Letting Children Step into the Story
When our daughters were young, we didn’t want their education to exist only in books and classrooms. We wanted them to experience the things they were learning about. To walk through historic places, hear the stories, touch what they were allowed to touch, ask questions, and interact with the people bringing the past to life.
This photograph of Erin at the Fortress of Louisbourg in Nova Scotia captures that idea beautifully. Instead of simply learning that military drummers were once an important part of life in an 18th-century fortress, she was standing next to one. She could see his clothing, hear the drum, hold a drumstick, and participate.
From a neurological perspective, experiences like this matter. A child’s developing brain is continually organizing information received through the senses. Seeing, hearing, touching, moving, interacting, and responding create a very different learning experience than simply being told a fact. The more meaningful and multisensory the experience, the more connections the brain has available to associate with what is being learned.
At Louisbourg, Erin wasn’t memorizing a lesson about colonial history. She was experiencing a small piece of it. The drummer could explain that drumbeats once communicated information throughout a military garrison, calling soldiers together, signaling duties, marking parts of the day, and accompanying ceremonies. Suddenly, an abstract fact had a sound, a face, a place, and an experience attached to it.
This was one of the reasons we took our daughters to historic houses, forts, museums, battlefields, national parks, and living-history sites. We weren’t simply trying to teach them more facts. We were giving their developing brains more experiences from which to build an understanding of the world.
The brain grows and develops through stimulation and experience. Give children opportunities to explore, participate, question, and discover, and learning becomes something they experience rather than simply something they are taught.
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