Learning Styles

One important aspect to help us be more effective in teaching our children is to understand their learning styles as well as our own. Why are learning styles important? If you know your children’s learning styles, you’ll be far better equipped to teach them and you’ll be better prepared to choose a homeschooling curriculum.

Your learning style naturally has an impact on your teaching style. With a little thought and effort you can adapt your teaching methods to better fit the learning style you see in each of your children. 

Three main types of learners are:

• Visual (seeing)
• Auditory (listening or talking)
• Kinesthetic (hands-on)

Usually the simplest way to determine how your child learns best is to think of how you were best able to sooth him/her as a young child or infant. Watching people and objects will soothe a visual baby. An auditory baby is soothed by sounds/singing. The kinesthetic baby just needs to move or be moved – bouncing, rocking.

There are also assessments available online to help you discover your child's learning style. This is going to help you decide what is the best curriculum for them.

Most traditional curriculum is designed for the visual learner and is easily translated for the auditory child. Kinesthetic programs are harder to find, but worth the effort if that is how they will learn best.

It’s important to remember that every child is unique and will not necessarily fit neatly in a “box.” Timberdoodle curriculum kits include a variety of materials to engage learners of all styles. Even though most of us do tend to learn best with our favored learning style, it's important that we expose our children to information in a variety of ways so that they can "learn to learn" in ways that might not be as intuitive to them.

(For more information on this, we highly recommend Talkers, Watchers, & Doers by Cheri Fuller. ISBN #1-57683-599-5.)