We have many choices to make as a parent educator with how and what to teach. It is best to make those choices with our child's learning styles in mind so we can provide the best education possible for our children. As a parent educator, you are in the unique position to teach your child using tools that work best for you. We will explore three basic learning styles in the next few issues. You should discover ways that you and your child best learn, your personal weakness, and how to work around or through your strengths and weaknesses. First, I will discuss auditory activities, traits of auditory learners, traits of those with auditory weaknesses, and how to help. In future articles I will discuss visual learners and kinesthetic/tactile learners.

Auditory learners are those who learn best through hearing information. You or your child may be an auditory learner if he follows oral directions better than written directions. An auditory learner will understand information better when it is read aloud than when they read it themselves. A child who is an auditory learner will prefer someone to read a book aloud or have it read to him rather than reading himself. An auditory learner may at times talk to himself, often sing or hum aloud, and can easily discriminate sounds. He will also often require others to help interpret diagrams, maps, and graphs. An auditory learner will often do well in more advanced learning situations such as college lectures. This type of child will often do well in typical school settings because these settings are more geared to strong auditory learners.

Your auditory learner will be the child who doesn't need things explained many times. You use that strength to your advantage when teaching things your child needs to memorize by rote. This type of child will memorize better by pairing the memorization with a tune or rhythm. Give instructions verbally when possible and talk about visual materials such as graphs and charts. After reading, discuss the story and story elements with your child. Use videos and taped books when possible for learning activities. An auditory learner will not be as motivated with computer learning or individual learning. They will want interaction and talking about learning situations. Your child may like to read and study with music playing; in fact, it may even increase their learning levels. An auditory learner will often be strong in reading and language skills, but not as strong in math and spelling skills. An auditory learner will most often learn well with reading instruction based on phonics skills. Sounding out words and understanding context in reading will most likely be a strength because of strong language skills.

A child with weak auditory skills will have more difficulty in typical school settings. This child will have a difficult time with oral directions, phonics skills, and too much discussion. My youngest son falls into this category. It is typical for him to become overloaded when there is too much conversation for him to deal with on any one subject. The other night, we had this wonderful time of sharing family memories of our grandparents and growing up. It was a great family time of sharing and talking. He was - with us - for about 20 minutes when out of the blue he said, "Can we stop talking about this now?" He wasn't being rude; he just couldn't talk about it anymore. He 'checks out' after too much conversation. If he is working with something visually, he can work for hours, but he couldn't talk for hours if he had to. I don't know how he came from my genes, but God works in mysterious ways! To teach reading strictly by phonics skills will be difficult for a child with weak auditory skills, this child needs other ways to help decode reading texts. Reading and language skills will most likely be difficult for a child with very weak auditory skills. In my teaching experience (seventeen years with learning disabilities), I have only taught a few children with such weak auditory skills that they could not learn phonics skills to help with reading. But, I have had many students who needed other skills such as context, sight words, and language patterns stressed so they could begin reading.

Whether your child has strong or weak auditory skills, you need to keep providing information through auditory modes. If your child learns well with auditory modes, you will further enhance their learning. Presenting lessons with increased auditory input will help your child who has auditory strengths learn information quicker and remember lessons longer. If auditory skills are a weakness for your child you need to help your child improve in auditory skills. Remember to pair your auditory input with visual or kinesthetic modes. Keep in mind your child and his or her own unique characteristics when teaching lessons and picking out materials to study.

There are times that children with strong auditory skills run into trouble with learning. For example, my oldest child is a very strong auditory learner. Those skills have served him well in school lessons, reading, and memorizing (especially lines from his favorite movies). Those strong auditory skills caused some problem when it came to his first year of tackle football. He had always been a good athlete and played many sports before, but this was the first contact sport. He happened to get paired with some coaches that were not very good at telling him what to do when practicing. My husband was getting frustrated while watching practice and not understanding why our son wasn't getting the plays they were showing him. We stood on the sidelines and had a painful discussion about how our son learns (or not in this case) and why he was struggling. After our talk, my husband realized our son was doing exactly what the coaches said but not what they were showing him. They couldn't they tell him what to do; they could only show him. He needed to be told how to do the skill. Over the season and with my uhusband's intervention, we finally had a successful year but we had to modify how our son learned the skills. You too may need a new "game plan" to modify how you teach and materials you use with your child to score a victory this year!

