How To Start Homeschooling: Learning Styles
Understanding homeschool learning styles is a crucial step to ensuring your homeschool program is a successful one for all involved!
As we continue our journey to help you start homeschooling your children, I would be remiss if I didn’t dedicate at least one whole post to figuring out homeschool learning styles.
As the name implies, learning styles are the methods by which a person learns best. Learning styles are often used by curriculum companies to help you know if their product will work for your child, but they are also part of many homeschool styles as well.
To help you wade through the terms, we are going to talk about learning styles, why they matter, and when to trust your gut so you can start homeschooling with confidence!
Before we look at homeschool learning styles I want to let you know that this post is the third part in a 5 part series. If you didn’t read the first two posts I want to allow you to at least open those links and save them for later – because we have already covered a lot!
In How To Start Homeschooling (part 1), we looked at the beginning, your reasons for homeschooling, how to draft a mission statement, and even how to keep things legal by researching laws governing homeschooling where you live.
In Homeschooling Your Family (part 2), we dug deep and examined your family, your commitment, and started you on the quest to find support for your homeschool.
Now, let’s take a look at your kids, homeschool learning styles, and how to best accommodate each child at the same time.
What Are Homeschool Learning Styles?
Learning styles are just like they sound – they are the way we learn new information.
Each of us has a preferred style of learning. As an adult, you probably already know how you learn best. Whether it’s through reading, listening, or jumping right in, you already know.
But what about your children? Do you know how they learn best?
Just like adults, children have a preferred learning style, although this is not always obvious.
Typically younger kids, under age 8, are mostly hands-on. They need interaction and to be able to see, touch, smell, feel, and even taste. They are still developing their preferences. These kids need to move around, get their wiggles out, and truly interact with their environment and what they are learning.
This is partly why younger children often have a hard time with a traditional classroom.
As society has pressured kids to learn more at younger ages, the younger grades have often turned away from interactive modes of learning. In their place, we find we find more formal sit-down learning that is detrimental to younger kids.
These kids need to move, not just to learn, but also to develop the motor skills and muscle strength they will need as they age.
In short, our littles simply need us to let them be little.
Older children though, start developing a preference for how they learn.
Auditory, visual, and kinesthetic are the three most common learning styles. No one is wrong, and no one is better than the other. They each have their strengths and weaknesses.
As a homeschooling parent if you are aware of your child’s preferred learning style you can try to accommodate this. This does not guarantee success, but it does aid your child in the learning process.
I can say, from experience, that trying to have a student learn in a way that is not best suited to them is an uphill battle for both of you. Attempting to teach them in the way they learn best will make homeschooling a little easier for both of you.
However, while we each have a preferred learning style, this doesn’t mean we cannot or will not learn differently. It does mean we need to be aware of how our kids learn best, accommodate that style most often, and work in the other styles where we can.
Understanding how your child learns best helps you to tailor their education to meet their unique needs & helps them flourish. Click To TweetThe 3 Homeschool Learning Styles
I’m going to put this out there right now – there is no one best way to teach your child. What works one day may not work the next. Your child may need one learning style for one subject, but a different approach to another. And what works for one kid, may not work for the next.
Because of this, I am going to caution you here.
While understanding homeschool learning styles is an important part of starting to homeschool, it’s not everything.
Read over the three synopsizes, gauge where your child falls, check out the additional resources below, and then move on. Don’t spend a ton of time here because as important as learning styles are – they are subject to change. Knowing how your child prefers to learn is best used to help you make curriculum choices – something we will talk about in-depth in the next post.
And, if I am being completely honest with you here, the best homeschools utilize all three options for each child.
It mixes hands-on with auditory by playing music while painting. It combines auditory with visual by heading outside to study nature, soaking in all of the sights and sounds and smells. And it intertwines all three styles of learning to help your child push their own boundaries academically and creatively.
1. The Auditory Learner
Just like the name implies, auditory learners learn best by hearing the material. They thrive on audiobooks and lessons that are read to them.
Unfortunately, this can be the most challenging learner to accommodate, but it’s not impossible.
Auditory learners typically need noise and have a hard time working in a quiet environment. Children who are auditory learners present what they have learned best in the form of oral presentations or videos they record.
Auditory learners typically have a difficult time remembering what they read silently. This is not due to a lack of reading comprehension. Try to allow them to read materials out loud to themselves, or read it to them or with them. Take turns reading together, and then talk about the material to ensure they are grasping the lesson.
Auditory learners prefer to work in group settings, so they are perfect for those times you can teach to more than one student at a time.
For more information on auditory learners and more tips on teaching them, check out the additional resources listed below.
2. The Visual Learner
Unlike the auditory learner, the visual learner needs to see things to truly learn them.
Whether they are looking at science charts, spelling words, or math facts, they have to see what it is you want them to learn.
Visual learners typically learn best in a calm, quiet environment. These students will often look at pictures, graphs, or large print sections of the material before reading a lesson.
