What's Your Child's Learning Style Preference?

There are four basic ways we take in and process information: visually involving the eyes, auditorially regarding hearing, kinesthetically with movement and tactilely using touch, taste and smell. Each of us has preferences in the way we take in information. Most of us are highly visual, therefore much of our learning and teaching methods are visually focused. Hearing is the next favored style, followed by movement and tactile.
In traditional educational methods, the kinesthetic and tactile methods of learning are rarely involved. Those of us who learn best with movement, touching, tasting and smelling can become bored and frustrated when our learning styles are overlooked. Children who are comfortable with visual and auditory teaching styles will also benefit from lessons that are kinesthetic and tactile.

Food preparation is one of my favorite lessons to do with children of all ages. Cooking involves all the learning styles, and children and adults are proud and happy to share the "lesson." Making chocolate chip cookies is an essential life skill; at least that's my opinion. Math, reading, following instructions, learning manners and clean-up skills are learned while engaged in a cooking lesson. We get quick feedback from our own taste buds on our job performance. If we don't pay attention, we burn the cookies. If we don't read or measure accurately, the cookies taste awful. We can then use some analytical skills to figure out what went wrong. Did we include all the ingredients? Right temperature? Correct proportions? Learning is much more fun when a warm cookie is involved.

Visual learners may be concerned about the following: saving the cookies so they can show them off, watching the cookies bake, standing up high enough so they can see everything. Auditory learners may like to sing while they work or enjoy the sounds of stirring, measuring, cracking the eggs and the thermostat in the oven clicking on. Kinesthetic learners love to do, so they'll want to measure, stir, drop and take the cookies off the pan, carry the cookies, open the oven door and get up and down off the kitchen stool. Tactile learners will want to touch everything and stick their fingers in the dough, taste everything and watch other people eat and enjoy. Tactile learners may enjoy doing the dishes, which may also look like playing in the sink.

If you are aware of learning preferences, when your child starts to lose interest you can draw them back in with little "hooks" such as: Does this look right? Do you like the sound of the mixer? Do you want to stir? Can you smell the vanilla? How does this taste? The question that gets us back on task gives us a clue to our learning preferences.

Observing your child while cooking can give you important insights about his or her learning style. Remember the purpose of this activity is not to bake cookies, but to see what aspects of doing a new activity your child enjoys most and which parts may be frustrating or boring. Once you have insight into your child's learning style, you can spice things up by adding emphasis when working with them. Use learning preferences to get feedback from your children by asking: Do you see what I mean? Did you hear what I said? Can you do what I asked? How do you feel about this?

Plan activities that engage all the learning styles to optimize your child's learning in a fun and purposeful way. Baking and enjoying warm cookies with your family is a great way to discover learning strengths and preferences.

Next Week: Learn About I-Messages

Kids Talk is a column dealing with early childhood development issues written by Maren Stark Schmidt. Mrs. Schmidt founded a Montessori school and holds a Masters of Education from Loyola College in Maryland.

She has over 20 years experience working with young children and holds teaching credentials from the Association Montessori Internationale. She is also Creative Director for a video-based reading series for children ages three to six, The Shining Light Reading Series. Contact her via e-mail at maren@shininglightreading.com.

Visit www.shininglightreading.com for more information.

Ask your local newspaper to carry Kids Talk. Call, write or e-mail your local newspaper editor and recommend Kids Talk.

Would you like to send Kids Talk to friends and family or receive Kids Talk e-mail updates in your own inbox? Sign up for FREE here:
www.shininglightreading.com/enews.html

©KIDS TALK™
925 N.W. Hoyt #532
Portland, OR 97209
503.274.9788
maren@comcast.net

Can You See the Genie in Your Child?

Knowledge without experience is just information.
~Mark Twain

"Where are your children going to college?" a mom at our pre-school meeting asked me. I didn't think I had heard correctly. I had a hard enough time just getting the girls to put shoes on and out the door each morning. College? Let's get through pre-school.

This mom went on to describe her children's educational blueprint from pre-school to med school. This was the day, over 20 years ago, when I first encountered over-planning. Today the pressure on parents for children to excel academically seems to be even greater, with our popular culture sending the message that every child at birth should be another Einstein and speak six languages among other things.

