The Value of Educational Videos in Jumpstarting Cognitive Faculties
With the countless learning video titles in the local market alone, picking one that is best for your child can be quite a dilemma. You need a good combination of upbeat songs and colorful images to stimulate your tot's natural curiosity. Most of all, you need a video that effectively enhances their social, cognitive, and early literacy skills.
Elements of an Effective Video
Fun learning videos address children's developmental needs and match their varied learning styles. Interaction between the viewer and the characters is crucial. By having characters speak directly to their young audiences, like the way Steve and Joe in Blue's Clues do, children pick up social cues that will help them mature into respectful and responsible adults.
Music is another key element in learning videos. Learning concepts are easier to grasp for your children when they come in the form of a happy tune. Because kids learn fastest from birth to three years old, providing a visual and auditory feast is the best way to stimulate young and active minds.
Videos also address the fact that children have very limited attention spans. This poses the question, though, of whether the video reinforces having a short attention span or helps the child develop focus and attention to the task.
Watching With Value
Experts agree that while many television programs and videos can be effective learning tools, parents are still their children's best teachers. Learning videos should only serve as a means to make communication of concepts easier between parents and their children. Learning videos are effective only when parents are involved.
What educational videos do for kids' cognitive faculties is priceless. They introduce new ideas to them and promote a high level of recall. They also make difficult concepts and ideas seem more real to children, thereby stimulating not just their creativity and imagination, but also their ability to make decisions and choices.
Not only that, kids learn that there are different kinds of people in the world and there are different kinds of ways to respond to and deal with each of them.
Learning videos contribute greatly to a child's development. It is important to note, however, that viewing time should also be limited. Children need as much physical exercise after stretching their brain cells. It is very easy to be tempted to let the time extend from a few minutes to an hour. As a responsible parent, you should call it quits when you notice the balance tilting.
