Even if you've already graduated, this can be the perfect time of year to get excited about learning something new. You may even be surprised at how fun learning can be when it's on your own terms and deadlines.

One of my favorite quotes is, "Stay curious."

There are infinite possibilities for learning something new and exciting. If you are always curious about something, you will never grow old.

For me, I found my passion for calligraphy and painting by registering for an online class. Now, I sell paintings of my poetry on Etsy, all because I took that one calligraphy class.

The hardest part is taking the leap and diving into something new. Honestly, what's the worst that could happen?

Here are some of my favorite ways to stay up-to-date with learning:

1. Read. Read. Read.

You know how people say that the most successful people are always reading? It's true.

Not only does reading expand your knowledge, it also keeps your brain active. You are constantly processing information, and this makes you quick on your feet when it comes to new ideas and innovations.

As for the creative types out there, reading is just as important for you. Looking for new inspiration for your latest art project? Read a novel. Looking for a topic for your next short story? Read some poetry.

The answers to all of your questions are written between the lines of your favorite stories.

For those of us on a budget, the local library holds endless possibilities for learning something new. Bring a friend and try to find a new favorite author for the month.

2. Talk to a mentor.

Learning from other people is one of the most effective ways to stay educated.

Also, in today's technology-driven world, having a mentor keeps you sharp with your people skills.

Go to coffee with someone once a month and have a topic planned for both of you. You may be surprised at how much you can learn from one person in an hour.

Don't know how to find a mentor? Ask around! One of your friends may have a boss or colleague who would love to chat with you about the topics you're interested in.

Just remember: If you don't ask, the answer is always no.



3. Take an online class.

I'm not talking about the online classes you dreaded in college. I'm talking about fun classes, about topics you're interested in.

I personally love Skillshare, a site where you can learn how to do just about anything.

The lessons on Skillshare are short and separated into sections so you don't have to watch the entire class in one sitting. The teachers are experts and give you guidelines for projects you can upload and share with the class.

Sometimes, the class can be as big as 5,000 people! But that's the beauty of it. There are no deadlines. You work at your own pace, and you create something amazing in the process.

My recent Skillshare obsessions include quantum physics and astrophysics. It makes me feel like a kid again, while still engaging my creativity.

While in-person workshops and classes are incredible, they can be pricy and not always available in your area. That's why I always suggest looking online first.

There's a whole new world for you to explore, in whatever field you choose.

4. Try something new.

Another way to expand your knowledge is to throw yourself into a new situation.

For us Californians, that could mean trying surfing for the first time, or doing that hike you never thought you could do. You could also try a new workout class, or an interesting food you don't know how to pronounce.

By putting yourself in these slightly uncomfortable situations, you are challenging your mind and learning as you go.

No one is forcing you to become an expert in these things, and that's the fun of it! You get to learn what you want, when you want.

5. Don't be afraid to ask questions.

This is the most important one (in my opinion): Ask everyone EVERYTHING. Ask them about their jobs, their hobbies and their interests. People love talking about themselves and what they're good at.

You'd be surprised by how much you can learn from your best friend if you just ask the right questions.

Learning does not have to be a burden. It can be as exciting as you make it, as long as you step out of your comfort zone and try new things. Think of all you can learn by this time next month!

Constant learning not only makes you knowledgeable, but also a better person

Never stop learning. It is the only way to grow, innovate and expand your mental horizons. Knowledge helps you develop a better perspective about things. If you belong to the class of curious people, you'll always find new skills to learn and habits to form. We love listening to people who have something new to share, and this comes from nothing but their zeal to learn and grow with each passing day.

When it comes to entrepreneurship, the best entrepreneurs in the world understand that they can be successful only if they get into the practice of constant learning. Apparently, Warren Buffett loves reading and this great habit keeps him on his toes.

The best way to live life to the fullest is to always look for ways that help you improve as a person. Even in an organisation, the authorities should invest in the growth and development of their employees. This is why big corporations like Facebook and Microsoft promote constant efforts to support the learning skills of their workforce.

