How to Identify Your Child’s Learning Style

Every child has a unique learning style and this is why some children are better off reading or writing, while some are more effective with hands-on activities. 

Knowing your child’s learning style enables you to better tend to their studying/ learning habits. You can advocate for them in school or know what after-school activities to engage your child in. 

In this post, we break down the main child learning styles and how you can identify your child’s learning style to help them with their studies at home better.  

But how do you identify your child’s learning style?

Children Learning Styles

Since children are gifted differently, some doing well through languages while others learn better through hands-on activities, you need to keep an eye on your child to determine what learning styles work best for them. 

Below are the main learning styles in children and how to tell if your child prefers either of them. 

1. Visual 

Visual learners are children who learn by seeing things. These learners better understand information through whiteboards, images, diagrams, graphs, or any other visuals. The advantage of visual learners is that they can easily visualise and interpret information. 

Instead of learning sequentially, visual learners learn holistically. They interpret knowledge by looking at the bigger picture. As a consequence would leave out details that may be important.

Graphs, tables, maps, charts are some of their best learning materials. 

And because visual learners relate well with visuals, you’ll most often find them engaged in wall paintings, illustrations in books, screens, TVs, and computers. Visual learners retain the information they find in the areas mentioned above. 

Signs that Your Child is a Visual Learner

• Your child loves visual activities, such as painting, art, etc.; 
• Your child lingers in books with many illustrations, such as graphs; 
• Your child can recall the places you have visited before; 
• Your child is interested in the things they see around them; 
• Your child responds better when you first give them an example. 

How to Help Your Visual Learner With Their Studies

Once you have known that your child is a visual learner, what next? Below are ways to help your child with their studies: 

• Build a visual dictionary home – To encourage learning for your child at home, label everything in the house – from the door to your furniture. This helps your child create a mental picture as they can see writings and illustrations in nearly every place in the house; 
• Teach your child with visual games – When it’s time to play, ensure that you are playing using sensory games to enable the concepts to stick. The fly swatter phonics game is an excellent example of a multisensory reading game that you can use. Once you have the materials (index cards, black marker, and fly swatter), write the letters on the index cards; 
• Encourage your child to draw – Visual learners are incredible artists. To help your child with their studies, ask your child to create what they have learned. For example, if you were reading a storybook for your child, ask them to draw a representation of what they learn from the story; 
• Make lists – Visual learners also love making lists and it doesn’t matter what kind of list it is. This is a perfect idea to ask your child to write down your shopping list or their day’s activity. You can also ask your child to write down all the items they can see in the living room, their bedroom or study room; 

Utilise flashcards – They’ll need to see something in front of them at all times. Learning can be challenging for these learners unless something is written down. This is why flashcards would work – they present any piece of information in the form of an image.

2. Auditory Learners

Auditory learners are children who learn best by hearing. They have an interest in music and a knack for playing musical instruments. Auditory learners are excellent listeners and can follow oral instructions to a tee. 

These learners have a good sense of rhythm and can become good musicians or singers in the future if properly trained. Such children could do better in a classroom setting where teachers teach using verbal presentations, such as lectures. 

Aural learners mostly enjoy lessons presented in video clips, lectures, and music. These kinds of learners are lively in class and consistently contribute to class or group discussions. Furthermore, auditory learners retain the information presented to them out loud. 

Signs that Your Child is an Auditory Learner

• Your child loves music and likes playing with musical instruments;
• Your child sings along to a song and always wants to create their songs;
• They have verbal strengths and retains phrases and words they’ve heard before 
• Your child is a good listener and can follow verbal instructions;
• Your child is lively and can take part in both classroom and group discussions; 
• Your child can recognise different sounds that other children cannot.

How to Help Your Auditory Learner With Their Studies

• Sing songs with your child – Since auditory learners love music and sounds, you can sing to them letters or numbers that they find challenging to spell. Also, you could create a song to help teach a moral lesson after reading a story to them;
• Get them audiobooks to listen to – Audiobooks are engaging and fun and your child will love them. Instead of reading to your child all the time, why don’t you get an audiobook for your child? It not only gives your child a better learning experience, but it also relieves you from reading to your child from time to time;
• Delegate teaching roles to your child – After they have learnt a new concept, encourage them to verbally teach another. This enables them to further their learning cognitives as they are practicing empathy.
• Introduce storytelling into your child’s activities – Storytelling is an important learning activity, and especially for elementary children. Narrate a story to your child while they listen attentively. Once you finish narrating the story, let them retell the story. You can use graphic organisers to help your child retell what happened at the beginning, middle, and end.  

