Products > CAMI Perceptual Skills Builder

When a child goes to school, learning how to learn will be his or her most important lesson. Learning happens when someone becomes curious about something seen, heard, felt, or experienced and makes behaviour changes as a result. The purpose of learning is to help a child adjust at home, at school, and in the world.

The final goal of learning must be the creation of insight. True knowledge is gained when we absorb parts with individual uniqueness through our senses and then shape a total image of the picture of the world around us. This picture then becomes our reality. Each new experience refers to reality, and each new experience broadens and reorganises this reality. It is from this reality that we make decisions and take actions to investigate, test and anchor what we believe in our understanding.

Over the past 17 years, CAMI has carved out a niche in the market as the leader in Computer Aided Instruction for mathematics. When CAMI turned their focus to the subjects of School Readiness and Learning Difficulties, they discovered that there is no single, comprehensive system that addresses all the perceptual development needs. CAMI then proceeded with the development of the CAMI Perceptual Skills Builder, a comprehensive system for the development of the foundation of learning.

The CAMI Perceptual System addresses an immensely important period of the child’s life, from the age of 4 to 9 years old. In this stage, the child distances himself from the pre-conceptual stage. The child has acquired the concept of object constancy and has learned to link his actions and thoughts with words. According to Piaget this 4 to 9 year phase is the intuitive phase of intelligence. The child learns to use the language more actively and to think more actively. The child is very dependent upon observation during this phase. Most children struggle with the transition from the intuitive to the concrete-operational stage.

Total Brain Development

The most well known cliché in education today is "Left versus Right-brain". Sometimes a superficial label is attached to children by identifying them as left or right brain learners. The more we use both hemispheres, the more intelligently we will function.

The gestalt (right) hemisphere is to a large degree responsible for spatial orientation, patterns and concrete objects. This hemisphere forms a total image from smaller elements. The logical (left) hemisphere is responsible for language and words. Here more analysis, sequencing and fragmentation into smaller portions occur. Creativity is a total brain process, which requires technique and detail from the logical hemisphere and in totality, flow and emotion from the gestalt hemisphere.

In just the same way, comfort with language that requires the correct words and sentence construction coming from the left-brain and in totality, emotion and dialect from the right brain. This integration enables comfortable reading and writing as well as understanding and creative interpretation.

CAMI's Perceptual Skills Builder Software uses the total brain development approach to heighten the effectiveness of the brain, which makes learning more integrated and successful. The program is developed in such a manner that 4 year old children already come into contact with strange circumstances and thus individually develop strongly with sufficient self confidence. The child thus develops a spirit that is hungry for knowledge and wants to discover more.

Features

The CAMI Perceptual system is fully featured and it addresses eight areas of perception:
• Colour,
• Shapes,
• Spatial orientation,
• Associative skills,
• Mental retention,
• Auditory skills,
• Estimation of quantities and
• Exercises that deals with the body of the child.

Exercises with similarities and differences place the emphasis on visual discrimination, the ability required for good spelling, reading and mathematics development. A child with poor visual discrimination will find it difficult to differentiate between letters, numbers and words. Children in this situation read letter by letter.

Visual sequencing exercises organise and stimulate the brain for good reading and spelling skills. Later learning is emphasised with mental recall exercises, which improve the memory, because if the child learns and is then unable to recall, the learning was of little use.

An immensely strong development of self-debate is developed by the foreground/background exercises in the system. These finely tuned exercises lead to participation, which in turn leads to independence and healthy self-confidence, which is essential for the development of the child.

Children with a foreground background problem tend to be unobservant and disorganised and behave accordingly. Each new stimulation will divert his attention. If the child is busy reading he will skip portions of the text. The child will also struggle to solve problems presented to him.

Memory retention exercises have a huge impact at the educational level. A child with poor visual memory cannot remember what he saw. A problem will be experienced with comprehension because he cannot remember what he has read.

Good emphasis is placed upon concentration through a series of sound exercises for further learning in the classroom situation. A good grasp of language is established and communicated through auditory instructions to the child.

Body image exercises help children with centreline problems. Research has shown that children who have this problem find it difficult to move their eyes from left to right and this in turn can lead to learning difficulties. Body image and the different aspects of mirror image exercises are of great importance for the child’s progress at school.

Benefits

The CAMI Perceptual Program creates an opportunity for optimal school readiness (as a foundation for future learning) in the child, which means that he can most successfully gain full advantage from the learning experience at school.

Good flow and rhythm in hand-to-eye coordination, as well as stimulation for the child’s laterality, is achieved through the medium of the computer mouse, which means that the left-right domination is checked and enriched. Exposure of the child to new situations prepares him for the classroom environment, which means that a high level of perseverance is created. This in turn incorporates a business-like learning focus and interest, which means that the ability to resolve objective demands in parallel with problem situations is developed.

The acceptable perceptual abilities that are given to the pupil place him or her in a position to sensibly interpret educational materials that have been observed, which leads to a better learner. The child’s ability to think is developed and optimised, which leads to exceptional conceptualisation. Integrated development of the pupil takes place through a high level of logical and associative memory development. It also places the teacher in a position of analysis, synthesis and globalisation of his (or her) observations, which means that focused attention can be given to the learners.

In short, the CAMI system will facilitate a focused cognitive stimulation and whole-brain development of the learner, which stimulates and integrates both hemispheres far better, so that intellectual development can take place easier.