You are probably also aware of the Baby Einstein videos and dvds for children. These too seem excellent and hold my baby enthralled for their full 30 minute length. You can tell the producers know what they are doing because my baby stays riveted to the screen with big smiles on her face whereas she gets bored very quickly with other kiddie programs on TV.

I am very comfortable with the fact that our child is finding educational stimulation via technology at such a young age. This is the world she is growing up into and I see no reason to withhold any of these technological advances. It should be said that we spend a lot more time interacting with her on a human, one to one, level than she spends with electronic stimulus. With all good parenting it’s a balancing act.

I have, however, become very aware of the need to add education toys into her day to day experience that focus far more on actual “doing” activities, rather than the more passive interaction afforded by the TV or iPad. This is the danger, in my opinion, of the iPad or PC. Too often I am seeing apps and games that mimic activities which in turn get in the way of real life learning. Games that allow children to interact, say, in a virtual kitchen is simply delaying, or doing away completely with, the act of learning in a real environment. The kind of educational toys made by the likes of Melissa and Doug are, I now see, absolutely essential. While my baby is very young it’s fine for her to play with more or less anything but as soon as she starts to comprehend more of the world around her I shall be getting wooden toys like the Melissa and Doug Kitchen, http://syreetaadams.hubpages.com/hub/MelissaandDougKitchen, so that she understands the concept of cooking in a very real, rather than virtual, way.

While we have already bought our baby a number of toys made from plastic, I also feel that spending a little extra for wooden toys is money well spent. This is especially true of more educational toys. The weight and feel of wooden toys give, I feel, a child a sense that what they have in their hands is something of value, rather than something to be played with and then discarded.

Of course currently this is all just theory and I wonder what steps will be necessary if, at two years of age, my child refuses to get excited with anything lacking a digital screen!?

Tony Wagner’s popular 21st Century Education book, The Global Achievement Gap, addresses seven necessary survival skills for children in the 21st Century.  One such skill is “initiative and entrepreneurialism.”  The 21st Century rainbow map shown at Booroobin has a large piece dedicated to “life and career skills.”

Is it possible that 21st Century children will take a different educational path after mandated education?  Will the experience shape them so much that they buck the trends and do not go to traditional university? 

Jonathan Alexander, a U.S.-based trade school advocate and outspoken critic of the college debt bubble, believes that to be true.  “I think that the children of today will have to make a big choice in their future.  Instead of going the traditional college path and incurring all of the debt that comes along with it, I think we will see many college-aged students turning to trade schools for skills such as welding, gunsmithing, and plumbing.  They can learn a skilled trade and not have the educational debt that comes along with a traditional college education.”

One thing is true: the amount of debt students are incurring before finding a job is ever increasing.  Whether they go to a trade school or skip traditional university all together, the way students approach education in the future is certain to change.

For the young person at school such lofty goals can be hard to understand. A better way to motivate reluctant students is to stress the ’real life’ applications of school learning. One way that this can be achieved is by relating knowledge to health. There is a growing scientific understanding behind health that crosses several disciplines.

For example learning about health is a good way to deal with several other educational issues. For example, by studying coconuts students can understand the difference between species, type and cultivar. The coconut is also an important cultural reference point. The word marks the earliest contact between the West and India – coconut means ’grinning witch’ in Portuguese.

Modern politics is connected to the coconut. It is a drupe that has meat and milk that is high in saturated fat and as a result has fallen out of favor with the American media; and yet, the medium chain fatty acids in coconut oil are easier for the body to convert to energy than the polyunsaturated fats favored in American cooking. 

Moreover, coconut water was used during World War Two for emergency blood transfusions because coconut water is a match for blood plasma.

In terms of cultural studies, coconuts in Thailand are a way of underatanding the lifestyles of many people in the country. They get money from coconut plantations; they use the milk, water and meat for cooking; they use the timber for furniture, jewelry, making musical instruments and construction.  The coir from coconuts in Thailand is used for upholstery stuffing and starting fires.

One simple plant can be studied from the point of view of many disciplines to reveal internsting and practical information.

With the abundance of learning materials available, even for young children, there are a lot of options. Young kids starts to learn through the use of toys so it is important to start getting smart toys for kids as soon as possible. You can start by providing interactive toys that help stimulate curiosity and exploration. This keeps children engaged as they learn new things about their environment. For toddlers, the never-ending “why” question is a testament to the amount of learning that takes place at this stage. It is important to note that bright minds need stimulation and you’ve got to feed it constantly.

