What Are Different Learning Styles For Children ?
Different children have different levels of grasping things. Some are slow to learn but when they have learnt something they do not forget easily. There are children who are fast learners and they learn most of the things at the first reading. There are other types of children who are good at learning but tend to forget fast.
Teaching new things to little ones is an art, the method of teaching differs from child to child. The learning style of children is quite similar to that of the grownups. Sometimes it is difficult to explain a thing by words but easy to explain by demonstration. Let us take the example of cooking classes on TV. When one watches an expert cooking something, it becomes easy to remember and repeat the process. If we only hear the process on radio it may be slightly difficult to grasp it at one go.
Thus the learning styles can be classified into different parts, they being:
Learning while watching as explained above about cooking classes. Similarly in case of children, while teaching a teacher often refers to charts depicting different objects. While teaching alphabets to small children she refers to a chart showing different fruits or animals. This way the children will learn fast and will easily associate a particular alphabet with an object. Similarly showing a video of children singing poems will make it easy for children to learn nursery rhymes.
Auditory method or learning by hearing is another method of teaching children. The teacher reads aloud from a book and the children repeat the sequences. In view of this a large number of audio tapes have been recorded containing alphabets, nursery rhymes and even simple arithmetic or tables for the children to listen and learn. Even for adults such tapes are available to enable them to learn a language etc.
The third type can be learning while doing the thing practically. As in chemistry class students go to lab and do practicals using various chemicals and equipment, similarly it is done with other streams of learning. Once a child does anything with his own hand he will rarely forget it. To learn driving after theory class is impossible. You have to sit down in car to drive and there is no alternative.
The best strategy of teaching the child is mixing the above options together. The child should be encouraged to listen, repeat and do the thing. Instead of audio tapes video tapes associated with the lesson will be very helpful. Children in a dance class should be made to watch the dance, listen to music and do likewise. However different teachers devise their own methods of teaching which work well.