Instead of a screen, a “treasure basket”: Elinor Goldschmied and her proposal for child development
Gabriel Díaz Cobos
Faculty of Education
A baby between six and twelve months old sits up, leans forward, reaches for an object, turns it, hits it, shakes it, observes it, puts it in their mouth and, without anyone asking, starts all over again. At first glance, it might seem like the baby is “just playing”. In reality, the baby is doing something much more important: building the neuromotor and cognitive foundations on which their future learning will be based.
The question is not insignificant: what are children capable of at this stage, and what are we offering them so that they can develop these skills?
A basic principle of child development is that the early brain does not organize itself based on abstract information, but rather on bodily experience. The outline would be: experience → synapses → thought → learning.
This article was originally published on The Conversation.