Moonlight International School

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What is child neuropsychology?

Child neuropsychology is a scientific discipline. The nervous system and the development that occurs in children and adolescents are studied. In other words, what happens in the brains of young people is evaluated.

Is a discipline between psychology and neurology. For this reason, it combines aspects of medicine, helping to understand their brains in terms of their biological evolution and the development of the different areas of the brain and nervous system, as well as cognitive studies, which help to understand the emotional and psychological parts of child development.

How do we work child neuro-psychology?

At Moonlight International School, we know how children's brains work, in order to adapt the teaching-learning process to the neuropsychological needs of the students.

From the school we have the responsibility of knowing what are the different neuropsychological aspects involved in learning and taking them into account to develop them on a daily basis through routines and activities, so simple and fun, that surely the children are not aware that they are really "exercising" their brain.

Trabajamos por desarrollar los diferentes aspectos neuropsicológicos.

Neuropsychological aspects that we work on

Executive Functions

It means the capacity people have to:

  • Setting goals.
  • Self organisation and planning on how to achieve them.
  • They will be able to solve problems they may present on during the way.
  • Make decisions.
  • Go forward with the set goal.
  • Evaluate their results to assess whether they would have been better achieved by doing it differently.
Imagen vectorial de personas terminando tareas

Memory

Chico con papeles moviéndose a su alrededor

This cognitive strategy helps us to collect the information, and in order to do so, we must first analyse, categorise and compare the new information with the initial one.

En el cerebro la zona que funciona como “almacén a largo plazo” de la memoria está conectada con zona de la emoción, esto explica la necesidad de que el aprendizaje signifique “algo” para los niños/as, que no sea mera recopilación de datos y memorización.

The student must get involved in the process of learning and commit to it under emotions, so to be able to actually learn.

Audition

The brain makes different auditory skills:

  • Perception
  • Auditory discrimination
  • Figure-background discrimination (to choose what we want to hear throughout other noises that constantly surround us).
  • Auditory attention.
  • Auditory memory

These skills will impact in activities like reading, acquiring languages and learning new ones.

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Visual Skills

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The school homework and the big amount of visual stimulation around children, requires their ocular system to be efficient and coordinated.

Eyes are filled with muscles that can be trained in order to optimise their capacities such as:

  • Ocular mobility.
  • The saccadic movements.
  • The visual accommodation.
  • Convergence

These skills have a direct impact on the reading and motor tasks like also writing and drawing.

Critical Thinking

We live in a world where access to information and communication is massive and ubiquitous, and such information does not always correspond to reality.

Therefore, we must develop in children the ability to treat and value the information they receive, as well as the ability to develop their own criteria and thinking.

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Creativity

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Educating in creativity means promoting the ability of children to produce original and innovative ideas, be flexible, be able to take risks, and solve problems and obstacles that arise throughout their lives.

Neuromotricity

Multiple authors establish a clear relationship between movement and learning, as the brain controls each of the movements we perform, such as walking, running, jumping ... if these are established correctly in the first years of the child's life (0 -6 years), the brain automates them.

In this way, the motor areas of the cerebral cortex responsible for these movements are left free, so that they focus on other types of learning, which are more complex and require more precision, such as writing or drawing. These tasks that involve aspects such as:

  • Eye-hand coordination
  • Perception
  • Spatial and temporal structuring.
chica corriendo

Sensorial Integration

Imagen vectorial de chica pensando en varias cosas a la vez

Dr. Jean Ayres defines sensory integration as an automatic and unconscious ability of the brain to organize the different stimuli that we receive.

Through the senses (hearing, vision, touch, proprioception...), the brain obtains an infinite number of sensory data about our body and our environment.

We have a Sensory Integration Room where we help the brain to “exercise” this capacity. The organization of the information obtained will be more effective and will help the child to manage and integrate in a more productive way all the stimuli (s)he receives. Given the importance given by Neuropsychology to this factor, in our school we have a sensory integration room where children will play freely daily and with specific neuromotor exercises once a week.

Given the importance that Neuropsychology attaches to this factor, at our school we have a sensory integration room where children will play freely daily and with specific neuromotor exercises once a week.

Laterality

The fact that children have a well-defined and homogeneous laterality (to be right-handed or left-handed) is the reflection of a functionally well-organized brain.

Different neuropsychological studies relate school performance to the laterality of children.

Therefore, we cannot forget the importance of children having the laterality correctly established and defined.

Ilustración en vectores de chica sosteniendo balón amarillo sobre superficie en zigzag

Multiple intelligences

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Thinking about multiple intelligences according to Howard Gardner formula "is a pluralistic view of the mind, which recognizes many different facets of cognition, which takes into account that people have different cognitive potentials and that contrasts different cognitive styles."

Gardner proposes eight types of intelligences:

  • Linguistic Intelligence.
  • Logical-mathematical intelligence.
  • Viso-spatial intelligence.
  • Body-kinesthetic intelligence.
  • Musical intelligence.
  • Naturalist Intelligence.
  • Intrapersonal intelligence.

Based on this theory, we must seek a teaching-learning model that allows the student to develop their skills and strategies of different intelligences, in order to achieve greater academic success.

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