Sharifa Oppenheimer

In this book readers will find not only a heart-filled rendering of the gentle ways young children have been traditionally raised and educated, but also cutting edge research that supports these practices. With love as the foundation, and through the neural tapestry created by joyful movement, music, art, stories, and play, we feed and bathe the brain of the young child. These deep connections with life are woven together during childhood to become the wholeness we call “I.”

Each chapter offers ideas for bringing this new science and these time-honored ways into the home and classroom. Parents, educators, and everyone who has ever loved and cared for a child will find research, humor, wisdom, and a new paradigm that marries ageless wisdom with the new science of the human brain and heart.
 

• “Friends, parents, educators, read this inspiring book. Sharifa’s research offers a rare and compelling marriage of the science of facts and figures and the science of the heart.” —Cynthia Aldinger, author, Life Is the Curriculum, and founder of LifeWays North America
  
  “Sharifa’s book is an uncommon meld of the science behind child development and the esoteric. She brings forward valuable current research and applies it directly to ways of being with children in an honoring and deeply loving way that empowers their growth as resilient, coherent and empathetic human beings.” —Carla Hannaford, PhD, biologist, international educational consultant, author of Smart Moves and Playing in the Unified Field

• CONTENTS:


• How to Use This Book
• PART ONE
• Introduction: The Science of Connection

1. Gentle Ways and Hard Science for the Early Years
2. The Love Connection
3. The Nature Connection
4. The Spiritual Connection

• PART TWO
• Introduction: The Science of Childhood

5. Exploring Self and the World through the Senses
6. Making Sense of Self and the World through Movement
7. Art and Stories: Tools to Imagine the Self
8. Creative Play: The Art and Practice of Becoming Oneself

• Conclusion
• Appendix
• Notes
• Color Images