horses’, ‘pigs’ and others in their respective shelter homes ‘cow shed’, ‘stable’ and ‘pigsty’. Also, stick different farm equipment used by the farmers; ‘tractors’ and ‘plows’, to transform the indoor environment into a farm-like surrounding. By going around looking at these elements, children naturally get curious and start asking questions.   

3. Invite Guests to Speak  

Invite someone who is influential and has made a mark in life. Probably ‘an author’ can be invited to speak in class about – how he discovered his passion for writing and what keeps him motivated. A ‘pilot’ can elaborate about how he made it to the ‘cockpit’ and what were the challenges he faced while training and appearing for exams. Meeting successful people and interacting with them, may give children a different dimension to think about and start visualizing what they want to be when they grow up, thereby starting to get more curious about these professions and researching on the same. IB Schools in Dubai and across the Middle East, also have webinars where parents are welcomed to attend the sessions, to promote an inclusiveness culture within the school’s community.   

4. Playing with Constructive Toys  

Toys that can be assembled together to design a workable model, are often referred to as constructive toys. We all remember how our parents gave us a set of blocks, to design a ‘car’ or ‘build a bridge’ using attractive toy sets. And who wouldn’t know the famous LEGO toymaker? LEGO® Education introduces amazing kits that add to the child’s curiosity and thereby motivate them to become inventors. The LEGO® Education SPIKE™ Essential engages children to use hardware like motors and sensors to device ‘smart solutions’. In the process of constructing models, children ask many questions and need someone to answer their queries, thereby starting to understand different concepts of engineering and how ‘things are made’. To learn more about the availability of LEGO® Education’s kits in GCC and UAE regions, visit our website.

 Therefore, curiosity indeed opens doors to possibilities! Allow your children to be curious explorers and gain confidence as their doubts turn into clarity.  

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Mathematics has been one of the most elusive subjects to teach for teachers and instructors. Primarily owing to the fact that the subject gets a pretty bad reputation. Mathematics is nothing but the quantification of things and ideas. The only primary requirement of Mathematics is for the practicing individual to have a free-flowing thought process that is efficient at problem-solving. This is why problem solvers are good at Maths and vice-versa. It is also of no surprise that Maths and problem solving both are such fundamental skills that everyone, no matter where you’re from or what you do, you needs an understanding of both the skills to a certain degree to function.

Problem–solving has simple steps that help the process and makes it streamlined; 

Understanding the problem: 

While seemingly obvious, understanding and identifying a problem accurately is the first step. Diving into the problem requires a degree of assessment on the problem-solvers part. Exploring the problem itself requires a particular outlook that is pragmatic and investigative. This is where curiosity plays an important role and helps the problem-solver become adept with the problem at hand. Once the problem at hand is completely understood, various approaches to solve it can be devised and then based on these, a strategy can be made. So, the first step towards solving any problem is first completely and fully understand it. 

Find a strategy: 

Strategy is key in finding any solution to a problem. Based on how the problem is identified and explored, the strategy can then be devised for an optimal solution. Building a strategy also is dependent on the resources available, including; information and tools. For example, in Mathematics, if a solution of a problem requires say a tool such as a calculator, and it is not available to solve that particular problem, then an alternate method has to be devised to solve the complex problem. This helps the problem-solver derive a usable and functional strategy that can be executed and used to obtain a final solution. Once the execution of the strategy begins, arriving at a solution is fairly a matter of delivery.  

The ‘Mathletics app’ for School helps develop these methods for young students that can be applied across all kinds of domains while building a true problem-solving mentality in the young students.  

Here’s how Mathletics does it: 

Simplified lesson planning: 

A simplified and structured lesson plan goes a long way in communicating the right ideas to the students while ensuring they absorb the ideas and are able to use them in the real world. Bench-marking assessments, grouping, and curriculum alignment are some of the tools used to deliver a lesson plan to the students thereby meeting their needs. 

 Hundreds of problem-solving and reasoning activities: 

Mathletics PSR Questions consist of 700+ problem-solving activities that are available to the students right at their fingertips. This enables them to reason and think critically and solve creatively. 

 Easy student progress tracking: 

Knowing how far you’re out in your progress, helps give students a larger perspective into their problem-solving skills. An instructor can track the progress of the entire class, maintaining a detailed report of how the performance of a student has improved or decreased. This ensures a long-term planning for the development of the young students. 

Mathletics is a comprehensive mathematics learning tool that has effectively changed how several schools and instructional institutes teach Maths in Dubai and other Middle East countries. Mathletics has achieved this by building its platform to benefit both; students and instructors, making learning and teaching more fun. To learn more about integrating the Mathletics platform in your institution across GCC or UAE countries, visit our website: Click here

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