Online Program
Using videos, audio podcasts, handouts, a feedback drop-box (where participants upload videos of their children doing program activities), email, and an interactive blog and forum, we bring the core of the local program right to your home.
Both parents and their kids are active participants in the online program. Parents primarily facilitate their child’s brain reorganization; kids do the actual work.
Once enrolled in the class, parents receive a special password that allows them to access their course’s weekly videos, podcasts, handouts, assignments, and activities.
Click on each topic to learn more about the online curriculum.
Course Description
It takes two separate 8-week sessions to present the entire multimedia Brain Highways curriculum. The first session focuses on pons development; the second session focuses on midbrain development. Both sessions also include ways to integrate retained primitive reflexes and numerous activities to improve sensory processing and integration.
In the pons course, there is also a pre-course week. During this time, parents receive materials and prepare for starting the program with their child the following week.
Basics
There’s a specific order in which the basic neurological movements are presented in the curriculum. Participants do not move on to the next stage of development until they are ready to do so. This ensures that kids (finally) have a chance to lay down neural networks in their natural order of development.
The curriculum also includes opportunities for kids to engage in appropriate school challenges at the same time they’re receiving rich sensory input. This offers new ways for teaching children with Asperger’s, ADD, Reactive Attachment Disorder, and other special needs. And guess what happens when we integrate such movements with learning? Kids who were previously known to resist school work are now eager to learn—and they do so with joy and success.
Curriculum Theme
We want parents and their kids to understand the direct relationship between incomplete lower brain development and its effect on behavior, attention, academic performance, coordination, speech, and social interaction. That’s why we provide fun, comprehensible ways for even three-year-olds to understand this connection.
In fact, teachers and extended family members are often surprised when some of our youngest participants start talking about their pons, midbrain, vestibular system, and proprioceptive system (especially when such adults are unfamiliar with these terms).
Materials
The online materials include videos, audio podcasts, support handouts, overviews, checklists, and questionnaires.
The Videos: Prior Brain Highways participants are the video stars. Most of these short videos demonstrate fun program activities and movements specific to brain development. While such directions are also included in the handouts, the videos make it easy for parents and kids to “see” what to do. With the exception of a few videos, parents and kids watch these together.
Audio Podcasts: Nancy Sokol Green, the creator of the program, shares personal stories and reflections that enhance the information provided in the videos and handouts.
Support Handouts: Charts, tips, articles, and more help parents learn important information. Ready-to-use handouts related to program activities and entertaining “stories” to convey specific ideas are also included.
Overviews: Parents receive a weekly overview of that week’s materials and assignments.
Checklists: Parents receive weekly checklists to help them quickly note what needs to be done.
Questionnaires: Parents are asked to respond to specific questions so that class facilitators can assess whether any individual feedback is needed.
Assignments
In addition to facilitating the weekly curriculum activities, parents are asked to mark weekly checklists and to periodically respond to questionnaires. Both help class facilitators to know whether everyone is on track. Families are also sometimes challenged to post original enrichment ideas on the Brain Highways forum. That way other families can also benefit from ways to expand on program activities.
Support
We often say that the parents—not the kids—are our true participants. That’s because our primary goal is to help parents become expert facilitators of their child’s brain organization and to learn how to apply this new knowledge to all aspects of life.
In addition to the curriculum materials, parents can seek answers to individual questions via email. If class facilitators decide additional phone conversations are warranted, they will arrange that. Parents also receive support from current and past Brain Highways participants via the Brain Highways blog.
Last, parents have access to our feedback drop-box. Here, they can upload videos of their children doing the brain organization work. Class facilitators then give parents feedback on what they observe.
Daily Brain Organization Work
Yes, it would be great if early brain development happened with just the wave of a wand . . . but (unfortunately) it does not work that way. To get results, kids in the pons class are required to do a total of 30 minutes of the core brain work a day, with that time increasing to 45 minutes in the midbrain session. Such time, however, can be divided and spread over the day. There is also a very minimal amount of time (about five minutes a day) spent doing other curriculum activities.
Sound too challenging to schedule? Then, it’s probably good to know that thousands of prior busy participants have already done so. As part of the curriculum, we model lots of ways to integrate the brain work with activities kids already enjoy. We also show families how to combine our daily requirement with homework, which often results in finishing assignments quicker than it would take without such integration.
But most importantly, the temporary time spent reorganizing the brain ultimately frees up an unlimited amount of time in the future. Many prior participants acknowledge that they used to spend far more time dealing with negative behaviors throughout the day than the short time they spent doing the daily brain work.
Accountability
You really can’t cheat when it comes to brain reorganization. It’s abundantly obvious if the work is not being done, so there is no point in doing the program if there’s no serious commitment to do the daily work.
To keep participants on track, parents submit weekly checklists to confirm that their child has completed the minimal amount of core brain work for that week. Parents also check off that they have watched the videos, listened to the audio podcasts, and read the handouts for that week.
Assessments
When is the brain organization complete? That’s the question everyone wants to know. Our on-going program assessment makes that answer clear to participants.
During the first week of each course, parents upload a short video of their child doing some of the key brain organization work so that we can give immediate feedback. This ensures that families maximize their time doing the program in the most efficient way.
At the sixth week of each session, parents, once again, upload a video of their child doing the brain work so class facilitators can give parents specific feedback about their child’s progress. In the midbrain class, participants also submit assessment videos the first and sixth week of the session.
Such on-going assessments provide lots of information. First, there are specific characteristics of each stage of development. While we never identify those distinct features to the kids (it would interfere with the natural progression if they were “thinking” about it), class facilitators know what to observe. They can then point out to parents which characteristics have evolved and which may still be missing as part of the assessment feedback.
Second, class facilitators also know the order in which those stages naturally evolve, what the last stage looks like, and what basic brain functions, skills, and behaviors are associated with each specific stage of development. When facilitators confirm that kids have met all of the brain organization criteria, they are done. That means they no longer need to continue in any way with the brain work.
If participants’ brain organization is not complete by the end of the midbrain session (and this is often the case as kids begin the program with different levels of development), parents still continue to upload videos of their children to receive feedback. We continue to assess children’s progress, for no extra charge, until the organization is complete.
