Are you homeschooling your children? Has your child been diagnosed with ADD? Are you looking for some things to keep the kids busy as you get ready for the holidays? Take a look at the stories that you may have missed this month.
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Children spend most of their days following different sets of rules designed to tell them how to think, how to act, what to do in any given situation. But they need time to explore things outside of those rules if they are to be successful in the future. They need to be able to think creatively.
Participation in the arts has been proven to increase academic performance. Art helps children develop essential learning skills and out of the box thinking. Art helps children think for themselves, consider multiple viewpoints and explore a wider range of possibilities. And while all of those are reason enough to support art programs for kids, there are some unique and very significant reasons visual learners need art.
So you have this great kid. He’s dynamic, smart, fun, curious, creative, and you love the way his mind works! Then he goes to school and they’re not seeing the same things you are. You hear he’s not paying attention. Not applying himself. Not keeping up. Not behaving. Then you hear – maybe it’s ADD ?
Reading and writing can be a struggle for visual learners. Here are some ways for you to support the process of becoming successful at reading and writing.
As parents, we want the best for our children at home and at school. Their success in the classroom is directly affected by the way their brain processes information. However some students are not finding the success they deserve because they’re right brain, visual thinkers…
Standardized tests can strike fear in the heart of any man – young and old, but ever wonder why? It seems odd that a few questions that require a pencil dot on a Scantron Sheet, can bring forth such stress and emotion. This is especially true for visual-spatial learners whose test results don’t reflect their true intelligence or ability.
Testing is designed with a left-brain bias. Linear-thinkers with good short-term memory and deductive thinking skills are much more likely to score well on standardized tests, because they measure the way the left side of the brain works, leaving our right-brain kids at a significant disadvantage.
There is a rather critical matter at hand in education and I want to speak very directly about it. The arts are being eliminated from our schools and testing is on the rise. There is a prevailing notion that we need less of the arts in order to make more time for the subjects that are being tested and for the tests themselves.
This line of thinking actually results in lower test scores and disconnected, discouraged, under-achieving students. Why? Because the arts, the very thing schools want to eliminate, are essential to the majority of the student population; not because art is a fun way to relax or express oneself – but because the arts actually fuel the brain. The majority of the student population are visual-spatial learners that NEED the arts to think effectively.
This morning I woke up to my usual stream of new ideas and a long “to do’ list, excited to start my day. But as I moved through my morning routine I realized the residue of yesterday’s creative activity was driving me crazy. I paused, looked around and saw that there were literally piles of chaos all over the house. Some of it mine, some my husband and adult kids, some from an energetic grandchild. 
Now there are days when the momentum of creativity and busyness sweep us along and the piles don’t matter – but there are also days when we all need to stop and tidy up. This is especially important for visual tactile people, who tend to leave signs of their creative thought process all around them, much like Hansel and Gretel’s trail of breadcrumbs.
