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BC Women "Toon Up" Kids to Study at Home by Offering Free Brain-Training Course



Paula Arab & Associates Inc.
  

By Paula Arab

VANCOUVER – TheNewswire - May 6, 2020 –  Two local-area women are helping parents teach their children from home by offering their animated brain-training program for free during the pandemic. The program, which can be viewed from any device, warms up the brain in under 10 minutes so that kids are mentally prepared to learn when they sit down for school.

“We are making it available to help parents and grandparents at home, with children coping with the stress of studying in isolation,” said Cally Bailey, co-founder of the Brain1st program.

“It engages children by talking with them, not at them and is about making the learning experience enjoyable rather than a chore,” said Bailey, who has spent more than six years studying and practising MBSR (Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction), a flexible and customizable approach to deal with the daily stresses of life.

The series of animated videos has been adopted by several B.C. school districts and the brain-boosting strategies have been used by teachers for the past three years as brain warm-up exercises before class.

 

Elisa-Maria Chong, a second-grade teacher at Douglas Road Elementary School in Burnaby, described the Brain1st program as “one of the most intelligently crafted programs to aid in the social and emotional development of children.”

The activities are engaging and easy to implement, she said.

“I use the program videos before lesson times, and it greatly helps the students focus,” said Chong, a teacher of eight years. “I think now more than ever, students are faced with additional stresses and are often distracted by the complexity of their lives and I believe elementary students would benefit from the simple, yet powerful, exercises and activities put forth by the Brain 1st creators.”

The Brain1st program uses digital characters - ‘Belle’ and ‘Tex’ to lead students of all levels through a variety of activities that positively impact behaviour, learning and movement. The fun, short animations automatically progress each day as users log in.

“Students don't always come to school ready to learn and teachers who have been using the program in their classrooms have found it positively impacts academic achievement,” said Laura Iverson Dieleman, another co-founder of the Brain1st program. She has spent the last decade focusing on neuro-behavioural disorders in children.

“We developed this program to stimulate the brain so teachers could spend more time teaching and less time managing daily classroom challenges,” said the mother of three, whose own children start their home learning day with ‘Belle’ and ‘Tex’.

The Brain1st program is being offered for free until the school lockdown is lifted in BC.

To register go here.

  

For more information, contact:

 

Cally Bailey

cally@brain1st.ca

604-839-9791

  

Dr. Laura Iverson

laura@brain1st.ca

 604-996-6654

 

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Cally Bailey (r) and Laura Iverson, founders of the B.C.-based Brain1st program


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Children engaging with the Brain1st program at home