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The Magic of Mind‐Mapping for Kids Summary/Description A good idea never loses its currency and simple ideas are often the best ones. Mind Mapping is a simple idea that has been around for a long time. Consider giving the gift of MindMapping to your kids. It may be the most valuable gift you ever give them. ______________________________________________________________________________________________ I have been a fan of Mind Mapping for a long time because it closely emulates the way in which the brain works. It makes learning easy and it encourages your kids to study in an effective way in school and at home. But when is the right time to introduce Mind Mapping to your kids? I believe that once your kids can read and write, probably around age 5 or 6, is a good time. Why so young? Well, given that kids’ brains are like sponges for absorbing information, the sooner you offer them a structured way of learning and a tool for recording related information in visual clusters, the better. Although individual kids may be auditory, visual or kinesthetic in nature, memory works on the basis of association and the visual impact of connecting related things, in easy to see and understand written formats, has a tremendous impact on their learning ability. It begins with showing them how to cluster related things around a subject heading. For example: you might ask your child to place a bubble in the centre of a page with the word ‐ school ‐ written in the middle. Then you can ask them to draw wavy lines like spokes in a wheel away from the central hub. At the end of each of these wavy lines, ask them to write down a single word that relates to something they see or do in school. Once they have done this, ask them to add a wavy line to each of their new words in the direction of the edge of the page. Finally, ask them to add a new work closely connected to each of the existing words but at the end of each of the new wavy lines. This can seem like a game to them at first. However, you have sown the first seeds of structured thinking and have used your kids’ natural associated memory to learn things in a visual way. As they become accustomed to using Mind Maps, they should be encouraged to use them for taking notes in school. It is a quick shorthand way of recording information. When they get to the stage of doing school tests, they should be shown how to summarize entire chapters of their schoolbooks on a single page Mind Map. It really is that simple and your kids will thank you for this gift of learning in the years to come. Once they become addicted to using the computer, you can introduce them to electronic versions of Mind Mapping which can be bought cheaply on the internet and downloaded immediately.
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Mind mapping has literally hundreds of different applications and it can turn anyone into a structured thinker as well as supercharging their memory. Remember, you can start your kids Mind Mapping on just a single sheet of paper with a pencil.
BIO Resource Box Niall Strickland is an MBA with more than 20 years of business coaching and management consulting experience working with CEO’s in small and medium businesses. He can provide additional information about the benefits of MindMapping in your business at www.NiallStrickland.com. This article has also been published on www.EzineArticles.com
Visit www.NiallStrickland.com to download other Business Articles, to view Business Advice Videos or to Discover the full range of products and services available