Covid pandemic now feels like a distant nightmare. But its effects didn't disappear when the lockdowns ended – some of them may stay with us for years to come.. Research showed that children who were around 5–6 during the pandemic found it harder to understand their own feelings and recognize emotions in others than children of the same age who grew up before or after it. Most importantly, lockdowns took away interactions with other kids: sharing toys, negotiating rules of the game, dealing with disagreements or figuring out why a friend suddenly got upset. At home it’s different: parents can anticipate children’s needs without much explanation. That's comforting, but it means no “training ground” to learn unfamiliar emotions and unpredictable social situations. But children still got their parents and siblings to connect to, right? True, but in Russia, more than one third of families only have one parent, and around half have just one child. So with no contact outside the family, that means many kids simply had few chances to experience different emotions and learn how to understand other people. Then parents were struggling too. Many were anxious about their families' safety and stressed by the uncertainty of what would happen next. Understandably, they had less emotional energy to talk through their children's feelings. Finally, there may be a cultural factor at play. In Russia, close community relationships play an important role, and people rely on friends for emotional support. That could be another reason why losing contact with the wider community may have hit children particularly hard. Perhaps that's the pandemic's biggest reminder: to grow emotionally, children need more than family – they need friends, classmates, playmates, and all the little moments of connection, disagreement and reconciliation that come with them. Join us to explore the human mind together! #EmotionUnderstanding

“I can’t get the puzzle pieces to fit!” By observing children at play and in everyday activities, teachers can identify where they need support. But it's not enough to correct one problem. Research suggests that rather than focusing on one skill, teachers should design activities that bring different skills together and help children reach new stages of development. After all, any skills – self-control, movement, visual memory and so on – build on each other. Imagine a teacher watching a child put together a puzzle. The child is calm and focused but keeps mixing up the middle pieces and the edges. The teacher wonders if the child has trouble understanding how shapes fit together. Then they notice that the child also gets confused during movement games, which confirms the hypothesis.  Instead of offering more puzzles, the teacher introduces a matching game where the child must pair objects with their shadows. At first, the child needs help but gradually learns to do it alone. This is how learning develops: what a child can do with an adult’s guidance today becomes something they can do alone tomorrow. The teacher then builds on this progress: they invite the child to pretend to drive other children to school, following a map - training imagination, spatial awareness, language, and self-control, all at once. Then games such as hopscotch help the child practise controlling their movements. So, the key is to look beyond individual difficulties and find more ways to support a child’s overall development. Play is ideal for this: children explore, make choices, try out adult roles, and learn to follow rules.  And there're three ingredients that make play especially valuable: pleasure, free choice, and curiosity. Pleasure motivates children to take on adult roles, free choice helps them guide their own behaviour, and curiosity fuels their imagination.  Looks like the magic of play is that children stretch their limits while having fun! Join us to explore the human mind together! #Teaching #DevelopmentalSupport

One size doesn’t fit all: the hidden art of learning online  Online learning sounds like a dream: study wherever you want, use any materials, and replay a lecture as many times as you need. But there’s another side to it: it’s much easier to miss an error, lose focus or motivation.  A central skill for online learners is self-monitoring: noticing what you understand, what you don’t, and whether your approach is working.  Research shows that students who are better at monitoring their own learning do not only perform better academically but also experience less tension because of confusing instructions or poorly organized learning materials. They spot misunderstandings early and change their approach – and thus spend less energy figuring out how to learn and more on what they were actually learning.  Interestingly, these students also find the material itself less demanding, even when a topic is objectively complex. People who know how to monitor their learning can organize information into meaningful chunks. This makes it easier to work with several pieces of information without feeling overwhelmed. So, the same material can feel easier when you know how to approach it.  What’s even more surprising is that simple tips for checking your understanding – like asking yourself, Which two or three key ideas from this text do I understand best? – didn’t help everyone. For students who were already good at monitoring their own learning, these prompts seemed to get in the way: the link between their self-monitoring skills and academic results became weaker. But for students who struggled to keep track of their own learning, the same questions gave valuable guidance right when they needed it most.  Perhaps, the lesson here is more guidance doesn’t always mean more learning. Some students need a nudge to stop and think, others need the freedom to go deeper. The trick isn’t to give everyone the same support, but to give learners the kind of support that helps them move forward. Join us to explore the human mind together! #OnlineLearning #SelfMonitoring #LearningApproach