Q: Why is schema development important?

A: Schemas are important because they're what give meaning and context to information as it comes in through our senses. In many ways, schemas provide a structure for our imagination to make sense of the world so that we can act intelligently and adaptively and engage more meaningfully and creatively with our environments. Trips to zoos, aquariums, and children's science museums (along with good books and real-world educational videos) are fantastic for schema development.

Q: What's a schema? 

A: A schema is another word for concept, image, or form. As a child grows, their understanding of the world and all its contents--stars, trees, animals, bugs, machinery--grows with them. Though all these things are known by just a single word or concept (e.g., "dog," "cat"), we learn through experience that there are many different kinds of dogs and cats. Through experimentation and exposure to different life experiences, our schemas evolve and become enriched and more complex.

Q: What does imagination have to do with learning?

A: Everything! It's hard to understate just how essential an active imagination is to the learning process. Images (and not necessarily just visual images--music can be imaginal, too) form the basis of all our ideas. In fact, the ancient Greek word for idea, ιδέα, literally means "form", or "pattern", and comes from the Greek word meaning "to see". The imagination is what allows readers to make rich, technicolor movies out of lines, spaces, and black-and-white text. More importantly, it's what helps to make information meaningful, which is the key for memory encoding and long-term recall.

Without engaging your child's imagination while reading a book, for example, they will most likely just end up sounding out the words on the page without forming any idea or picture of what's actually going on. The magic ingredient in high-quality learning and schema development is a curious and actively engaged imagination, no matter the subject. 

Strategies for nurturing your child's imagination and schema development include reading age-appropriate chapter books with them and engaging their curiosity about what they think might happen next. If possible, take turns reading, and invite them to try to imagine the movie that each of the words are painting as they read. Pausing to highlight familiar sensory experiences throughout, like the sound of rivers, the feeling of damp grass, or walking at dusk in a lamp-lit forest, will help to cultivate a rich imagination and equip your child with the tools needed to be active agents in the learning process, and to make the most of their educational experiences in school and beyond.

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In terms of brain health and development, it's recommended to seek out high-intensity games (like tennis) that require quick thinking, and maybe consider avoiding ones that might increase risks of head trauma or brain injury (e.g., concussions, TBIs).

The cerebellum, the back bottom part of the brain, is roughly ten percent (10%) of the brain's volume, but it has MORE THAN HALF of the brain's neurons (information messengers). It's super important! One of the main jobs of the cerebellum is physical coordination, including balance, walking and moving, and engaging in complex athletic movements, but it's also central to thought coordination and processing speed (Deverett et al., 2018; Beuriat et al., 2022). Similar to the theme in the above section on schema development, healthy and balanced brain development is very much dependent on actual, real-life experiences. Simulated experiences, like cartoons or even some of the most educational YouTube videos, simply aren't enough. Running outside, scanning the natural environment in all 360 to avoid hiccups and stumbling blocks, and using all our senses to "make sense" of movement decisions in relation to space and the changing distance of objects around us exercises parts of the brain (including the cerebellum and the prefrontal cortex) that make us smarter, healthier, and more capable of functioning in day to day life. In fact, a recent study found that people who engaged in lifetime sports--such as tennis, which requires extremely fast reflexes and processing skills--had a predicted life expectancy gain of 9.7 years over their sedentary counterparts! In addition to cardiovascular health, can you guess what might be going on there? (hint: it might have something to do with exercising the cerebellum.)

Although it can sometimes be hard to make time for engaging our kids in sports and outdoor play and exploration (work stress, "not enough time", too tired, etc.), the rewards--in most cases--far outweigh the costs and many of the perceived associated risks. Children who spend hours a day holding a two-dimensional screen up to their still-developing eyes simply do not see the same kind of visual and brain development as hands-on children who play outside (in 3D five-sensory [and more] space) and are, in actuality, at an increased risk for underperformance, stress, and mental health issues in school and beyond due to underdeveloped and underutilized parts of the brain. In order for the whole brain--in all its 360°--to grow and develop, and enable our children to become the people they were meant to be, it's essential that we make time for activities like sports that require us to move out in nature, think fast, and take in the world in full using all our senses and their associated cognitive processing systems. In the context of sports and school, perhaps lessons learned from cutting-edge neuroimaging and neuroscience research will provide us with new insights into what it means to "be well-rounded". At the very least, maybe it'll inspire us to pick up those running shoes.