First phase of activity – birth to 3 years, is the most formative in childhood.
The child absorbs all available impressions in full detail, each impression is instantly manifested into and superimposed on all previous ones. The absorbant mind acquires nearly any impression, simple or complex, with ease and accuracy. It responds to human stimuli, within the full range of human activity; It uses every sense to percieve the child’s entire emotional as well as behavioural and cultural enviornment. By absorbing surrounding enviornment, the young mind creates his/her human abilities, in about three years.. These creations do not appear gradually, but seem to be formed by an inner development that is only occasionally in vast leaps of ability.
Second phase of activity – 3 to 6
The absorbant mind continues to function , yet now appears more scientifically focused on specific impressions gained through interaction with the material as well as human enviorment. These new experiences come together, further develop, and then, integrate the abilities earlier created. During the first phase, the mind consisted mostly of an inner development that surfaced occasionally in surprising gains, the second phase appears busy, and the development of skills are open and continuous. Previous activity in the enviornment had been largely unconscious and spontanious, the 3-6 year old interacts with the enviornment consciously and intentionally, he/she strongly prefers certain experiences to others. All these experiences continue to be acquired by the ‘absorbant mind’ without effort or strain, no matter how complex they appear to us adults. Child recieves impressions, processes, categorises and interprets them; filtering bits of impressions through and fitting them into, an inherited structure. The structure gradually changes and unfolds as the child grows. What makes each child’s intellectual development different, are the different experiences that the child has been exposed to at each stage of the structure’s unfolding. Although the first stage is unconscious, it is not undirected. At any one time, the child’s unfolding intellectual structure makes use of certain aspects of the impressions it absorbs. It is the effect of absorbed experience on the underlying structure that creates the child’s intellectual abilities. By the second phase, (around 3), the structure’s developmental work has progressed sufficientally enough to give the child enough mental faculties to express interest consciously…
Third phase of activty – 3 to 6
The child feels and shows preferences for the types of stimuli needed to refine and integrate the basic abilities from 0-3.
The following activities provide the child 5 subjects with stimuli and experiences that, in terms of our theory discussions ‘nourish the absorbant minds’ , fulfill needs of the sensitive periods and the child’s inner unfolding intellectual structure, and also, follows the process of three stage learning:
Practical Activities – develop personal and social skills used in daily living ie/dressing oneself, cleaning, being polite)
Sensorial Activities – serve to enhance and enlarge the child’s sense perceptions of the world
Language – start child reading and writing
Mathematics – introduce counting and arithmetic
Cultural – exposes child to fields of inquiry as physical science, history, geography, anthropology and biology.
Each activity, in itself provides some such experience to aid some particular stage of development. Together the activities build on another to create an inter-related web of experience that helps integrate the individual abilities developed along the way.