3. Kinesthetic Learners

Children with kinesthetic learning abilities are usually physical. They love sporting activities, such as dancing, taking part in football, etc. These learners usually can’t sit for a moment; they usually have the urge to move around. 

As a result, these children learn better through their bodies, i.e., when they touch or move around a learning object. In other words, kinesthetic learners learn when they do something practically – not in theory. This is why it’s best to engage such children in learning activities that involve standing or role-playing. 

Hands-on learning is a must for kinesthetic learners. Their brain processes every information when they touch and feel something. That means that their learning process is slower if they don’t get a hands-on learning experience.

Signs that Your Child is a Kinesthetic Learner

• Your child has an aptitude in sporting activities like dancing;
• Your child fidgets all the time when they are seated or must move to process information;
• Your child frequently uses gestures when communicating;
• They perform better with hands-on activities;
• They enjoy activities, such as painting, writing, drawing, etc.;
• They started to walk, sit or crawl when they were still very young.

How to Help Your Kinesthetic Learner With Their Studies

• Make learning activities physical – Kinesthetic learners are physical, so you need to encourage them to use their hands when learning. For example, you can let your child trace the words when you are reading a storybook together; 
• Encourage their entire body movement – Since kinesthetic learners learn better using their bodies, learning while walking suits them. You can play some music and let them dance, or ask them to recite poems as they use their hands to illustrate what they are reciting;
• Teach on whiteboards/ blackboards – Many schools are starting to appreciate the advantages that smart boards can bring to children’s learning. However, you don’t have to get smart boards when you have a whiteboard or blackboard at home. For example, teach math on the whiteboard while illustrating key concepts;
• Allow your child to fidget – When you are teaching your child, ensure that you have breaks so that they can go out and stretch a bit. Don’t restrict their fidgeting because this is their nature and they can concentrate for longer when they are fidgeting.

4. Reading/Writing Learners

Reading or writing learners are those children who have to take notes while reading or taking lectures to understand a concept. They learn through words and adapt well to the traditional learning system of reading from a textbook while writing down important points. 

Since they can’t learn better without taking notes, they are good writers and can retain information longer once they have written it down. These learners thrive best when they are learning in a quiet environment with little to no distractions. 

Reading or writing learners prefer written text that they can read and condense the information so they can better understand. This way, they’ll always easily remember a concept they came across in the textbooks.

Signs that Your Child is a Reading or Writing Learner

• Your child likes writing everything down when performing a task; 
• Your child is ever into books, especially story books; 
• Your child can easily remember anything they previously read; 
• Your child learns better in a quiet environment free from distractions; 
• Your child performs tasks better when they write down the instructions given to them.

How to Help Your Reading or Writing Learner With Their Studies

• Take notes with them – Reading and writing, learners learn better by writing down as they learn. Get your child a pen and a paper to write as you teach them something. It would even be better if you could write along with them; 
• Help your child rewrite and read notes – Once you are through with your homeschooling lessons, go through your child’s notes together and help them rewrite to read better. You can then read the rewritten notes together;
• Encourage your child to use bullet points – Your read and write a child can read and take points from the material. Encourage your child to use bullets for easy reading when they need to refer to their notes later or in the future;
• Help your child turn diagrams into words – Most read and write children find it challenging to interpret diagrams. This is why you need to help your child turn those diagrams into words. For example, when learning about shapes, ensure you show them the shapes and write down their names.

How to Stimulate Your Child’s Learning Style With Link & Think Methodology

Using our Link & Think methodology, your child can enhance their learning by combining logical and creative minds through programmes that stimulate each learning style. For example, our mastery of language program can help children with different learning styles. This program involves catchy songs, fun rhymes, and animations that could help visual learners get the best out of their early childhood education.

Conclusion

Children are gifted differently and that’s why they adopt different styles of learning. Knowing your child’s learning style helps you develop better learning strategies to help your child learn better and keep their dreams alive. 

Knowing your child’s learning style helps you better understand them. Instead of shouting at them because they didn’t understand a concept, you can encourage them and let them learn at their pace. 

We hope this guide helped you identify your child’s learning style. Don’t hesitate to leave a comment if you have any questions.