“Research shows that learning another language can stimulate brain development” (Department of Education and Early Child-hood Development of Victoria)
Learning another language helps to develop essential areas of a child’s brain. This is because they get used to directing their atten-tion between conflicting thought processes (like two different lan-guages) and are better able to channel this same focus to other tasks.
In our Kindergarten classes, we planned the weekly topics for “Colour and Mamemaki Festival” on the third week of this term. The students started by learning the names of colours in Japanese. On Wednesday the task was to colour an “Oni Mask” with colours specified on the sheet. However most of the kindergarten students have not learnt how to read the Japanese alphabet “Hiragana”. Well then how could they colour the picture? “Sensei, can you please show us the notes that you wrote on the smart board?” On Monday, I wrote the names of the colours using in the specific colour so it was easier to understand for the children. The students compared the letters and the colours to solve the problems. Thus the students are not only learning languages but are also developing problem solving skills in the daily language lessons.
YKW Nihongo Class Ms Shinozuka
