Touch Stimulation for Your Accelerated Learning Environment

Touch stimulation includes the subtile influences of physical elements within our learning environment and various types of tactile stimulation. We'll discuss our learning environment  first.

The Subtile Influences of Our Environment

When looking around your children's learning environment, our furniture and room accessories actually have a subtle influence on how they feel consciously and subconsciously. These feelings can come about by actually touching them by sitting, picking up, or by just looking at them or thinking about them. Let me give you an example of what I mean:

Childhood "Touch Stimulation" Memories

In my childhood home, I remember having the hardest time learning new things or doing my homework while sitting at my kitchen table. At the time, it was the only place I could sit and spread out my work. This table sat beside a tiled countertop which, oddly, came to long sharp point at one end right in the middle of the kitchen. In fact, the only way to get through our small kitchen was to walk around it. I remember when running through, sometimes I'd hit it with my arm or chest and it really hurt. Also, where I sat at the table, my neck and head are were actually situated right beside that same extruding point.

This is an example of touch stimulation that had a negative influence - so much so that I believe it actually interfered with my ability to study in the only place available to me.

In general, kitchens don't make good accelerated learning environments simply because of all the distracting inherent touch stimulation and scent stimulation. And, I think you can see from my story how elements in our environment can have a negative impact on learning.

I hope the story above illustrated one way we can touch things with our mind. The stimulation we discussed above is a right brain sense.

Fill Your Accelerated Learning Environment With Objects That Invoke Positive Touch Stimulation

So look around the place where your children study or where you study. Cozy couches, big fat pillows or big stuffed chairs are great. Soft, round objects, rather than sharp ones can help keep the mind at ease. Hard, sharp plastic toys can be distracting. Things in our environment that can make us think about pain can even block the potential effectiveness of accelerated learning methods. I think you get the idea.

Tactile Touch Stimulation for Your Baby

A great way to stimulate your baby's brain is touch different areas of their body with physical items around the house. For example, what we did with our baby is gathered items such as sand paper (rough), cotton (soft), water (liquid), rock (hard), etc. We took one item at a time and gently rubbed them against baby's arms, hands, face cheeks and feet bottoms. With each, firest we showed it to them, then announced, ("This is rough.... This is soft.... This is plastic.... This is metal..... This is glass....., etc.").  They loved it! This type of stimulation is a fantastic way to build powerful brain connections between the right and left brain functions.

Also try this: Make sand paper letters and numbers by typing them out on your computer and printing them out on white card stock. Make them large - about 4 inches tall. Take some white glue and carfully glue inside the shapes then sprinkle some fine sand on the glue. Let it dry. Now, when your baby is in a receptive mood, Show them a letter at a time, announce what the letter is then take their fingers and gently trace the letter/number forms while saying what it is again, ("This is an 'A'", etc.)

Here's another great game that helps us visualize through physical stimulation (both powerful right brain activities): When our kids got a little older I would draw a large letter on their backs and see who could guess what it was. We took turns on each other's backs. At first it was hard to see in our minds what letter were feeling on our backs but pretty soon, we got to a point where we were drawing whole words on each other's backs. It was really fun and felt great too. Try it!

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