Yesterday was a big day in our family. Like so many families this time of year, we sent a little one to his first day of kindergarten. Along with first day photos and excitement came a bit of anxiety, some for our new student and even some for mom.
We love dad’s and want to honor them all year but especially on Father’s Day. Take a few minutes to enjoy this musical tribute to suburbanite dad’s. Get ready for to see how they use playful rap to share their thoughts on raising kids, Disney movies, barbequing and landscaping.
At Young Rembrandts, an after school enrichment program that teaches kids how to draw. The more kids we teach, the more parents ask – when are we going to teach them. So we’ve recorded a few, 2 minute, easy to follow, step by step “How To Draw” videos. Get out your pencil and paper and learn to draw a monster.
Have you been labeled – scatter brained, distracted, inattentive, even impulsive? Has your child? Perhaps ADD or ADHD diagnosis has been away to explain these behaviors. Diagnosing ADD or ADHD is highly subjective and comes with a multitude of negative connotations. But what if it’s not a negative? What if its not even ADD ?
There’s good news. Visual learners share many of the same traits as ADD. Visual learners need more visual, hands on learning experiences and often struggle to organize, stay on task and pay attention. This is increasingly apparent with children in today’s language heavy, test oriented classrooms. And yet there are great advantages to being a visual learner. Some of our most creative minds, great leaders and innovative business people have been and are visual thinkers.
What do you say to your child when she tells you…
“I’m not smart. I’m not the same as the other kids. How come I don’t get good grades like they do? I’m not smart like they are.”
I met with a group of parents to share information about learning styles and ways to help our visual learning children do better in the classroom. A mother seated in the front row had raised her hand and asked that question about her 9 year old daughter.
It’s time for kids to sharpen their pencils and get ready for standardized testing. While this is not good news for anyone involved, did you know research has proven that participation in art class can improve test scores?
Several new studies have been published recently on the relationship between the arts and test scores. The Journal of Educational Leadership recently published an article – The Art and Craft of Science: by Robert and Michele Root-Bernstein.
This morning I was looking on line to see what kind of things are being done in elementary schools, to teach math visually and came across this video; Teaching Math Without Words: A Visual Approach to Learning Math Through Software.
In the video Dr. Matthew Peterson shares some great insights on why the current language heavy approach to teaching math is not working, especially for children that learn visually and conceptually. In answer to these challenges, their group, The Mind Research Institute has developed math-learning software to use in the classroom and is yielding impressive results. This video includes examples of their software – which I must admit – move way too fast for me to fully grasp. But when seeing the children working and discussing, in front of their computers, the programs seem to move at a pace that invites engagement and understanding.