Bright colors, interesting pictures, graphs, and charts are some of the best ways to aid your visual learner. Whether they create these elements from the text or lesson, or your curriculum choices come with them, a visual learner needs more than just words on a page or screen.
Completing projects, presentations, or videos is going to be one of the best ways to gauge how well the visual learner is retaining what they are learning.
For more information on visual learners and tips on teaching them, check out the additional resources listed below.
3. The Kinesthetic Learner
These kids are hands-on learners.
They thrive in an environment that offers lots of opportunities to truly engage in what they are learning. Whether you are making crafts, taking lots of field trips, or turning spelling into a hands-on game, they need to be involved and immersed in their studies.
Kinesthetic learners also tend to be very busy, and need to be busy. They truly learn with their whole body and not just their mind.
They are more likely to remember experiences rather than facts in a book. Kinesthetic learners typically need frequent breaks and do best with shorter assignments.
They often prefer to work in a less traditional fashion. Rather than being at a table or desk they often enjoy and do better if they are allowed to work on the couch, in bed, lying on the floor, or sitting in a beanbag chair.
If your child is a kinesthetic learner you are going to need to think outside the box a little. These learners may not want to read a science lesson so much as they want to pull apart an electronic device to see how it works.
They may not want to study grammar and parts of speech, but they may want to write a story and illustrate it.
For more information on kinesthetic learners and more tips on teaching them, check out the additional resources listed below.
What If My Child Doesn’t Fit Into Just One Homeschool Learning Style?
Odds are your child will lean heavily into one of the three learning styles, but that does not mean they won’t have different preferences.
Identifying a learning style does not mean they will only learn in that style, just that it will be the easiest for them to learn in. Accommodating your child’s preferred learning style will aid them and help them to learn better and build confidence.
That’s not to say you need to purchase or provide materials only suited to their dominant homeschool learning style.
I have a very visual learner, but one year we had a history program that did not fit that mold. It was a read, answer questions, review, and quiz type of program. And while the program was excellent in my opinion, it was not a good fit for her. We spent the whole school year with me dictating the lessons, drawing in her materials, highlighting important information, and taking written quizzes orally. I simply had to find a way to accommodate my child.
Yet, each child is different. While my visual learner did not do so well initially, I rarely had to assist my kinesthetic learner. He read, answered the questions, reviewed, and tested mostly independently all the while tapping his foot or a pencil.
After that year, however, we changed our history curriculum.
We opted for one that allows us to study the same material in different grades, offers different ideas for projects, has multiple ways to show learning, and provides different review options. It allows me to accommodate multiple learning styles utilizing one program and dive into a bit of child led learning that helps us stay relaxed in our approach to home education.
It also does not mean that I spend hours searching for different programs for each child. Even though I am aware of their preferred learning styles, I want to aid them in improving other styles.
They will not always be able to learn in a way that suits them best, so we are always looking for ways to stretch their learning habits and increase their ability to learn in different ways. Knowing their preferred learning style helps us to provide lessons best suited, but also aids us in teaching them to learn in different ways.
Looking Forward As You Start Your Homeschool Journey
Knowing your child’s preferred learning style is crucial in deciding which curriculum you are going to use as you start homeschooling.
Whether you choose to purchase a curriculum that is ready to go and all laid out, use online courses, or piece together your own lessons, learning styles need to be in the back of your mind. There is nothing worse than realizing the curriculum you choose for the year just does not work well for your child. Not only can it be a costly mistake, but it can also cause your child to doubt their ability to learn. Understanding how your child learns best helps you to tailor their education to meet their unique needs and helps them flourish.
This does not mean you need to purchase or use only items geared towards a particular learning style. Just like with our history curriculum, we adapted the program to fit our needs. And this is one of the greatest things about homeschooling – the ability to teach your child the way they learn best.
Additional Resources To Help With Homeschool Learning Styles
As promised, here are three additional resources that I really like to help with figuring out the preferred learning style of your children. These are not the only sources out there, just the ones I like best and use myself. Not only do they cover what the styles are, but there are also tips and tricks for teaching each style, and a couple of quizzes to take to help you determine a preferred learning style.
Now that you are more familiar with learning styles, spend some time determining how your child will learn best. It may take some time but will be well worth the effort. When it comes time to look at curriculum options, you will be very glad you did!
Speaking of curriculum options, that will be the subject of the next post in this series!
Continue this series with part 4, How To Start Homeschooling: Selecting Homeschool Curriculum.
The Complete Beginner’s Guide To Homeschooling combines the entire How To Start Homeschooling series – all in one easy-to-access place! The 92-page ebook contains all of the information in the series, plus additional content, exclusive pages, workbook materials, planning pages, and a curriculum guide based on homeschool learning styles!
Are you ready to start your homeschooling adventure? Or do you need more information then is listed here? Comment below or shoot me an email at kelly@hopeinthechaos.com!
This post has been updated from its original version published July 2017.
