Earnest Parenting.com logo

Encouraging Heroes. You can be one too.

Every child has a different learning style. That is, one child learns best by working with hands-on activities, while another child might learn better understand with flash cards. Neither learning style is superior, but it’s important to recognize the differences in the ways your children learn.

Visual Students

The visual learner works and learns best by seeing (visualizing) the information so it is easier to take it in. For this child, a lecture that lasts 45 minutes to an hour is painfully dull and boring. This applies to children in daycare, as much as a high school student.

This child most enjoys taking in and assimilating new information by using colored pencils and paper to draw pictures that make understanding easier. He or she will learn math facts or spelling words more easily with flash cards. Allow this child to use colored index cards, colored highlighters and colored pencils to assist in learning. Make maps, tables and graphs available so they can see the relationship between numbers in math facts. Even allowing this child to use a colored pencil to underline the parts of speech can make it easier to learn English or Language Arts.

The Auditory Learning Style

The child who learns best from spoken words is an auditory learner. A lecture might be more easy for them to understand as they listen to the words and understand the concepts through sound. You have several tools available for auditory learners, in order to help them pay attention and learn more effectively. These include limiting noises that can distract the children, allowing them to talk to themselves or even other children in a Normandy Park preschool about the material being taught, putting new material to a song tune to learn it, recording new material into a tape recorder and playing it back, making use of word associations, or listening to an auditory book while reading the printed version. Obviously, some of these activities will need to be carried out while the child uses headphones, if the other student find this sort of learning distracting.

Learning Kinesthetically

Kinesthetic means movement. These learners like to be physically active or engage with learning materials in a physical way so they can learn more easily and hands on. As pointed out by Kid’s Country Child Care & Learning center, some learning strategies for these children can include using hands-on activities, such as math manipulatives, models, or puzzle maps. This child can track words on the page while reading out loud.

Some children may need to take breaks more frequently or be allowed to move around the classroom. Kinesthetic learners can learn effectively by writing new material down several times. Others may need to play (quietly) with a small stress ball as they work on assignments. Underlining or highlighting pertinent facts can be a good strategy for some physically active learners.

Parents and teachers get the best teaching results when they take the time to understand the learning styles of each one of their children.  Their children will benefit and feel much happier as they study after school in a way that feels natural to them.

Earnest Parenting: help for parents who want to understand their child’s learning style.