Last night, my son was in his room working on a project for a college class.
As I said good night to him, I got a peak at what he was working on and was very impressed. As I admired his work I thought about how my active son, that had resisted sitting still for hours of homework as a young child, had grown into a young man, willing to spend hours and hours on visual projects that engaged him.
Take a peak and be encouraged.
When I first created Young Rembrandts, I was teaching a lot of preschool classes. 
We see huge academic and social benefits to getting young kids into art and drawing at an early age. But this story is about our elementary students. Elementary children are equally impacted by the arts. I have talked a lot about the relationship between art and learning styles but today I want to focus on artistic skill development.
We have a kindergarten boy in the family and he loves building things and making things.
His Christmas gifts included a lot of hands on activities and plenty of Lego’s. Brayden loves to build, take apart and rebuild the Lego sets he already has, but the addition of several new pieces have already brought hours and hours of time spent in detailed assembly work. As much as it seems we’re living in Legoland, we’re excited by his passion and interest, knowing it’s reflective of his strong spatial skills. Building these colorful three- dimensional puzzles is also a powerful way to focus his boundless creative energy.
This is Herman. He’s a very bright, sweet little nine year-old boy. At home he’s curious, creative, helpful, insightful and an excellent big brother. He’s in second grade and does well in school, but his work doesn’t quite reflect who he is or what he’s really capable of. And yet it’s been hard to say why not.
I was talking to a friend about the HBO movie, Rethinking Dyslexia that aired recently. We had both been very impressed by the movie. I’ve researched and written about dyslexia in relation to being a visual learner, but my friend has first hand experience with a son who is dyslexic. As we talked about Brandon and his learning experiences, I was enormously impressed by the success he’s found in his career because of his perseverance and the ways he learned to make things more visual for himself.
Back to school means back to vocabulary tests. Our visual learners are not too excited about any tests – but vocabulary tests can bring extra anxiety because words are not their native tongue.
I have been driven for many years, in all I do, to find ways to help children be more confident and successful. Writing Being Visual was a long, labor-intensive process, especially for me as a visual learner, but I truly believe that when we understand the way our visual kids think, can help them be more successful. When I hear from parents that have read and applied visual learning techniques, I am enormously grateful to be a part of this important conversation.
This is what one of our reader’s had to say:
This is a never before seen peek into my home office. I wanted to share how I have visually organized my office. 