Don’t wait until your child is old enough for school before you start educating. Observe your child and as soon as he starts to get curious, take this as an opportunity for learning. Remember, you can’t force learning; you’ve got to make it interesting. This is certainly doable with a variety of learning resources at your disposal.

The thing about our brains is that they are protected by this thing called a skull (duh I know ha ha). The problem with not being able to see our brains is that people don’t see the rewards like you do when you sculpt your biceps for instance. If you ask me, I’ll take a healthy brain over big ’pipes’ any day.

Far too few people really give their brains the exercise it needs because they don’t understand exactly what exercising your brain really means. Doing puzzle booksthat require complex logical reasoning like sudoku, or memory recall like crosswords really make your brain sweat. Another important thing to remember is that just like the rest of your body, your brain has different areas that need to be worked (think of guys with giant arms and chicken legs), so be sure to use a wide variety of different ’exercises’ that hit the different functions your brain has.

Invest in the best video baby monitor and be aware of your child’s play time when they awake from a nap.  It’s important monitor them in their individual playtime.  If your child is cooing and speaking to the decorations in their crib?  Or do the wake up and start crying immediately?  You can only tell this with a video baby monitor.  Once you determine their actions in their solo time, you can develop their attention and creativity by focusing on their needs.

Once you help your child develop their concentration and confidence as an infant you need to continue developing their skills throughout their toddler and  adolescent year by spending time with them, helping them with their homework, and taking a sincere interest in their activities. 

A solid foundation is critical to your child’s education.  It’s not simply about paying to get into a great school.  It’s about watching your infant closely and strengthening their weaknesses and then spending time with them throughout their young lives.

The good news is that the metabolism can be educated to work more efficiently through a series of activities, diet and lifestyle changes. Like many of the body’s unconsciously run processes, the metabolism is governed by the subconscious part of the mind and that can be influenced by conscious decisions and actions. For instance, the initiation of a daily exercise program and the gradual increase of the amount of exertion undertaken will have a knock on effect on the metabolism by forcing it to increase its pace to match the increased workload experienced by the physical body.

Likewise, a change of diet to a more healthy or low calorie option such as the kind provided by diet programs like Medifast or a healthier alternative as obtained from a professional nutritionist or diet expert will similarly cause the metabolism to increase efficiency through being forced to deal with a different set of foods to digest and process. By removing high glycemic carbohydrates that were causing the sluggishness and lethargy and replacing them with more proteins and fiber, the metabolic process is given a jump start. When that diet is combined with drinking more plain water and the omission of unhealthy soda drinks, the combination can make a marked improvement in the way the body burns energy and its reduction in stored fat.

The physical changes that a person makes to their lifestyle, diet and activity levels teach the metabolism through repetition to increase its work rate and efficiency. This is the real way to improve health and reduce excess fat storage in the body by teaching the body’s natural power plant to do its job more efficiently for the benefit of the person and a greater level of overall well being.

One growing segment in the education field is parents who are seeking to educate their kids through homeschooling.  There are now many resources available online that make this easier than ever before!

Some families have taken to travelling the country in recreational vehicles.  This mode of living provides the opportunity for children to learn about the world through actual visits to places of historical or political significance, while learning more traditional subjects like mathematics through watching online in an RV movies on these topics.

Combining online learning for the three Rs, with site visits – ’field trips’ – to places of importance is a stellar way for youngsters to acquire a well rounded education that gets them away from just living in one city their whole youth, and exposes them to many different situations they might not otherwise get to experience.

My child is luckier. I don’t spend much time helping him with his homework, but I do spend a lot of resources giving him experiences that will demonstrate to him the value of knowledge. We recently went on a family holiday to Thailand. We toured the beaches of Khao Lak and then we spent 3 days doing a PADI Open Water course. This involved maths which is usually very boring but when my son Matthew could see how maths was related to diving he immediately applied himself to learning. He could later practise his skills of calculating the amount of nitrogen in the blood stream when we went diving in the Similan islands.

Later in the holiday we moved down to Bor Saen near Phang-Nga Bay. The bay is spectacular because it has many karst mountains rising from the sea. At this point geography became interesting finding out about the properties of limestone. In the same trip we visited Koh Panyi – an artificial island made up of houses on stilts. Matthew was fascinated in the stroy of the Malay immigrants who settled on the small adjacent island and over time expanded out into the sea. This lead on to a discussion of the sea gypsies and the small pockets of people who still pursue traditional lives largely untouched by money and the other trappings of modern civilization.

The trip to Thailand taught my son so much more than I could have done in the classroom.