QSR Activities for Young Children

I often get asked questions like: what age should I start linking memory with my child?  How do you do Mandala with a baby?  How can you get a two year old to look at 3D pictures?  Up until recently, I had no answers to these questions.  All I could suggest was what I observed the children doing in right brain class.

In her book Quantum Speed Reading, Tobitani lists out the activities she recommends for children at various ages.  Most of the activities I wrote about in the previous posts on training the QSR ability aren’t intended for children below 4.  In fact, most of them are for elementary school children and above.

So if your child is too young, the best thing you can do it practice them on yourself so you get an idea of what you are trying to achieve and you can see what the activities do for you.  One thing I have noticed is that I must continually practice the activities to feel a benefit.  For the past week, I hadn’t been doing any image practice and found I could not after-image the Mandala pattern in Gavin’s Heguru class like I did the previous week.

Tobitani’s QSR Program:

1. 0-2 years old

• speak to your child
• give your child lots of daily life experiences
• read picture books with your child

2. 2-4 years old

• communicate your love through touch – you can never have too many cuddles and hugs
• tell imaginary stories where your child is the hero
• play pretend where your child is something or somebody
• let your child play with toy dishes while you are in the kitchen cooking
• play outside in nature
• play with friends
• lots of picture books (8 pages); reread the ones that he likes

3. 4-6 years old

• let your child talk to his friends
• let your child play in groups (e.g. in playschool)
• lots of pictures books; include a wide range of books (such as ones that adults might enjoy as well)
• QSR training: flying into Mum’s belly, into own body and into books; demonstrate how to flip through books without going into the contents

The activities I wrote about in my earlier posts on QSR are done with children in elementary grades and adults.  Tobitani talks about these activities in greater detail in her book and I will expand on them in a later post.  I guess for now, the underlying messages are: love, imagination, play and books.