I read about this program in Chapter 8 of “Nurture Shock” by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman. It’s a curriculum that helps teach preschoolers self control. It was developed in 1990 by Drs. Elena Bodrova and Deborah Leong from Metropolitan State College of Denver.
Children who have taken it have scored a full grade-level above the national standard. It was so effective that it improved all the “at risk” children to the point where they couldn’t get more funding–there were no more “at risk” kids, they were behaving and learning!
Has anyone heard of or had experience with this program?
Wow Ouroboros, you must read fast. I recently read NurtureShock and am also very interested in this program. Here are some follow up resources I have found, but haven’t yet had the time to follow through…
Thanks for the videos and links Twinergy. After checking, I don’t think there is a “Tools of the mind” preschool where we live. I’m wondering if any of the Montessori schools use this concept here or not.
I found it interesting that if told to “stand still” children could only do this for about 2 minutes, but when told to pretend they’re a soldier(Buckingham palace style-guard) they could stay still for 11 minutes. Since their R brain is so active, they can visualize so much better and how it’s much easier for them to learn behavior though imaginitive play.
Ouroboros1 - I bought the book from Amazon but haven’t read through it all yet. They talk about it being implemented in schools but we have no “Tools of the Mind” schools here. I was hoping I could get tips on helping my children develop their executive function at home by reading the book. One of the things they encouraged was role playing - since you can’t role play on your own, I have been trying to role play with my son. It won’t be quite as effective for him but I figured it was worth a shot…
My DS, who was recently diagnosed Sensory Processing Disorder (Sensory Seeking variety), has receiving therapy from the school district’s early intervention program. He is very smart and not on the autism spectrum, but also has some unusual, often dangerous, behaviors to self stimulate his senses. He is the kind of kid that I think could really benefit from the Tools cirriculum. I just called and talked to the special education specialist at the elementary school in my neighborhood and told her about my DS and the Tools program. She sounded very interested asking a lot of questions about how to follow up and get more info about Tools. I’m going to be following up to with a lot more calls to the district and can hopefully get access to the program for my DS.
Based on the positive experience I had I would also encourage others to call their local schools.