The term cognitive development refers to the transformation of a thought process that includes various mental abilities like learning, remembering and solving problems, decision making, and information processing. Generally, the cultivation of this process begins at a very early stage, impacting the ability to perceive, comprehend and react to every situation around them.
Children develop cognitive skills rapidly in the first few years of life and build on them progressively throughout grade school. Hence, early training and education have been proven to be an effective way of stimulating the brain, helping it acquire cognitive ability faster. It has been observed; childhood experiences contribute powerfully to the development of a child’s brain. In this new age, where knowledge is so accessible, one of the best ways to nurture the building blocks in a child’s mind is through personalized, project-based and play-based learning.
With project and play-based learning, children organically understand the concepts and develop skills that they will need in order to complete an interdisciplinary project. Exposing young minds to a nurturing environment complementing with a holistic curriculum plays a crucial role in shaping intellectual as well as an emotional quotient in a child. Maximizing the academic standards with such intrinsic forms provides immersive experiences leading to cognitive development. They use all their senses to explore the existing environment and inculcate knowledge, skills, and attitudes in return. Activity-based learning motivates, drives, and encourages children to solidify what they have learned by applying it in a meaningful situation. Also, providing lessons that are customized for them, at their own pace, with the ability to collaborate with other students either in their school or around the world, allows the children to push their boundaries and be more acceptable.
Personalized learning has been recognized as another important human factor affecting students’ learning. This style of learning can be considered fairly new, however, this can be a major factor in the holistic approach to education. Personalized learning gives an edge to a child’s understanding along with learning speed. This approach of learning should be given an upper-hand in education as it has the greatest benefits. The ability to make complex learning easier by designing and presenting only the required and specific information to a child makes learning easy and interesting for them. Identifying a student’s strengths and weaknesses and nurturing them accordingly at an early age empowers the overall cognitive skills.
In the cognitive-based learning, personalization is more about the process, strategies, and the ability to deliver lessons and methods to the specific learner. A child may prefer the audio, play-based or presentation way to understand and capture the lesson. This strategy works by collecting the data of the child and using them for their higher benefit and predicting what they would like to see or do next. It highly prioritizes the special need of an individual for their personal growth and individual success.
Personalized, play-based or project-based learning not only fosters the child’s need but prepares them for all forms of challenges. It inculcates effective problem-solving and decision-making abilities with analytical thinking. It has been proven that children with well-built cognitive skills tend to be smarter, hence it is important to keep a mind intrigued in order to keep it sharp.