Learning Styles-Visual Learners-"Show Me"

I'm a Missouri girl born and raised. Mark Twain I'm not, but then again who is? Mark Twain is a favorite Missouri son of course but unless you're from these parts you may not know that our state motto is "The Show Me State". It rubs me a bit wrong as it implies that the state is comprised only of visual learners when I know in fact that at least one auditory learner makes this her home! A visual learner constantly wants to see what is going on and needs to see how things work in order to learn. I think the Missourians got the slogan because they were a stubborn lot who had to have things proven to them. Don't make that mistake with your visual learner. You might think he or she is being stubborn when they can't follow your directions, but in actuality, they need to be shown how to follow the directions.

Visual learners are those who often need oral directions repeated, remembers things best if they are written down, likes to have a visual presentation (charts, graphs, etc), can understand and use maps easily, can picture things in his head, likes jigsaw puzzles, and will often get words to a song incorrect. A visual learner will most likely be strong in spelling and math skills while reading and language skills may not be as strong. We all tend to learn something quicker when we are shown how to do it. For example, few people learn a game as quickly when they must read the directions and play. They would rather have someone show them how to play. We all have some parts of auditory and visual learning. The key is to maximize the benefits of all areas.

Visual input is easy to include in lessons with your child. Showing examples of work is the easiest way to increase visual skills. Model your learning activities for your child whenever possible. When teaching handwriting skills, model the correct formation of the letter while you are also using auditory modes by telling your child exactly what you are doing. Work through math problems while you are talking through the points. If your child has very strong visual learning skills and is having difficulty learning, you may need to increase your visual associations for learning. Many alphabet flashcards use this technique by having pictures on the back of a letter card to reinforce the letter sound. Some children I have taught needed even more visual reinforcement such as having a letter within a picture beginning with the letter sound. The same reinforcement can be done with math facts. The fact can be written into and incorporated within a picture to help with the memorization of that fact. In math, it is important to use manipulatives to teach math concepts. You do not need to purchase expensive manipulatives kits, but use things in your house. I have used pennies, game chips, buttons, and craft sticks for manipulatives. For the visual learner, use charts, maps, graphs, and pictures whenever possible. Use a highlighter in texts to mark important information. Read texts with your child and help him to visualize the material. Visual learners will often learn well with a computer and videos. This child will most likely need more than phonics to learn to read. Be sure to teach sight words and use context to read. Guided reading is a good approach to teach reading for those who are visual learners and not strong in auditory skills. When teaching writing skills, use graphic organizers to help your child get a visual picture in his mind. In other subjects, use outlines, charts, maps, and other visual representations to increase your child's learning. This child will also most likely need a quieter place to learn than the auditory learner.

Children who have visual difficulties can have a difficult time with writing on paper, letter formation, spelling, reading left to right, transposing letters, and math skills. Some ideas to help with paper and pencil activities can be as easy as color-coding your child's paper before writing. I always color-code with green for 'go' and red for 'stop' If your child has difficulty writing from left to right, put a green line down the left side of the paper and a red line down the right side. Your child will see to start on the green side and go to the red side and stop. Many children with visual difficulties have a hard time writing on lined paper. First, don't write on lined paper until your child has letters formed correctly and can write the letters close to the appropriate size. Then you may want to color code the lines of the paper with green on the top line, then leave the slashed line plain, and color the bottom line red. This will help to reinforce starting letters at the top and writing the letters with downward movements. This will also give you a better point of reference as you model and explain how to make specific letters. You can use color-codes in reading also. You can draw in the margins of the book or use sticky notes to mark the left and right side of the text. This will help with your child's tracking of the text. Another method to help with tracking is to use an index card as a bookmarker. You can make a small rectangular cutout in the top right hand corner of the index card. Your child can slide the card across the line of text and the index card hides the previous words on that line and the lines of text below the line your child is reading. This helps your child track the line he is reading and keeps extra visual stimuli from distracting him while he is reading and decoding words.

A child with strong visual skills and weak auditory skills can be stressful to teach, especially if you don't match those skills. Evaluate what you teach and why. Gear your curriculum and lessons to a more visual model than auditory model if that is your child's learning preference. You will most likely not have difficulty with math and spelling work. The areas with the most concern for you are generally reading and language skills. Even children with very weak auditory skills can be successful readers and writers, but it takes time and attention. Use your time to your child's advantage!

Learning Styles'Kinesthetic/Tactile-"Let me"

Spinning tops that never stop. Runaway stagecoach. Bouncing "Flubber." These are images that come to mind when I think of some of the extremely kinesthetic/tactile learners I've encountered in my teaching career. Watching me try to harness and direct these youngsters was no doubt better than any 'I Love Lucy' episode.