If you aren't actively looking to learn new things, these 10 quotes on self-learning and development from prominent personalities from around the world will compel you to rethink your decision and help the learning bug bite you.

"I have no special talent, I am only passionately curious." - Albert Einstein, physicist, scientist, Nobel Prize winner

Curiosity makes you smarter. Learning new languages make you smarter. Reading makes you smarter, and there are so many other productive ways that you can use to instil knowledge in your life and ensure that your mind remains active and healthy. Constant learning is like food for your brain that not only feeds knowledge but also expands your brain power, which in turn ensures that you become an overall healthy individual.

Self-growth, which comes from constant learning, is the key for a successful life and career. Here are some reasons that will help you understand this better:

Learning makes you a happy person

Not being able to share your opinions, or worse, not having anything to put across can be frustrating. How would you feel if your peers are talking about a recent event that you are unaware of? Learning helps you socialise better and gives you the authority to share your opinions and judgements with utmost confidence. It also gives you the benefit of effective communication, and hence, people start taking you seriously.

You become the go-to person for all advice

This is applicable in both personal and professional life. Constant learning gives you the wisdom and ability to react to different situations in a sorted way. This makes you a popular pick for friends and acquaintances to approach with problems. People will look up to you to resolve matters, ranging from a conflict at the workplace to a disagreement in their personal life. This same idea can be applied to adding value to your organisation. If you sell, build and run operations using your vast knowledge, you become irreplaceable.

You become the master

The only way to master whatever you do is through teaching someone else how to do it. It is always best to share the knowledge you have acquired through constant learning. It can be through seminars, conferences, blogs or an e-book. As an entrepreneur, learning should be a part of your culture. Your teammates can use your knowledge and experience to achieve your company's targets and this way you truly accomplish the status of a great master.

So, never stop learning and being curious. It is indeed the best way to live a fulfilling and successful life. So what are the new things that you learnt today?

Intellectual development refers here to the changes that occur, as a result of growth and experience, in a person's capacities for thinking, reasoning, relating, judging, conceptualizing, etc. In particular it concerns such changes in children.

There are a number of different approaches to the study of intellectual development in children. As in the history of most branches of scientific knowledge, the study began with observation and description. For many years descriptive accounts of children's thinking, reasoning, and other intellectual capacities were thoroughly mixed with descriptions of their social and emotional development and of their verbal and motor skills. Moreover, there was at first a tendency to attribute to the child mental processes that were simply miniature versions of adult thought patterns. Such early observers as Darwin (1877) were careful and deliberate, but their records often revealed the limitations of studying only one child, and the biases of the observer.

Predictably, the early, unsystematic observation of one child at a time was eventually replaced by systematic efforts to measure children's behavior and capacities in standardized and objective ways. The growth of the mental testing movement in the first 40 years of the twentieth century testifies to the enthusiasm that was generated by the possibility of applying the precision of quantitative measurement to the task of comparing individual children and calibrating the changes that take place over the early years of life. Although observation had been supplemented by measurement, the primary purpose of these efforts remained descriptive, and the generalizations achieved were themselves only descriptions of trends and improvements that occurred consistently with increasing age.

Still more recently, since about 1950, there has been an increasing movement toward the laboratory study of the ways in which patterns of development themselves change as age changes. This recent work has been not so much concerned with the effects of age itself as with the development in children of certain functional relationships between experience and performance that have been demonstrated in human adults and have been found lacking in most infrahuman species. The emphasis is on the application of laboratory controls and experimental manipulations to the study of cognitive development. The aim is to control the stimulus conditions under which behavior is observed and to explain why intellect develops, as well as describing how and when it develops.

Such an approach does not obviate the need for study of the child's understanding as it changes with age. Rather, it relies on developmental descriptions of intellectual processes and products for clues as to when a certain level of understanding or specific intellectual accomplishment is likely to be achieved, and what repertoire of cognitive processes constitutes the means available for such an accomplishment at that age. Even the correlation of processes with products over ages, however, leaves the detailed cause-effect analysis still to be performed.

