A Brain-Based Approach to School Readiness

As a parent, you want your child to start school with confidence and the necessary skills to succeed. School readiness goes beyond the ability to recite the alphabet or count to 10. A child’s readiness to learn is influenced by their cognitive development, which includes skills such as attention, memory, language, and problem-solving. Taking a brain-based approach to school readiness can give your child a solid foundation for academic success.

What Skills Do Early Learners Need?

Early learners require a range of cognitive skills to help them process and retain information. Some of these skills include:

• Attention: The ability to stay focused on a task for a prolonged period.
• Memory: The capacity to store and retrieve information.
• Language: The ability to communicate effectively and understand spoken and written language.
• Processing Speed: The ability to process information quickly and accurately.
• Executive Function: The ability to plan, prioritize, and organize tasks.
• Visual-Spatial Processing: The ability to understand and interpret visual information.

Even more important than content knowledge, making sure a young child’s brain is wired for efficient learning can set them up for greater success from the get-go. If your child’s brain is able to process the world quickly, retain information, and stay engaged, they will be set up to thrive in any academic environment. 

Cognitive Development Stages

Cognitive development occurs in stages, and each stage builds on the previous one. These stages are:

• Sensorimotor Stage (Birth to 2 years): During this stage, children learn through their senses and motor skills.
• Preoperational Stage (2 to 7 years): Children develop language and begin to think symbolically.
• Concrete Operational Stage (7 to 11 years): Children can think logically and understand cause and effect.
• Formal Operational Stage (11 years and up): Children can think abstractly and reason logically.

While these broader development stages occur fairly predictably in neurotypical kids, cognitive skill development happens uniquely to each individual. Everybody has different natural strengths and weaknesses, AND the brain has a constant capacity for change to target weaknesses and strengthen them.

Lay a Solid Foundation: Strong Cognitive Skills for School Readiness

To ensure school readiness, children must have strong cognitive skills that support learning. LearningRx’s brain-based approach to cognitive training focuses on improving cognitive skills to enhance learning ability. This approach is based on neuroscience research that shows that the brain is capable of changing and adapting throughout life.

We all know that kids are the most receptive to learning. The ability of their brains to grow and adapt at an earlier age can set them up for greater success later. This can mean avoiding years of struggle learning to read, or less stress over math. Or maybe it’s avoiding disruptive issues due to lack of attention and self-regulation. Laying a foundation by building these skills NOW can help them be more confident and successful in the classroom for years.

School Readiness Training with LearningRx

LearningRx tailors each of its school readiness training programs to a child’s unique needs. By strengthening cognitive skills, children become better equipped to handle the demands of school and excel academically. Our LiftOff® early learning program uses fun games and activities to engage learning and thinking skills in kids. These activities help kids build a strong foundation of skills, including:

• Paying attention, ignoring distractions, and basic multitasking
• Remembering key details during lessons and activities
• Imagining sounds and understanding spoken language
• Picturing mental images and processing visual information
• Basic problem solving, logic, and reasoning abilities

School readiness doesn’t just look like learning the alphabet or counting. It should include making sure your child’s brain is adequately wired to handle learning new information—without the stress and struggle that is so common!

Click here to learn more about our LiftOff program and get started today >>