I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.
-Ancient Chinese Proverb

Children are doers. They are explorers and makers. They fully experience their whole environments by holding, pushing, pulling, tweaking, and fully interacting with the things they come in contact with in order to understand the world in which they move through each day. They need to touch.

Children touch, feel, and play with their entire environment: the food they eat, the ground they walk on, and all their learning tools. Books are no exception.

Interactivity is nothing new in the world of books. As the publishing world has grown in the way of children’s materials over the years, more and more “touchable” books have found their way into the eager hands of little people waiting to explore them. A child can now readily find a book that will satisfy their need to touch. For now they can turn the pages with gusto, lift flaps, look in mirrors, feel a smooth, bumpy, or scratchy page, play peek-a-boo, and even zip zippers.

This kind of play is not only fun for a child’s growing mind and body, but truly and utterly essential. If a child’s mind is to grow to its full potential, the child must be given ample opportunity to explore her world in order to understand it.

A child needs to fully explore her world in all its wonder: to climb trees, to finger paint, to play in the mud, to practice and develop motor skills in big and small ways, to hear wide varieties of language and music, to listen and be listened to, and if new technologies are part of her, her family’s life, and that of her future, to explore them in ways that are developmentally appropriate.

Now, as new technologies are emerging, we find ourselves in the most fortunate time and place in history where children can touch books in ways they never have been able to before. With the latest in interactivity, such as iPhone and iPad apps for children, not only can a child read a story in a way that satisfies their need to touch, but their touches can now translate into the ability to control those stories: to enter characters, make them talk or sing, and even control the storyline.

We know that children learn by doing. With picking up, touching and truly interacting with the things, books and all, in their environment, children are able to most fully learn from them. In this way, they develop deeper understanding of their world. In turn, they can then take that understanding to other areas of their life so they can do, create, and interact even more as they grow. What an exciting time to be a child!

Ginger Carlson, MA Ed. is a teacher, educational consultant, mother, speaker, and author of Child of Wonder: Nurturing Creative and Naturally Curious Children. Learn more about Ginger and her work at http://gingercarlson.com or read more of her writings at The Savvy Source.