The Learning Styles for Home Schoolers

You may have noticed while home schooling that what works for one child may not for another. Each child has difference capabilities, and may or may not understand things being taught. There may be children who do not understand without some pictures or images, while some would grasp things better just by listening to what you say. Keeping in mind the features and traits of each type you can decide on home schooling activities accordingly so that your child finds it easier and enjoyable to learn.

Experts mostly identify the three basic learning styles as auditory learners, visual learners and Kinesthetic learners.

Auditory learners: They are such children who learn best by hearing and are sensitive to your voice tones. They may be good at remembering spoken words than written words. The kids are pretty verbal and talk to themselves. They may even enjoy listening to tapes, CDs and radio for learning. Such children will be sensitive to your voice tones and it is necessary that maintain voice levels so that it does not seem like you are irritated or angry or frustrated. Whatever you say will be grasped well by the child and he need not even look at you to understand you. Lessons using tape recorders and other audio systems can be good for him and those which require wearing headphones to listen to will be more effective as it would not let him be distracted by other noises.

Visual learners: The kids who can learn by observing your smallest facial expression are visual learners. Your smile and any expression, positive or negative will send a message to your child. Your smiling eyes will encourage while a frown may make the child look away. Pictures, videos, TV and watching other people can be a good way to teach. There are video CDs that can be used to teach. You may enjoy working out puzzles together or even enjoy learning from books with pictures and diagrams. These children remember pictures better than words. You will find it easier to understand things from maps and graphs and even creative drawings and sculptures.

Kinesthetic or tactile learners: If your child learns best by doing, they are tactile or kinesthetic learners. You will often find them wiggling or moving some part of body constantly. They may drum fingers, rock, switch position and be highly inattentive. What you need to do to teach such a child is to provide something that can be touched like a simple pencil, a marker if you are using a transparency or even a bracelet. The child would mostly find writing difficult and have a very short attention span. But you may find that projects like cooking, lab experiments and crafts would have better effect than listening or writing activities. You can think of new ways to teach things by practically doing them. Some children find the regular read and write method of learning. They can mostly learn by reading on their own, writing stories, taking tests and memorizing.

By understanding you child's preferred learning styles you can plan your Home schooling curriculum to ensure that it becomes effective. There are other ways also in which you may arrange learning. You can focus on personality patterns to understand or predict how your child would react to different situations. Social interaction can also help you to understand their attitudes and habit and design your strategy accordingly.

Seed Newsvine

Bookmark this article in your preferred program

Comments

Add Comment

Popular Articles in this cathegory

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.