I haven’t done much research on the topic (this is officially my starting point) but I’ve read that expanding a child’s picture vocabulary is a good start at memory training and improvement. (This was also mentioned in a post by Dr Miles R Jones a couple of days ago.)
How important is it to isolate one picture from all the others (in a Doman Bit fashion?) Is it fine to use books with multiple related pictures on one page? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_sMTlWZp7M
With pictures, a child doesn’t really get a feel for the properties of that object, like weight, texture, size, how an object moves etc, obviously the gaps can be filled with later experiences of these objects, but I always wonder about the impact this will have on a child’s view of his world. (To today, the first thing that pops into my head when someone says “elephant†is a pink cartoon elephant, yet I know very well what an elephant looks like in the real world.)
Another question that has been raised recently is how to categorise EK to add meaning to it. Is just doing EK bits grouped into meanuful catagories but without any facts along with it, a waste of time? Do you think that helps train memory?
I’ll admit, I know next to nothing about this subject, but I’m curious.
I don’t do EK because I decided it wasn’t worth the time I would have had to put into it. I constantly second-guess myself about that decision, but there you are. But one thing that did strike me from Doman’s explanation of EK was the idea that if you flash a series of related Bits - say, 10 different species of dog - then it would help the child form the mental category “dog” more quickly, with less time categorizing cats and rabbits as dogs because they’re furry and have four legs. That made logical sense to me. So I would say that flashing related Bits would be useful, even without any more facts.
I attempt to integrate Doman and Montessori ideas, and EK is the point where they clash most, I think. Montessori emphasizes the importance of seeing the real item before pictures, so you get that information about size and weight and smell and feel and al the other things pictures can’t give. So Montessori would have you visit the farm and see the animals before flashing your farm animal cards. (Well, Montessori doesn’t flash, but when combining the two, that’s how I do it.) But then, Montessori does allow for the fact that, say, maybe your local farm doesn’t have any pigs; you can still show the pig card and talk about pigs with the other farm animals, since at least you’ve seen horses and cows and chickens in person. How seeing a cow makes a pig picture easier to understand I’m not sure. So maybe you might as well flash things they’ve never experienced.
The memory training argument is one I’ve only come across recently and it’s really making me reconsider doing EK. So I’d love to hear how others feel about it.