Before knowing what to teach your children, you need to know how to teach them. This is where understanding their learning styles comes into play.
There are four basic learning styles for children between the ages of 2-4: Introvert, Extrovert, Perceiving and Judging. Knowing which learning style fits your child will enable you to teach your child in a way that suits his or her personality.
The Four Different Learning Styles: Tips to Help Young Children Learn
Introvert:
This child enjoys alone time and can spend extended periods of time with one activity. It’s important for this learner to have time to digest new information.
When working with this child on a new concept, it’s a great habit to ask at the end of a lesson if she has any questions, then let her ask away. Beyond that, give her time to digest new information.
A teaching idea would be building a volcano with your child without any food color and ask her at the end to think about what could make the next volcano even cooler.
Extrovert:
This learner prefers working with someone else instead of working alone. He wants to dive right in and learn by trial and error. There are not enough hands-on activities for this learner.
Active learning is a must for this child. For example, teaching the alphabet and sight words should be an energetic and fun activity. Try taping the letters and/or words around the room, then have your child find them. You could even try timing him.
Perceiving:
This learner need constant change. The same old schedule is exactly that: Same and old.
When teaching this child, try to make learning an adventure. A fun idea might be teaching about the life cycle of an ant and how ants work. Then go outdoors and try to find an anthill, making sure to bring pieces of food with you. You could also go to the library and check out books on ants.
Try to remember that this learner likes to have a say about when the learning time is over.
Judging:
This learner thrives on schedule, routine and structured learning. There isn’t a workbook that this child doesn’t like. This learner wants an obvious start and end to every lesson and activity.
A great teaching opportunity would be baking cupcakes. First plan out the process and have your child draw out the steps. Next dive in and let your judging learner do the work. Talk about the math and sciences involved and enjoy your finished project.
I liked that you talked about the perceving learning style. It is good to know that with this style you need to make learning fun. It does seem like a good idea to understand what type of learning style people have. My nephew is going to start school soon and it does seem like it would be a good idea for him to understand what his learning style is.