How Do Young Children Learn Logic Through Poems & Stories?
Other People Are Reading
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Observation
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From the moment they are born, young children learn about their world through watching and listening. Modern psychologists and anthropologists generally agree that young children learn best through observation and mimicking, and these actions lead to the child's linguistics, rationale and logic.
Children experience the fastest learning rate of their lifetime between birth and the age of 3. In addition, children learn tremendous amounts about logic through watching and listening, but they learn even more through doing things and enjoying life experiences. Since very young children are often incapable of enacting life experiences on their own and possess little to no logic rationale, they can instead enjoy vicarious experiences through poems and stories while learning valuable lessons.
As a child listens to, becomes engaged in and vicariously experiences the consequences that befall "The Boy Who Cried Wolf," for example, she can learn simple life lessons like the consequences of falsely raising alerts.
Listening
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Stories and poems are especially effective for young children because, as some of the most ancient communications mediums still in use today, they possess the ability to envelope a listener and draw that person in to the world woven by the poet or storyteller. The longevity of stories and poems is partially explained by the ability of stories and poems to capture a child's (or adult's) attention and draw the listener's mind into a virtual world where any possibility can play out.
According to Steve Denning, a storytelling consultant, well-told stories can envelop the listener in a virtual world that seems so realistic that devout listeners may feel as though they enjoyed first-hand experience of the events described in the story. The effect of stories on young children is similar to how stories affect adults, though children's stories often include simplistic terms, basic words and abbreviated storylines to accommodate the child's shorter attention span.
As a child listens to the vivid imagery of flowers, wilderness and family relationships described in "Little Red Riding Hood," for example, the child may identify with the main character and receive a valuable lesson about heeding parental advice.
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Rhyming
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Just as stories draw in and consumer a child or adult listener, the rhythmic cadence and frequent rhymes of poems can capture a child's attention and maintain his interest long enough to convey a message. Children enjoy repetition and basic literary patterns like rhyming, partially because the cadence of a poem simulates natural rhythmic sounds with which the young child may be comfortable. As the poem or story captures the child's attention, it can then inject specific lessons about logic that help the child draw basic "if/then" conclusions; as the child listens to more stories and poems, the repeated injection of these lessons helps reinforce basic logic and build additional, more complex reasoning abilities.
Logical Inference
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Once a story or poem captures a young child's attention, parents or educators can use the story to create memories and associations in the child's mind. Many children's stories carry meaningful messages about personal safety, consequences and other basic life realities, and a number of stories and poems describe how characters experience the consequences of their actions or choices.
As a child listens to and vicariously experiences the story or poem, he may begin to make simple "if/then" type connections in his mind as described above. Just as the characters in the story often learn from their experiences, so does the child; as these vicarious experiences continue and stories and poems create the framework for more advanced logic, many children also progress to the ability to predict a story's outcome.
When a parent or educator read poems and stories to children, they may periodically stop and ask, "What do you think happens next?" With each correct prediction, the child's confidence in his own logic grows, and his ability to apply more advanced logic and reasoning takes a corresponding step forward.
Elementary, secondary and post-secondary education may then expand on this basic logic to create more advanced capabilities, reinforcing the notion that children who read or listen to stories maintain a competitive edge both in and out of school.
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