Although the present article is not primarily concerned with age changes per se, it should be noted that the description of age changes in intellectual functioning continues to thrive in two lines of research. One is the continued development and refinement of standardized tests of intelligence in order to predict an individual's future intellectual achievement and to select, train, and guide children whenever a test-derived forecast can aid in making decisions on their behalf [seeIntelligence AND Intelligence Testing].

The second line of research is that of Jean Piaget and his associates on cognitive development. This large body of work has been concerned with the ontogenetic unfolding and evolution of cognitive capacities in the child, and like the work of Heinz Werner (1926), it has an organic quality and a complexity that are quite different from the empirical, item-analysis tradition of the test developers.

Both of these lines of research are structural in emphasis, i.e., they are primarily concerned with identifying the component parts or capacities of the intellect and with the organization and arrangement of these parts. The test developers are concerned with objective measurement of capacities in quantitative terms governed by a sophisticated statistics and a well-worked-out theory of measurement. The genetic epistemologists, on the other hand, have followed Piaget's lead in attempting to describe the step-by-step development of the child's understanding of his world as it progresses toward a formal, abstract, and logical comprehension of operations and relations in that world. Recent investigators stimulated by Piaget's work have begun the task of isolating the conditions necessary for cognitive change and the explication of processes as well as products.

In contrast, a functional emphasis, i.e., a concern with dynamics, processes, and interrelationships, is found in the descriptions of cognitive development and in the explorations of dynamic mechanisms in cognitive change that have largely been undertaken by American behaviorists and behavior analysts and by Soviet pedagogists. These lines of research are more concerned with the processes of learning and thinking than with the structure of understanding. It is to the contributions of these functionalists that the present article is primarily devoted. It will be necessary first to summarize the most important age changes that have been described from infancy to adolescence. Consideration is then given to cognition, seen as the elaboration and selective generalization of simpler forms of learning and conditioning. Concepts such as mediation, learning set, and expectancy are discussed in relation to experimental studies of discrimination learning and discrimination reversal, concept formation, and the perceptual constancies. Curiosity and exploratory motivation are treated in relation to orienting responses and observing behavior. Research on acquired dis-tinctiveness, equivalence, and relevance of cues is presented as evidence for the importance of a general class of intervening responses, and the major role of language in this connection is stressed. Finally, consideration is given to individual differences in cognitive style, including discussion of such variables as field dependency, rigidity, reflectivity, and creativity.

Overview of age changes:

Infancy:

Very little behavior in infancy possesses that degree of orderliness and abstractness which would qualify it as intellectual or cognitive. There are evident, however, the beginnings of systematic relations with the environment that imply understanding on a primitive level. Beyond the specific and identifiable reflexes, newborn behavior is usually described as massive, diffuse, and all-or-none in its occurrence. Recent investigations of neonatal behavior have shown that such descriptions mask at least seven reliably discriminable states of arousal, ranging from deep, unresponsive sleep to intense crying or sucking that is equally unresponsive to external stimulation. Reactivity to external stimuli is greatest at intermediate values on the arousal dimension.

Beyond the neonatal period (birth to ten days) there are three kinds of behavior in infants that appear to mark the beginnings of cognitive development: the development of simple stimulus equivalences, expectations, and persistent exploratory behavior.

Stimulus equivalence. Stimulus equivalence means perceptual recognition of the same object, person, or event under variable appearances due to changes in distance, illumination, context, angle of regard, and the like. While there have been no formal psychophysical investigations of perceptual constancies in infants, studies of attention and recognition of familiar people and objects have indicated that considerable equivalence learning takes place in early infancy (Rheingold et al. 1959). Infants also show selective attention, indicating some kind of differential sensitivity to faces and patterned stimuli (R. L. Fantz, quoted in Gibson 1963).

