Homeschooling
Homeschooling has been a wonderful experience for my family and I. Many of my children are visual learners,meaning they think and learn with pictures rather than words. They also learn best with movement and using their senses, meaning they use touch, smell and body movement to learn new concepts. Two of them twil around with their head tilted while reciting spelling words in preparation for a test. Unfortunately, nearly all traditional schools teach to auditory learners. Let's face it, you can't have 30 kids twirling and sniffing and touching at the same time! But with homeschooling, I can teach to their learning styles. I use the curriculum from Laurel Springs School in Ojai California as well as the teacher support. Our teacher had us check my learning style and theirs to help customize the curriculum and anticipate and avoid conflicts caused by any differences between my learning style and theirs. For instance, instead of doing worksheets or writing an essay about the Bill of Rights, my kids researched, wrote a script, rehearsed and videotaped a show on it. I help them with their writing skills by using Inspiration Software (a visual web planning program with tons of different preset templates for different writing and planning projects. I have them play tic tac toe to learn teir spelling words. I have them make clay models to learn new vocabulary words. I use different colored pencils to teach math--for instance, when combining like terms in algebra. We go on lots of field trips and in general have a blast learning.
If only there were schools that had a class for each learning style led by a teacher with that same learning style. Kids would bounce out of bed and rush off to school eager to learn rather than drag their feet and complain because they're being forced to learn in a way that their brains aren't wired to learn.
By the way, more children are visual spatial learners than before. An evolutionary phenomenon? A reflection of prenatal or postnatal factors? Too much TV early on? Who knows. Comments welcome.