Nikitin method

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The Nikitin method is a model for early childhood education that was developed by the married couple Lena and Boris Nikitin in the Soviet Union at the beginning of the 1960s and described in several books. It is essential to give the children as many and as different suggestions as possible from the very beginning and to encourage their curiosity, on the other hand not to exert any pressure and to give the children the opportunity to have a say.

family

The Nikitin family lived in the Bolshevo settlement, around 40 kilometers northeast of Moscow . You have / had seven children who were born between 1959 and 1971. These children are: Alexej (* 1959), Anton (* 1960), Olga (* 1962), Anna (* 1964), Julija (* 1966), Iwan (* 1969) and Ljuba (* 1971).

The Nikitins supported and challenged their children in a playful way from the first months of life, taught them independence, the ability to help themselves, and also demanded intellectual performance and social behavior. Among other things, they wanted to create a stimulating environment, a learning-play landscape for and with their children. The play materials developed by them to promote intellectual development are of particular importance.

All children could read by the age of three or four and do arithmetic according to the first grade curriculum, by five to six they could write, and by four to five they could understand plans, drawings, and maps. In the first few years of school, all of the children performed excellently. Some of them went straight to the second or third grade or skipped several grades.

Barefoot and little clothing

The Nikitins assume that humans have the natural ability of all mammals to adapt to different ambient temperatures. However, this ability to “regulate heat” can be lost if children are used to a constant temperature through clothing at an early age. This could make them more susceptible to various diseases, such as: B. for colds. In addition, tight, heavy clothing hampers the child's natural urge to move. Few and light clothing and a cool ambient temperature, on the other hand, encouraged movement. Physical activity is perceived as pleasant and pleasurable. Walking barefoot had a positive effect on posture and the children could develop their walking and running skills and their overall coordination of movements better. Based on these assumptions, the children were allowed to play barefoot and only wearing short panties, indoors and outdoors, for most of the year.

nutrition

The basic idea of ​​the family is: food presupposes hunger, if you are hungry, you also eat. Other families spend a lot of time cooking, preparing "... various dishes for young and old, spicy and unseasoned". Nikitins had rearranged their food like this: What is healthy for children is not unhealthy for adults. There were regular meals at the common table, everyone ate the same thing. If you don't eat anything, you have to wait until the next meal. In this way, toddlers are introduced to what will later be eaten at an early age and are always given appetizers to try, preferably healthy, nutritious food from the region. There were no experiments with recipes. After the meal, nothing should be left on the plate. However, if someone overestimated themselves, the food stayed on the plate for later. The Nikitins were of the opinion that most parents lack the patience to pay attention to this technique as early as infancy, which makes it all the more difficult later.

do gymnastics

  • The children start with gymnastics at an early age. As soon as they can walk and grasp rings or other devices, they learn special movements.
  • Initially there were only a few rings, a small horizontal bar and lianas in one room of the apartment. After moving, the equipment was expanded. There was, among other things, a large pole that was 5.70 m long and spanned two floors.
  • The children are introduced to the individual tasks step by step without assistance. The children start with simple successes and work their way up. If the children have reached a height that scares them, they will not be helped in their descent. This should give the child a greater degree of independence.
  • When children run out of strength or don't feel like doing gymnastics, they stop on their own. There should be no pressure to perform.
  • Young children doing gymnastics are more developed in terms of their motor skills than others and have practical access to physical laws, such as gravity . At the same time, they are more careful in exploring new things without being afraid.

Game material

To the Boris and Lena z. Some of the game materials developed in-house include:

  • Nikitin pattern cubes
  • Nikitin squares
  • Nikitin-Matrici
  • Nikitin number towers
  • Nikitin ABC cube
  • Nikitin Uni Cube
  • Nikitin Geocube
  • Nikitin building blocks

With the Uni cube, the child should train his spatial thinking and three-dimensional imagination. With the Nikitin squares, the sense of shapes and combinations is trained in a playful way. All of these games are designed to promote fine motor skills, concentration, perception and creativity. Each game also has different levels of difficulty, which always offer the child new challenges.

social learning

In addition to the acquisition of cognitive and physical skills, the parents attached great importance to the fact that their children develop their social skills and not become “lone fighters” based on their performance. Lena Nikitin summarized this in three main points:

  • Adults should always be caring for one another and support one another. Both parents share all domestic and educational activities.
  • The children should have the opportunity to contribute to the family as a toddler and to be encouraged and strengthened (praise!). If a child does “work”, it will be paid for it at the end of the month. In addition, the children have a say in family matters or disputes.
  • Children should learn at an early age to develop compassion for other people and to take care of them, for example through volunteering.

literature

  • Nikitin / Butenschön: The Nikitin children have grown up. A Russian educational model on the test bench. Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 1990

Web links

Individual references, footnotes

  1. ↑ Nikitin, Boris & Lena: From the first year of life to school (Ot goda do schkoly), translation and editor: Marianna Butenschön, Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 1982 p. 29ff.