Teaching 5 year olds - Great article from Scholatic

While pondering other ways to help teach my 5 year old, I found this great article by Scholastic.

The key points that apply to teaching leadership are listed below:

Toddlers imitate what they see, preschoolers try hands-on trial and error, and kindergartners tap language and abstract thinking skills to solve problems. That gives a nice summary of a child's abilities up until 5, don't you think? Our experience validates this.

The article states that 5- and 6-year olds' problem-solving skills include developing their ability to tolerate frustration. Five- and 6-year olds will take time to observe and identify the problem, try out a few solutions, and draw a conclusion. So, we can offer more difficult challenges to them than younger children.

Learning to think abstractly is an essential part of developing problem-solving skills.

• Five- and 6-year olds become more adept at thinking about a solution to a problem without actually trying it out.
• Cognitively, they're able to imagine and think through a problem and its solution with less hands-on experience.

IF this is correct, THEN we can do thought experiments with them and tell stories of others working out problems.

Strong language skills are essential to abstract thinking - and 5- and 6-year olds are often very verbal. They're able to explain their thinking and can expound on their ideas in great detail.
IF true, THEN ask the child to tell about their idea for solving a problem before they do it to help them make a plan. After they do it, ask them to check if the problem is solved. If not, ask how they will adjust to solve it. This pattern is called the Deming Cycle or PDCA (plan, do, check, adjust).

With stories, 5- and 6-six-year olds can now suggest possible solutions to a character's problems. So, pause during stories when a character faces a problem, and ask how the child would solve the character's problems.

They also enjoy creative-thinking activities, such as brainstorming all the ways to use a familiar object.

5- and 6-six-year olds have an increased awareness of other people's problems. So tell them hypothetical or real problems and ask how they would try to solve them.

They need a lab to practice problem solving, so create a supportive environment in which the child can regularly explore materials and discuss ideas.

Encouraging the child to try new approaches - and congratulating all their efforts - helps them develop the confidence to experiment without fear of failure.
Leadership requires a higher than average degree of confidence be built up in the child through adulthood.

Allow children the space and time to work through their frustrations. Support their attempts at solving problems by asking open-ended questions that guide them to focus on possible solutions. It is crucial for future leaders to develop their own problem-solving abilities rather than too much reliance on others.

Guide children to create abstract representations of their concrete problems. Do children have an experiment to do? Talk about it, draw it, write about it! This helps them develop higher-level abstract thinking as they record their ideas and accomplishments.

This article provides age-specific strategies that although were aimed at teachers, can be used by adults in the child's life to teach them.