When we began this series, we discussed auditory and visual learners. Most adults tend to be strong auditory or visual learners. Small children tend to be mainly kinesthetic and tactile learners. Some will continue to be the strong kinesthetic/tactile learners all their lives. These learners have the most difficult time in a traditional school setting and often even in a homeschool setting if you expect them to conform to your teaching style.

Many times, children with strong kinesthetic/tactile learning and weak auditory or visual skills are labeled with attention deficits. A child or adult with ADD/ADHD is overloaded with visual and auditory stimuli. Our brains are amazing in that we can filter the information we see and hear to make sense of our world. Someone with ADD/ADHD is often not able to do that. The overload of information causes the person to 'shut down' or not pay attention. The other side effect can be increased activity levels. An ADHD child is most always a strong kinesthetic/tactile learner and very weak in visual skills. Kinesthetic/tactile learners do not have to fall into the category of ADD/ADHD, but working with a child that is a strong kinesthetic/tactile learner can be challenging.

A kinesthetic/tactile learner is one who learns best through movement and exploring the environment. This child will tend to fidget with things such as pencils, pens, or play with keys. He may like to take things apart and put them back together again. This child may prefer to stand, work with his hands, and like to chew gum or eat while working. He will prefer to do things rather than watch a demonstration or read about it in a book. This child is usually good at finding his way around. He may be considered hyperactive. Kinesthetic refers to movement and tactile is touching. Small children typically learn best with kinesthetic and tactile modes. This is why small children must experience things, touch them, turn them over and play with them. When we see a preschool child playing with blocks and puzzles, we understand that is the way they learn. When a child gets older, we expect him to learn in different modes. Most children do begin to learn primarily in other ways. Some children still need the kinesthetic and tactile modes to learn successfully. Incorporating movement into your child's learning can help almost all children learn better, even for older children.

Many kinesthetic activities make sense to us as adults, but some activities do not. When we teach our child a sport such as baseball, we can talk about catching the ball for hours but we still must go outside and practice catching the ball. Many kinesthetic and tactile modes are used easily in lessons. For example, in science you can work with lab activities, act out plays or scenes in reading, work with manipulatives in math, or make food to practice following directions. These types of activities are good for all children whether kinesthetic/tactile is the main way in which they learn. Include movement and hands-on learning whenever possible for all children, especially young elementary aged children. As a child gets older, most will not need as much movement in order to learn. But, some children will need even more movement to help them learn. For those children, you need to add extra movement to their learning. This movement often does not seem to make sense to us as adults. Your child may need to stand or rock while he works. He may need to keep some part of his body moving in order to concentrate. For some, this can be chewing gum and eating, tapping his foot, standing up and sitting down, or tapping his hands. I often gave children a stress ball to squeeze while they were working independently or working with me. The movement allowed them to focus better and improved their learning. In some school situations, children are not allowed this movement and everyone seems to suffer Pairing a movement with memorization skills will increase a child's memorization abilities. You can memorize math facts by chanting the facts aloud while you are marching in place, clapping your hands, or throwing a ball in the air. The movement has nothing to do with the learning but the movement involves the body and helps the kinesthetic learner remember the facts. Some parents or teachers think they can work faster and get more accomplished by skipping the time consuming kinesthetic modes. For some children it may work, but for most the kinesthetic movement helps increase learning and for those who are very kinesthetic learners, it is essential for their success.

In order to teach your child using more kinesthetic/tactile modes, we must have a new perception of school. You may also need to put back on a "child-like" view in order to do things that may seem silly. Many teachers have a difficult time with jumping around the room or allowing their child to have lots of movement while he works. The perception most of us have from our schooling is that we must sit in a chair, listen, and work quietly. In a classroom, this is still the norm, and must be in many situations. At home, you have the opportunity to change that perception for your child if that best fits your child's learning style. Your child can jump around or rock in a chair while he is learning. You can have kinesthetic and tactile input in all that you do. A teacher with a classroom has limited time and space to do these things. Take advantage of your priceless opportunity to teach to your child's strengths. Ah, homeschooling!

Pamela Maxey is the founder of Classic Apple. She graduated from William Jewell College with a degree in Elementary Education. She has taught children with learning disabilities or homeschooled her own children for the past 20 plus years. She resides in Lee's Summit, Missouri with her husband and two sons and, as of the year 2000, counts herself among the growing sorority of breast cancer survivors. Her life is a testimony to the saving Love of her Heavenly Father. You can contact her at 816-537-5801 or pmaxey@classicapple.com.