What is Your Child's Learning Style?

(Received from a homeschooling mailing list.)

Knowing how your child best learns and being able to adapt your teaching to suit them makes a really big difference to homeschooling. It is well worth spending the time observing your child and trying different ways of teaching to find out which way they learn best. Basically there are three learning styles, visual, auditory, and kinesthetic.

AUDITORY - (learn by listening) 30% of learners
Learn from verbal instruction
Need phonics
Enjoy plays
Write lightly and it is not always legible
Talk while they write
Remember names and forget faces
Distracted by noise
Remember by listening, especially with music
Games and pictures are annoying and distracting


VISUAL - (learn by seeing and writing) 40% of learners
Can be verbal (sees words) or pictorial (sees pictures)
Remembers faces but not names
Vivid imaginations
Think in pictures
Facial expression tells what their emotions are
Uses color
Caution: TV, Movies, Nintendo can be addicting


KINESTHETIC - (large motor, whole body learning)
Learn by doing
Not avid reader
Poor spellers
Remember what was done, not seen or talked about
Doesn't "hear" things as well
Touch is important
Attacks things physically - fight, hit, pound
Impulsive
Needs math and science manipulatives
Loves games

Note: All children are very kinesthetic to age 6.