The fact of the matter is that every human being is a genius. Robert Kiyosaki in his book Rich Kid, Smart Kid defends each child's uniqueness by saying that we all have a "genie in-us." Kiyosaki sees our main parenting job as helping our children find their uniqueness and strengthen it. This goes along with one of my favorite sayings: "The purpose of education is to help us find our passion in life."

The words genius and genie are derived from the Latin genius, meaning "guardian spirit." We can lose track of that guardian spirit and the gift our children have to bring to the world with activities that offer facts without meaningful experiences.

Knowledge with meaningful experience creates wisdom, or the ability to make common-sense decisions. When we force feed our children information without meaningful experiences, we fail to nurture true learning.

Two-and-a-half-year-old Jake could name each letter of the alphabet using flashcards with his mother. His parents, Kay and Fred, were sure Jake was ready to read.

At a parent information session, Kay and Fred learned there was more to learning to read than memorizing letters. They realized that meaningful language experiences, such as phonemic awareness, vocabulary enrichment and hands-on experiences, were critical to reading success.

Learning to differentiate the sounds in our language and connect them to letter symbols is phonemic awareness. It takes time, practice and a knowledgeable adult to introduce the sounds of our language and to present sounds with symbols.

Naming objects and their parts can strengthen vocabulary. We can also model writing the names of objects to show that written words correspond to spoken words. Reading books aloud and singing songs are enriching.

Hands-on language activities include going for "hunts" through the house looking for objects that share a characteristic, such as color, material or shape. Gathering all the objects necessary for an activity, such as changing a tire or baking bread, then naming and labeling the parts, creates a purposeful learning experience.

Jake, at two-and-a-half, had excellent recall of the letter pictures and their names, much like memorizing the names of 26 animals. It would be another two-and-a half years before Jake had enough language experience and knowledge to read. Jake's parents realized the difference between knowledge and information. Fred and Kay nurtured Jake's strengths with meaningful language experiences instead of having Jake memorize symbols.

Give your children experiences that nurture their uniqueness. Feed the genie. Then relax and enjoy being a parent.

Next Week: What's Your Child's Learning Style?

Kids Talk is a column dealing with early childhood development issues written by Maren Stark Schmidt. Mrs. Schmidt founded a Montessori school and holds a Masters of Education from Loyola College in Maryland.

She has over 20 years experience working with young children and holds teaching credentials from the Association Montessori Internationale. She is also Creative Director for a video-based reading series for children ages three to six, The Shining Light Reading Series. Contact her via e-mail at maren@shininglightreading.com.

Visit www.shininglightreading.com for more information.

Ask your local newspaper to carry Kids Talk. Call, write or e-mail your local newspaper editor and recommend Kids Talk.

Would you like to send Kids Talk to friends and family or receive Kids Talk e-mail updates in your own inbox? Sign up for FREE here:
www.shininglightreading.com/enews.html

©KIDS TALK™
925 N.W. Hoyt #532
Portland, OR 97209
503.274.9788
maren@comcast.net

Join in National Turn-Off-Your-Television Week

A school-age child may spend more hours watching television this year than going to school. The TV Turn-Off Network web site reports an average of 1023 hours of TV watching versus 900 hours of school time per year for our children.

The trend is for newborns to have televisions in their rooms. In America, it is not unusual for a television to be in every room of a home. In a typical American household the TV is on 7 hours and 40 minutes per day. Let's not forget the big-screen televisions that have larger-than-life projection. Our home computers in many ways are more entertainment than work tools, as we surf the net and play computer games. During a recent visit to a public library's computer section, I observed that seven out of the ten monitors had card games on the screens.

Watching television, which includes video and computer games, impacts our health and our literacy abilities as well as undermines family values. Obesity is becoming a health epidemic in our country, with TV watching a strong factor in being overweight. Forty percent of American families report eating dinner while watching TV. Literacy rates of 12th graders who watch 6 or more hours of TV a day, compared to those who only watch one hour per day, showed a rate of 14% proficiency for the 6-hour-per-day watchers and a rate of 52% for the one-hour viewers. Research studies over the past 40 years also show a correlation between watching media violence and committing real acts of violence, weakening the influence of family ethics.

Turn off our televisions and our home computers for a week? The Gameboys and the PlayStations? What would we do? It is hard to ignore the itch to turn on the TV when a moment of boredom appears. Boredom passes, if we let it, and often leads to creativity. Prepare for boredom by keeping a list of fun activities on the refrigerator. For children under the age of six, having puzzles, art supplies and building blocks available will keep minds and hands occupied. For older children, books, board games and art supplies can be tedium and time busters.

