Understanding Your Child’s Learning Style

Understanding Your Child’s Learning Style

What are your child’s favorite pastimes? Does she enjoy singing and playing instruments? Does she love to draw? Is your child imaginative? Does she recognize locations and faces with ease? Maybe your child is naturally gifted in sports and learned to crawl or walk early?

These observations tell you essential information about your child’s learning style or “modality.” Understanding how your child absorbs and retains information will ensure you effectively guide them towards successful academic and personal development. And if you homeschool your child, her learning style is an excellent tool to predict what curriculum she’d respond best to. This can save you time and money and help avoid cumbersome frustrations as your child learns and progresses.

Identifying Your Child’s Learning Style

You know your child’s patterns, habits, and passions better than anyone else. Every student has a preferred strategy to absorb and recall information more efficiently. Some students are dedicated note-takers. Some make up “jingles” to help them remember key information. Others create diagrams, and some prefer to watch videos. When it comes to learning styles, one size does not fit all.

One thing all students do have in common is they learn best when given a curriculum that interests them and is presented according to their modality.

The three main types of learning styles are:

  1. Visual Learners —These students need to see information to learn, and they retain it best through imagery and visual aids. “Seeing” takes many forms, including spatial awareness and photographic memory. Dry-erase boards, videos, demonstrations, graphs, outlines, maps, drawings, and other visual media encourage a visual learner.

Studying activities for visual learners:

– Image-based computer games

– Getting outdoors and going on field trips

– Educational videos

  1. Auditory Learners —Auditory learners prefer to listen to information. These students enjoy speaking and associating concepts with music. Learning through “listening” includes lectures, verbal instruction, oral reports, active discussions, and music.

Studying activities for auditory learners:

– Repeating information aloud

– Creating clever jingles

– Using mnemonic devices to remember and recall facts

  1. Kinesthetic Learners – These students take in information best through activities and hands-on experiences; they require movement to learn. Examples of tactile learning include creating charts and posters, taking notes, and going on field trips.

Studying activities for kinesthetic learners:

– Learning while walking and talking

– Arts and crafts

– Science experiments

Many children don’t have a single learning style. Some students develop their specific learning preferences early, while others don’t develop a dominant learning style until much later in life. Older kids generally have a dominant learning style and a few less pronounced ones. Other kids may have multiple prominent learning styles. This is all normal and provides a variety of engaging methods for your child to interact and learn!

Our highly qualified tutors and instructors understand that one size does not fit all. We embrace our students’ modalities so they can learn efficiently and enjoy the process.

We invite you to call our team today at (310) 454-3731 or click here to schedule a free consultation.