How Do You Teach Kids Concepts?

My girlfriend has a younger brother who's 8. He starting to understand some concepts about life, but he's still misunderstanding a lot of them. Not having a younger sibling in my life to teach and guide I was kind of wondering how someone would actually teach kids some life concepts? Is it better to explain verbally, or is it better to show by example?

Like with me, honesty is key, even if I'm dealing with a kid. I don't want to delay their learning by making up fairytales. So if a kid asks questions about stars or the moon how could I teach them about it, but at the same time simplifying it enough so that they can understand?

In reading, attention must be intensely focused to the exclusion of all else. Gratification must be deferred and reading become second nature for thoughts, meanings, to light up. Such labored concentration on the initially opaque medium hampers release of the words’ content and can be sustained by children only for short periods without their becoming exhausted. This effort creates defensive avoidance in a great many children for whom sustained attention is difficult. Could it be that the highly complex level of abstraction in reading is completely alien to early childhood, analogous to how non-mathematician adults feel when asked to read a page of mathematical symbols. There is a vast gulf in experience for a child between the written word m-o-t-h-e-r and the matrix of feeling-meaning that the sound “mother” connotes. While the imagination takes flight in hearing a story, it often flaps in useless frustration when it attempts to learn the four major sounds of the letter “A” too soon. This effort to enter a world of abstraction before the way has been properly prepared literally can suck the vitality right out of a child. How different is the holistic, picture consciousness of a young child from this step-wise, linear, analytical, abstract construct of written language that is barely 5,000 years old against the backdrop of eons of pre-literate human evolution.

From the time I was 6, I used to get the "How and Why Wonderbooks" on various aspects of Science.

My girlfriend has a younger brother who's 8. He starting to understand some concepts about life, but he's still misunderstanding a lot of them. Not having a younger sibling in my life to teach and guide I was kind of wondering how someone would actually teach kids some life concepts? Is it better to explain verbally, or is it better to show by example?

Like with me, honesty is key, even if I'm dealing with a kid. I don't want to delay their learning by making up fairytales. So if a kid asks questions about stars or the moon how could I teach them about it, but at the same time simplifying it enough so that they can understand?

I think it's a lot easier to understand certain things at that age. So I don't think there would be an issue there as long as you explain it fully and explain it well.

The imagination runs wild at that age.

Not necessarily. That's a good age for memorizing things...tell a kid something once at that age, and they'll be great at parroting it back to you for a long time to come...but that doesn't necessarily come with much depth of understanding. It's a good time for teaching them things like the names of stars and planets, or the order of the planets, or the types of stars, or THAT the planets orbit around the sun, but don't expect them to understand WHY they do that (though at that age, that's what they will ask you endlessly...why? why? why?) I mean, you could give them an explanation, and they'll amaze your friends by repeating it back to them, but it doesn't mean they have the conceptual understanding in their mind, they just know the words that go with it. Conceptual understanding develops more slowly.

Not necessarily. That's a good age for memorizing things...tell a kid something once at that age, and they'll be great at parroting it back to you for a long time to come...but that doesn't necessarily come with much depth of understanding. It's a good time for teaching them things like the names of stars and planets, or the order of the planets, or the types of stars, or THAT the planets orbit around the sun, but don't expect them to understand WHY they do that (though at that age, that's what they will ask you endlessly...why? why? why?) I mean, you could give them an explanation, and they'll amaze your friends by repeating it back to them, but it doesn't mean they have the conceptual understanding in their mind, they just know the words that go with it. Conceptual understanding develops more slowly.

Yikes, I would have told the kid there is no such thing as heaven. I think its good that it upsets him. It will keep him busy thinking.

I find it very disturbing to lie to a child about some wild fantasy called heaven just to make him 'feel happy'. As far as Im aware, animal dont even go to heaven if your a Christian, right?