Expectations. If certain events occur in a brief, invariant sequence with considerable frequency and regularity in the infant's environment, he is capable of displaying anticipatory responses that constitute for many psychologists sufficient evidence of expectancy. For example, it is commonly observed that quieting and sucking responses at first occur primarily in response to tactile stimulation of the mouth or cheek and general handling. Very soon, however, they begin to occur in response to vocalization by the mother and to other sights and sounds accompanying her approach. Another example is the eye blink, which at first occurs in response to tactile stimulation only and later occurs whenever a figure grows rapidly in size ("looms"), as if it were approaching the face at high speed. The acquisition of such simple preparatory responses as these does not require a cognitive interpretation and is explained satisfactorily by either classical or operant conditioning theories. But motoric anticipation does seem to provide a promising basis from which the child may develop more abstract capacities to anticipate the outcomes of his actions and to interpret signals of events.

Cognitive or intellectual development means the growth of a child's ability to think and reason. It's about how they organize their minds, ideas and thoughts to make sense of the world they live in.

Some intellectual development milestones you may notice in five and six-year-olds include:

Vocabulary increasing to 2,000 words, sentences of five or more words.

Can count up to 10 objects at one time, can copy complex shapes.

Begin to reason and argue, uses words like why and because.

Understand concepts like yesterday, today and tomorrow.

Are able to sit at a desk, follow teacher instructions and do simple assignments independently.

Some intellectual development milestones you may notice in seven to 11-year-olds include:

A longer attention span and willing to take on more responsibility such as chores.

Understand fractions, money and the concept of space.

Can tell time and name months and days of week in order.

Enjoy reading a book on their own.

Adolescents aged 12 to 18 are capable of complex thinking. This includes the ability to:

Think abstractly about possibilities.

Reason from known principles, forming own new ideas or questions.

Consider many points of view, comparing or debating ideas or opinions.

Thinking about the process of thinking, being aware of the act of thought processes.

It is important that parents and caregivers understand their child's current intellectual stage so they can offer activities to support their child's cognitive or intellectual growth. Creative and artistic play helps with learning and development by letting children engage in problem solving where there are no right answers. With creative activity, the process is more important than the end product.

Visits to the library will increase their vocabulary, imagination and desire to learn. A library card is a great way to introduce the concepts of borrowing and responsibility to a child.

Introduce your child to museums, new neighbourhoods and exhibitions.

Spend as much uninterrupted one-on-one time with your child as you can.

Avoid prolonged viewing of television, video and computer games.

Set up a homework space and routine in your home.

Talk to your child's teacher if you are concerned about your child's progress.

What kinds of intellectual growth occur in adolescence?

A child in early adolescence:

Uses more complex thinking focused on personal decision-making in school and at home.

Begins to show use of formal logical operations in schoolwork.

Begins to question authority and society standards.

Begins to form and speak own thoughts and views on a variety of topics. You may hear your child talk about which sports or groups they prefer and what parental rules should be changed.

A child in middle adolescence:

Expands thinking to include more complex, philosophical and futuristic concerns.

Often questions more extensively, analyzes more extensively.

Thinks about and begins to form his or her own code of ethics (What do I think is right?).

Thinks about different possibilities and begins to develop own identity (Who am I?).

Begins to systematically consider possible future goals (What do I want?).

A child in late adolescence:

Uses complex thinking to focus on less self-centred concepts and personal decision-making.

Has increased thoughts about global concepts, such as justice, history, politics and patriotism.

Often develops idealistic views on topics, may debate and develop intolerance of opposing views.

Begins to focus thinking on making career decisions and their emerging role in adult society.

As children get older, they grow more sophisticated in the way they think, becoming more logical and systematic in their thought processes. To enhance their cognitive development at this stage:

Include them in discussions about a variety of topics, issues and current events.

Encourage them to share ideas and thoughts with you.

Encourage them to think independently and develop their own ideas and set goals.

Challenge them to think about possibilities for the future.

Compliment and praise them for well-thought-out decisions.

Assist them in re-evaluating poorly made decisions.