Thinking Training Story Garden (Little Class)

Author: Li Zhongchen
Publisher:
Publish Date: 1998-03-01
Features:
Introduction to "Story Garden for Thinking Training"
1. The Purpose of Writing "Story Garden for Thinking Training"
"Story Garden for Thinking Training" is a picture book designed to train young children's language skills, imagination, and especially their thinking abilities. It is well-known that storytelling can develop children's thinking, but what aspects of their thinking can it develop? What kind of stories should be told, and what methods should be used to achieve the best development of children's thinking, as well as their language and imagination skills? How can the content, form, and teaching methods of stories be adapted to the psychological characteristics of children of different ages? These important questions have long remained unresolved in China's family education and kindergarten teaching. Most of the children's storybooks currently published in China simply collect myths, legends, fairy tales, fables, and other stories from ancient and modern times, and parents or teachers are asked to narrate them vaguely to the children. Many of these stories lack vocabulary, sentence structures, lengths, narrative styles, and plot contents that align with the psychological development of young children. The selected stories also lack the function of directly training children's sequential thinking, and storytelling education lacks scientific rigor. "Story Garden for Thinking Training" was written to address the scientific aspect of storytelling education. It is suitable for kindergarten teaching and also for early intellectual development at home.
2. The Features of "Story Garden for Thinking Training"
It integrates the training of language skills, imagination skills, and thinking skills, with a particular emphasis on sequentially training young children's thinking—this is the most prominent feature of this picture book. "Story Garden for Thinking Training" is designed based on child psychology. The stories are narrated linearly, with concise and fluent language, concentrated plots, short lengths, few characters, and minimal changes in time and space. Whether in story writing or in the design of teaching methods and prompts, it aligns with the psychological development patterns of preschool children. There are various approaches to training children's thinking, but "Story Garden for Thinking Training" primarily focuses on training young children's ways of thinking. The development of thinking methods is the foundation of thinking ability development. The thinking methods of young children have the following characteristics:
① They lack an accurate understanding of the causal relationships between things, often mistakenly assuming a causal relationship based on the mere proximity of two events in appearance. Swiss psychologist Piaget referred to this as "phenomenalism."
② They think from a self-centered perspective, often exhibiting an irreversible "egocentric thinking." Specifically, they find it difficult to view their own perspectives from the perspective of others or to think from a perspective that contradicts their own views.
③ They cannot simultaneously consider two or more factors in the same scenario, often being unable to attend to multiple aspects of a task at once.
④ They do not understand that the characteristics of a certain thing may change in different contexts, meaning they lack an understanding of the relativity of things.
⑤ In their thinking, they often focus only on the immediate, visible effects of actions, lacking attention to and consideration of the long-term consequences.
⑥ They lack an understanding of the positive and negative aspects of things. They tend to think only about the positive side and neglect to consider the negative side.
⑦ They cannot distinguish between the main and secondary aspects of things and do not understand that the nature of a thing should be determined by its main aspects.
The above characteristics of young children's thinking methods are primarily determined by the centrality of cognition and the concrete-figurative nature of their thinking. In their thinking process, these seven characteristics permeate and influence each other. To address these characteristics, we have embedded scientific thinking methods into engaging stories. Parents or teachers can guide children to understand the underlying meaning of these stories through enjoyable storytelling, helping them learn scientific thinking methods and promoting the development of their thinking abilities.
3. The Basic Content of "Story Garden for Thinking Training"
This book is divided into three volumes: Small Class, Middle Class, and Big Class, with a total of 102 stories. The Small Class volume contains 36 stories, suitable for children aged 3–4, without units, primarily focusing on training language skills, imagination, and simple thinking abilities. It helps children understand simple causal relationships, laying the foundation for learning subsequent stories. The Middle Class volume contains 34 stories, suitable for children aged 4–5, and is divided into five units: 1) Understanding the causal relationships between things; 2) Thinking from the perspective of others; 3) Considering two factors in the same scenario; 4) Understanding the relativity of things; 5) Thinking creatively. The Big Class volume contains 32 stories, suitable for children aged 5–6, and is also divided into five units: 1) Thinking from the perspective of others; 2) Considering the long-term effects of actions; 3) Understanding the positive and negative aspects of things; 4) Distinguishing between the main and secondary aspects of things; 5) Thinking creatively. The book includes an overview of teaching methods, with teaching prompts for each story. The Middle Class and Big Class volumes also have unit teaching guides for each unit. In kindergarten teaching experiments, one story is typically taught per week.
4. Points to Note When Using the Story Book
1. Some people may wonder when they see the unit titles of the Middle Class and Big Class stories: Can preschool children understand such profound concepts? Years of kindergarten teaching experiments have proven that, with proper guidance, children can indeed understand. First, our training design does not focus on making children aware of their own thinking methods but rather on helping them recognize the thinking methods of characters in the stories. "The person in the situation is blind, but the onlooker is clear." As an "outsider" or "onlooker," children first recognize the thinking methods of various characters in the stories and evaluate whether their actions are right or wrong. This greatly reduces the interference of emotional factors in the process of understanding, lowering the difficulty of comprehension. Once children have accumulated some cognitive experience, parents or teachers can gradually guide them to "reflect on themselves" and transform the understanding gained from the stories into reference points for regulating their own thinking activities, thereby promoting the development of their thinking methods. Second, we do not require children to understand the stories at an adult level; we only ask for a preliminary understanding, which is reflected in the teaching method guides and teaching prompts. More importantly: The teaching design of the book and the teaching prompts for each story are arranged in a way that is gradual, from simple to complex, and progressive. Especially, the thinking questions within each unit are interconnected, with earlier questions providing the foundational cognitive experience and psychological preparation for later questions, which are extensions and deepening of the earlier ones. This creates a step-by-step ladder for children's thinking activities. Therefore, parents and teachers must first understand the teaching method guides and teaching prompts in the book to grasp the design logic of the training.
2. The 102 stories in "Story Garden for Thinking Training" form an organic whole. Even older children should start with the Small Class stories when learning this set. Of course, older children can learn Small Class stories much more quickly.
3. Cultivating children's interest in learning stories and encouraging them to retell stories fluently are the foundation and key to children understanding the stories and learning thinking methods. It is crucial not to give children difficult tasks right away but to proceed step by step and avoid rushing.