With a week of no television, consider cooking dinners together as a family and reading a book out loud. Two classics, Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain and A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L’Engle are two of my favorite read-aloud books. They appeal to a wide age range from about six years to adult. The books also lend themselves to family discussions about ethics, decision making, being different and growing up.

Turn off your TV, and do those things you say you're going to do and never have the time. Bike ride, star gaze, invite neighbors over for dinner or dessert, have a sing-a-long, go to a concert or play, dance and exercise. Once you let your imagination go, I think you'll have some fun.

Plan ahead, and turn off your television during National Turn-Off-Your-TV Week, April 25 to May 1. I hope you'll find what I found—something I didn’t realize was missing.

For more information and ideas for reducing television viewing and having a week with no television, visit www.tvturnoff.org.

Next Week: Can You See the Genie in Your Child?

Kids Talk is a column dealing with early childhood development issues written by Maren Stark Schmidt. Mrs. Schmidt founded a Montessori school and holds a Masters of Education from Loyola College in Maryland.

She has over 20 years experience working with young children and holds teaching credentials from the Association Montessori Internationale. She is also Creative Director for a video-based reading series for children ages three to six, The Shining Light Reading Series. Contact her via e-mail at maren@shininglightreading.com.

Visit www.shininglightreading.com for more information.

Ask your local newspaper to carry Kids Talk. Call, write or e-mail your local newspaper editor and recommend Kids Talk.

Would you like to send Kids Talk to friends and family or receive Kids Talk e-mail updates in your own inbox? Sign up for FREE here:
www.shininglightreading.com/enews.html

©KIDS TALK™
925 N.W. Hoyt #532
Portland, OR 97209
503.274.9788
maren@comcast.net

Using Synergy For Effective Parenting

In the recent movie, In Good Company, there is a scene where the conglomerate's big boss gives a pep talk using the idea of synergy as though it were a disease. Months ago I had planned to write about the synergy habit from Stephen Covey’s The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. How dare Hollywood poke fun at synergy! Synergy is fun.

Twenty-five years ago in my business courses, synergy was defined as the idea that the sum of the parts was greater than the whole. Here is another view of synergy, one that wasn't on the test.

Synergy comes from the Greek word, sunergos, which means "working together:" sun meaning "with" and ergon meaning "work." Why is working together a key concept or habit? Because for the most part, it is not how we were raised. Traditional schooling rewards individual effort. Many children consider working together as "cheating." In our early lives, the rewards for working together are rarely tangible and are not easily measured or reinforced. In America, we have a culture of being the "Lone Ranger," and depending on others is not a valued trait.

The dynamics of a healthy family is synergistic. In a strong family, we are more than the composite of each individual when working together. The sum of the parts is greater than the whole. Working together, or synergy, creates more than the sum of each individual’s efforts. Covey tells us "the essence of synergy is to value differences, to respect them and to build strengths to compensate for weaknesses." Covey challenges us to take the differences within our families to create an environment that fulfills each person, nurtures self-esteem and self-worth of every individual and creates opportunities for every individual to mature into independence and eventually into interdependence.

Trust and cooperation help create effective communication that make working together a fruitful, instead of a frustrating, experience. Mike and Cathy, who have worked in community theatre for years, explained to me why they continue to work on plays in differing capacities year after year, even though finding the time is difficult, money is tight and not everything runs smoothly.

"We’re addicted to seeing something come from nothing. At first there is the idea of the play. Then people come together. The ideas go back and forth. We practice. We're exhausted. Finally, we have this wonderful experience of everyone working together, even though we might have had our differences, and didn't see quite eye-to-eye on a lot of issues. But in the end it's a great experience, and you make wonderful friends, lifelong friends," Mike told me.

"We love being part of something bigger than ourselves," Cathy added.

Cathy and Mike have the habit of synergy, working together, to help make their lives richer and more meaningful, along with their co-workers and other members of their community.

Years ago I saw these words inscribed on a church wall in St. Louis: In similarities, friendship. In differences, tolerance. In all things, unity.

These words are a formula for synergy, an essential habit for effective families. Create a "working together" environment in your family, so everyone loves being part of something bigger than themselves.

