Discover your Child's Learning Style {and how to teach them accordingly!}
Ever been in a traffic jam? Congestion, irritation, frustration.
If we had only listened to Google Maps, the highway would have been a much better route. Smooth, easy-going and enjoyable.
Teaching our children can have many "roadblocks" and traffic jams, especially if we're not in tune with our child's learning style. We may feel like they're not grasping certain concepts, unable to pay attention or just generally checked out and not enjoying learning.
It's not WHAT, it's HOW.
If your child has struggled with learning in the past, it may have had more to do with the way the material was presented - the HOW - rather than the material itself.
In other words, it's not so much the skills and content of utmost importance, but the route we take to get there.
Unlocking our child's learning style helps us to determine that route.
Everyone has a preferred learning style that highlights how we best process, store and recall information.
Tapping into our kids’ learning styles offers a way to capitalize on their strengths, and tailor our curriculum and teaching to suit their needs.
When we understand our child’s preferred learning style, we’re able to crack the code to our kids’ engagement, motivation AND success.
This article will help you UNLOCK your child’s learning style so you can better tailor the curriculum to suit their needs.
Today, we’ll uncover the three learning styles and how to identify which style fits your child so that you can better program and ultimately teach your child so they find success and enjoyment in learning.
VISUAL LEARNER
✅ Does your child have an amazing imagination?
✅ Enjoy art and making posters or dioramas?
✅ Does your child love things to be neat, tidy and organized?
You likely have a visual learner!
Visual learners process information best when it can be seen. These kids learn and think in pictures over words.
Mind maps, diagrams, videos, demonstrations… these kids like to SEE the ideas and instructions rather than simply having them said out loud.
Strategies for your visual learner include:
- Use pictures, charts, graphic organizers - visual components for lessons. Mind maps, pictures, graphic organizers help to organize information, and show what they know
- Model and demonstrate before doing. Visual learners like to sit back and watch before they dive in and do it for themselves. Modelling and showing examples are important teaching strategies
- Use videos: Youtube is a great resource!
- Offer an art materials and writing supplies so your child has a toolbox to represent her thinking and ideas
- Do visualization exercises: Especially when reading aloud, invite your child to paint a picture of what she sees in her imagination. This helps with story retelling and comprehension
- Invite them to “show what they know” in pictures, models, designs and graphic organizers.
AUDITORY LEARNER
✅ Does your child LOVE to listen to or compose music?
✅ Tell funny jokes?
✅ Does he devour audiobooks or podcasts over flipping pages of a book?
✅ Is your child known as a chatterbox?
You have an auditory learner!
Auditory learners like to tell and share about topics they’ve learned about to show their understanding.
It’s important to give your child space and time, to not just listen, but also to share - so they can process information through talking.
Sounding out unknown words while reading independently, or listening to a video or podcast about how something works are go-to strategies for auditory learners.
They can ALSO be easily distracted by unnecessary background noise, so be cognizant of this.
Strategies:
- Encourage discussions and dialogue
- Show what they know through raps, poems, songs
- Play music softly in background {Classical, Enya etc.) or completely quiet.
- Listen to chapter books on YouTube / podcasts
- Opportunities to present through plays, storytelling, puppet shows…
KINESTHETIC LEARNER
✅ Do you have a kid who just CAN’T sit still?
✅ A mover and a shaker?
✅ A jumping jellybean?
If your child loves to fidget or is highly active, you likely have a KINESTHETIC learner.
Kinesthetic learners thrive with hands-on opportunities. This learning style is perfect for the do-ers and movers who prefer a more tactile experience over sitting still and listening quietly.
From building models to conducting experiments, these learners enjoy having an active role in educational experiences.
Kinesthetic learners learn best through their senses. They want to show what they know through demonstrating - actively showing your their understanding.
Kinesthetic learners tend to have difficulty sitting still for longer periods of time, so it's important to build lots of movement into their day.
Strategies:
- Be sure to build LOTS of movement breaks into your kinesthetic learner’s day.
- Offer flexible seating - lying down, standing, going outside, and mini integrated movement activities, like rolling a tennis ball under their foot while doing seatwork.
- Offer plenty of sensory materials to explore concepts: playdough, plasticine, rice, salt, paint, sand.
- Manipulatives: counters and tactile materials are very important for kinesthetic early math learners. Seeing, touching, manipulating the counters helps them make sense of math concepts before they move on to abstract reasoning.
LEARNING STYLE teaching strategies: Number Sense
Let’s look at a simple Early Years concept like number sense, and how we might teach it according to the learning styles.
Visual learner
- Paint the number three. Add stickers, dot stamps or loose parts to represent that number.
- Match numerals with pictures
- Create 3D visual / concrete number lines
Kinesthetic Learner
- Plasticine snake 3’s, Pipecleaner numbers
- Sensory trays: trace the numeral in dyed salt or sand
- Trace the number on your child's back. Have him do the same to you (or a stuffed animal)
- Use play silks or body parts to “paint” the number three in the sky
- Jump that number, clap that number, make the number with their body
Auditory Learner
- Playing musical instruments - grab a numeral and play percussion beats
- Listening to counting books
- Keeping the beat
- Counting Songs, rhymes fingerplays
Would you like a cheat-sheet to help you identify your child's learning style, and quick tips and strategies that deliver to that learning style?
PLUS! If you're looking for a curriculum that offers experiences to meet the needs of all learning styles - head over to the Artful Teaching. Joyful Learning. Curriculum and Implementation Program Waitlist. Doors Open again soon!
