Posts Tagged ‘kinesthetic learners’
Game night – bring it into your school day!
There is much talk about family game night, a chance to spend quality time with the family. But board games shouldn’t be restricted to game night, they can be part of your school lesson plans!
Most board games offer learning through counting, matching and cooperation. There are also board games made specifically for their educational value, like phonics bingo or money matching games. Classic games like Monopoly and Scrabble have obvious educational value but games like Operation or Jenga can be great to develop hand/eye coordination and patience skills. The key to having board games enhance learning is to play them and have the child do the work. Have them count the spots on the die, then move the appropriate space. Have them find the colour that matches their own or count out the money owed. As they get older give them more opportunity to learn by letting them be the banker, or having them help a younger sibling spell words. Board games allow children to learn by doing, and by talking and by seeing – perfect to fit all learning styles. As an added bonus, playing a game can help active learners learn to sit still for a specific amount of time.
Make board games part of your lessons and see how much fun your children have learning!
Homeschooling can get costly when you are buying all the books and materials needed for the lessons. But when it comes to math manipulatives, all you have to do is look around your house!
Manipulatives are defined as “any of various objects designed to be moved or arranged by hand as a means of developing motor skills or understanding abstractions, especially in mathematics.” Using manipulatives in math can help explain tough concepts. Also, manipulatives are a great teaching tool to use for kinesthetic (hands-on) learners. Geometry manipulatives are easy to find around the house, just look for specific shapes – tin can (cylinder), sugar cube, book (rectangle) and the like. Counting manipulatives are also easy to find as you can use anything that you have a bunch of – marshmallows, paperclips, toilet rolls and more. Sorting and graphing manipulatives can be anything that differs in colour or shape – different coloured paper clips, beads or buttons or even cereal.
Before you spend the money on fancy math manipulatives, look around the house and see what there is you can use for free!
There are no rules, that is the beauty of homeschooling. Working one-on-one with your child will allow you to determine the best way for them to learn, and then you can teach it appropriately.
If your child does not like to read, offer stories in comic book form, you can get classics, Shakespeare, even the history of the world in this form. Comics break up the words with pictures making reading easier for reluctant readers.
If your child likes hockey bring that into your lesson plan. A unit study on a specific subject that the child likes not only covers the curriculum but also inspires them to learn because they are learning about something they are interested in.
If your child is an auditory learner, work in some audio books, computer games and music to the lessons so that they have the best chance to learn. Likewise, visual learners and kinesthetic learners can be taught to their learning style.
If your child is struggling with a concept, or is not liking a particular subject, tweak it so that the lessons will be more interesting, or easier for them to understand.
With homeschoooling you can take the time to determine how best to teach lessons to your child. You can cater to their interests, their likes and their dislikes. You can make education fun and important to them – that should be the only rule!
Children who can’t sit still for long periods of time won’t learn any better if they are made to. The advantage of homeschooling is to be able to teach to the child in the best way possible. For an active child this may mean a creative lesson plan.
School is more than books and worksheets so if you have a student who is active, don’t rely on just those resources. Some desk work needs to be done but if you alternate desk work with an active learning activity, the child will have a chance to move in between you will find that they will learn better. Manipulatives make great active learning activities. Math lessons can involve stacking blocks, measuring furniture, racing cars and all sorts of other active learning ideas. Spelling can be made active too if you hang letters around the house and ask the child to run around and find the letters to spell a certain word. Bring puppets into English class to help act out stories or create a craft associated with the story or chapter just read so that the child can be rewarded with an active lesson following a sit-down reading assignment. Music can be a great active learning activity too. Rhythm, rhyming, sound science and more can all be taught through music.
Allowing an active child a chance to be active in “class” can help them learn and make your teaching day less frustrating!
In high school, I took drama class. We acted out plays in front of audiences, memorized soliloquies and learned lighting techniques. As a home schooled student, your child doesn’t have to miss out on drama class!
Of course, a group of kids can get together, dress up and play act, many times they do that anyway. But stories can also be acted out by using puppets. Children can make their own puppets or you can use bought ones. A great way to check for reading comprehension is to have them act out the last part of the story they read using puppets! It is also a great creative source for them to tell their own made up stories.
Puppets are great manipulatives too. For those kinesthetic learners puppets can help with reading, history and more because they can have movement with puppets!
Knowing your child’s learning style is important so that you know how to teach them the best way they can learn.
Some kids need to hear the lessons (auditory learners), some need to see it (visual learners) and some need to be involved in the lesson (kinesthetic learners). Knowing which style is their strongest will help you know how to teach each lesson. Although it is good to teach each learning style so that kid’s can strenghten each one, it is best to teach to their learning style on subjects they are less familiar with or struggling with. To find out the learning style of your child, just fill out a learning styles questionnaire about them.