Next Week: Learn About National Turn-Off-Your-TV Week

Kids Talk is a column dealing with early childhood development issues written by Maren Stark Schmidt. Mrs. Schmidt founded a Montessori school and holds a Masters of Education from Loyola College in Maryland.

She has over 20 years experience working with young children and holds teaching credentials from the Association Montessori Internationale. She is also Creative Director for a video-based reading series for children ages three to six, The Shining Light Reading Series. Contact her via e-mail at maren@shininglightreading.com.

Visit www.shininglightreading.com for more information.

Ask your local newspaper to carry Kids Talk. Call, write or e-mail your local newspaper editor and recommend Kids Talk.

Would you like to send Kids Talk to friends and family or receive Kids Talk e-mail updates in your own inbox? Sign up for FREE here:
www.shininglightreading.com/enews.html

©KIDS TALK™
925 N.W. Hoyt #532
Portland, OR 97209
503.274.9788
maren@comcast.net

Put First Things First

In his book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey tells us that time management is a misnomer. Our challenge is not to manage time but to manage ourselves. Our focus should be on enhancing relationships and accomplishing results instead of focusing on things and time. Covey says that our activities can be categorized into four groups based on combinations of urgency and importance.

Quadrant One activities are urgent and important. These include dealing with crises, pressing problems and deadline-driven projects. Sounds like parenting, doesn't it? Quadrant Two activities are not urgent but important. These include relationship building, personal growth, planning, recreation and recognizing new opportunities. The third category, Quadrant Three, include urgent but not important activities, such as interruptions; some phone calls, mail, reports and meetings; pressing matters and popular activities. Phone calls and television are examples of some Quadrant Three activities. Quadrant Four activities are not important, and not urgent. These include trivia work, busy work, some mail and phone calls, time wasters and pleasant activities. Surfing on the Internet is a Quadrant Four activity.

How we spend our time in activities from each area gives certain results. Quadrant One activities result in stress, burnout, crisis management and putting out fires. Quadrant Three activities may seem urgent but result in having a short-term focus, managing by crisis, being seen as wishy-washy, seeing goals and plans as not worthwhile, feeling out of control and developing shallow and broken relationships.

Quadrant Four activities are used as escape from the stress of Quadrant One and Three activities. People who spend most of their time in Quadrant Three and Four activities are likely to be seen as totally irresponsible, are fired from jobs and are dependent on others or institutions for basics.

Now for Quadrant Two results. I saved the best for last. People who spend the majority of their time involved in Quadrant Two activities have vision and perspective, balance, discipline, control and have to deal with few crises. Covey tells us that highly effective people spend 90% of their time in Quadrant Two activities that are important but not urgent.

Covey encourages us to take a moment and write down the answers to these two questions:
1. What one thing could you do (and aren't doing now) that if you did on a regular basis would make a tremendous difference in your personal life?
2. What one thing in your business or professional life would bring similar results?

As we become more aware of what's important to us, we will learn that the "key to being effective is not to prioritize our schedule, but to schedule our priorities."

Highly effective people spend most of their time in Quadrant Two activities by putting first things first. Scheduling our priorities will make it easier to turn off our cell phones, turn off the television and get off the computer, so we can have uninterrupted time for relationship building in our families, time for furthering our personal growth, time for recognizing new opportunities, time for planning and time for recreation. Our children deserve to be raised by highly effective people. Put first things first. Happy parenting!

Next Week: Synergize

Kids Talk is a column dealing with early childhood development issues written by Maren Stark Schmidt. Mrs. Schmidt founded a Montessori school and holds a Masters of Education from Loyola College in Maryland.

She has over 20 years experience working with young children and holds teaching credentials from the Association Montessori Internationale. She is also Creative Director for a video-based reading series for children ages three to six, The Shining Light Reading Series. Contact her via e-mail at maren@shininglightreading.com.

Visit www.shininglightreading.com for more information.

Ask your local newspaper to carry Kids Talk. Call, write or e-mail your local newspaper editor and recommend Kids Talk.

Would you like to send Kids Talk to friends and family or receive Kids Talk e-mail updates in your own inbox? Sign up for FREE here:
www.shininglightreading.com/enews.html

©KIDS TALK™
925 N.W. Hoyt #532
Portland, OR 97209
503.274.9788
maren@comcast.net