knick-knacks

First Thought
In the second chapter of A Mind at a Time Mel Levine describes the mind as a tool chest in which different neurodevelopmental functions exist. Specifically, he defines eight systems as follows: attention control, memory, language, spatial ordering, sequential ordering, motor, higher thinking, and social thinking. The following excerpt explains that each system needs to be put to use and that we tend to use multiple systems to perform even rudimentary tasks.

Parents and teachers experience satisfaction watching children's neurodevelopmental systems expand in their capabilities over days, months, and years, especially when the functions are put to good use, exercised like limber muscles. Caring adults have to realize that a system deteriorates drastically when it is underutilized. For example, if a child almost never elaborates on ideas, rarely talks in complete sentences, and instead overindulges in words like "stuff" and "thing," or else in profanity, then his verbal skills will stagnate, fail to grow, and even diminish. If you never do any running, the neurodevelopmental functions needed for running are likely to starve, inevitably eroding your overall gross motor performance.

Your child's neurodevelopmental systems never get a chance to perform as soloists; they constantly join forces to accomplish good results. Memory partners with language to help your third grader recall the words to "Silent Night." Attention control reacts with gross motor ability to produce the sinking of a long putt on the eighteenth green. Sequencing, visual memory, and language combine with social awareness to let you explain to a friend the plot of the science fiction thriller you saw on TV last night.

Second Thought
I am somewhat surprised (though not really given how most things these days seem so controversial) to find that the theory of multiple intelligences is under debate both in its definition and validity over at WikiPedia.

Third Thought
A few weeks ago, I took an online learning styles inventory for fun. Between you and me, I thnk I am more visual and less verbal than this depicts.

The graphic organizer reminds me of a spider's web.



I am not sure how to connect all of this, which can only mean that my brains are starting to spill out of my ears.