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Parenting

So Your Kid Is A Verbal Learner – Now What?

Of all the learning styles, verbal learners tend to be the rarest. This doesn’t mean that they are harder to teach or destined to have problems in school. In fact, verbal learning indicates that people will succeed later in life because they have better language skills. 

It is important to understand that verbal learning is different from auditory learning. Auditory learners learn the best when they hear about a topic, whereas verbal learners need to hear the words and speak them in order to understand. 

Interested in helping your verbal learner succeed? MindFinity helps you to teach your children and increase their Inventive IQ through various activities that strengthen all of their learning styles. Our games will have your children learning while dancing, singing, cooking, and more. The games only take a few minutes every day, but they will quickly become your favorite time with your kids. To learn more, click here.

For now, let’s talk more about your verbal learner.

What Is A Verbal Learner?

Verbal learners tend to learn best through the words that they hear and the words that they say. They need to have both levels in order to understand a topic, though they can usually learn just by hearing words spoken out loud. Traditionally, they benefit from singing songs, repeating chants, and lectures.

Verbal also includes writing. Verbal learners can best express what they know through written essays, speeches, and presentations.

How Do I Know If My Child Is A Verbal Learner?

Has your child ever used a word that you weren’t even sure if you knew the meaning to it – and then you looked it up and they used it correctly? That’s a sign they are a verbal learner. Some other signs include:

  • Loving reading, vocabulary, and spelling
  • Enjoying writing activities
  • Playing word games like Scrabble or crossword puzzles
  • Learning new languages easily
  • Disliking silence or independent study
  • Performing well in front of crowds
  • Preferring writing, history, and reading over math and science
  • Remembering quotes, passages, and songs easily

Of course, every child is different and some verbal learners may excel in math or science. It really just depends on the instruction, teacher, and the child.

How Can I Use This Information To Help My Child Succeed?

If you think that your child is a verbal learner and you want to help them succeed, there are a few different steps that you can take to improve their study skills and performance in school. The first is to encourage your child to read instructions to themselves by mouthing the words. When your child is learning a new subject, have them read the textbook or story aloud to you instead of to themselves. You don’t need to give it your complete focus, as it will benefit your child either way.

Encourage your child to learn as many songs, mnemonic devices, puns, riddles, and wordplay to remember topics – think something like “My Very Eager Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas” to remember the planets or “Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally” for mathematical equations.

Encourage your child to write things out that they don’t understand – verbal doesn’t just mean speaking and hearing. It can mean writing something down. These are the kids that are going to benefit from well-written notes that are color-coded and organized perfectly.

MindFinity Helps Kids Learn Through Gameplay

Our award-winning program helps your children expand their brains and learn polymath thinking skills while dancing, playing music, doing martial arts, and moving around! You get a new game each day of the week, which takes a few minutes a day. And you can expand on the games and have your child put their imagination to use. For visual learners, the games can help to quickly spot patterns and increase their Inventive IQ, which can help them to learn better throughout their entire school career.

Interested in learning more? To learn more about MindFinity and sign up for a free trial, click here.

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Uncategorized

Making Learning Fun For Your Kids: Our Top Suggestions

We are all always on a quest to make learning fun for our kids. It is something that most parents struggle with, particularly in a world where the school system doesn’t cater to them at all. So it becomes our concern to ensure that our kids are enjoying school and doing the best they can.

The truth is that children who love to learn do better in school, and are more likely to succeed in extracurricular activities, and eventually go on to do better in life. But what do you do if your child shows no interest or natural inclination toward learning? What if they don’t seem to enjoy it? Here are some tips:

Figure Out Their Learning Style

One important thing you can do for your child is determine their learning style. There are many, but most people are among a few categories, including verbal, kinesthetic, auditory, and visual. Some children learn better on their own, whereas others learn better with a group. If you can determine how your child learns best, talk to their teacher about it.

You can then supplement what they learn with specific lessons of your own. 

Show That Education Interests You As Well

Children are great at mimicking our behaviors. If you want your child to do some extra work, show that you are doing it too. While you have your child looking at some supplemental materials, read a book or do the same on your computer. 

If you are already taking online classes or training, consider getting something for your child that does the same thing. One way you can do this is by investing in MindFinity. MindFinity helps to increase Inventive IQ and spark a love for learning through play. 

Movement Is The Key For Many Kids

So much of the modern school day focuses on sitting in one place and learning. When you can add any kind of movement into a lesson, it feels like a treat. Adding a dance, standing, or walking to any lesson will increase what your child absorbs. 

Standing desks, chairs with pedals, and even fidget toys can help many kids retain information and pay attention.

Pay Attention To How Food Impacts Their Mood

The school day sits at a weird time, and no one really talks about it. Before your child goes to school, make sure you fuel them with good nutrition. Try not to give them sugary cereal or something with too many carbs, as this can result in crashes and spikes. If possible, send healthy snacks to keep their energy up throughout the day.

Another thing to consider is water intake. If a child seems tired or uninterested, 

Don’t Punish Failure

One thing you really don’t want to do is punish your child if they don’t understand something or don’t perform well. Now, this doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be consequences if they misbehave in school, don’t pay attention, or simply don’t do their best. Sometimes their best is failure, particularly in some subjects. The key is that they perform to the best of their ability. 

If failure is the best they can do, start from there and work together to improve.

MindFinity Helps Make Learning Fun For Kids

If your child isn’t doing well in school, doesn’t like school, or just seems bored, you can help them. You need to make learning fun for your kids, and that doesn’t have to be something lengthy or complicated. It can be as easy as logging onto MindFinity.

MindFinity can help you by introducing different activities each weekday that will have your child learning, and get your own creative gears moving. For a few minutes every day, you won’t have to plan out the lessons. Instead, they are delivered to your inbox and you can build from there.

For more information about MindFinity, please click here.

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Parenting Schooling

So Your Kid Is An Kinesthetic Learner – Now What?

If your child is a kinesthetic learner, they have a few things going for them and a few things that you need to be on the lookout for, especially in schools. Kinesthetic learners are the types of people who learn by getting up and doing things instead of sitting there and hearing about doing them. Often, they are the kids who succeed in science or math because it involves movement. They may struggle with more introverted subjects like English or history.

MindFinity helps you to teach your children and increase their Inventive IQs through various activities that strengthen all of their learning styles. Our games will have your children learning while dancing, singing, cooking, and more. They only take a few minutes every day, but they will quickly become your favorite time with your kids. To learn more, click here.

What Is Kinesthetic Learning?

Kinesthetic learners are the types of kids who move around a lot, and they do better when they are active. Whether they remember things better when singing a song that has movements, or they are gifted in some type of movement, they will always remember things better when they can use their bodies as well as their minds.

How Do I Know If My Child Is A Kinesthetic Learner?

 Children who are kinesthetic learners aren’t just the kids who can’t sit still, and kids who can’t sit still aren’t always kinesthetic learners. To spot a kinesthetic learner, look for these signs:

  • Your child excels in sports or physical activities
  • They move their hands or bodies when working on a problem
  • Your kid has a good sense of body awareness
  • Kinesthetic learners often grow bored of assignments quickly
  • They don’t like “step by step” projects

There are some negatives to having a kinesthetic learner as a child as well. Some of these signs include a general disinterest in things like reading or studying. These learners are easily distracted by what is going on around them, if only because it allows them to move their heads. 

How Can I Use This Information To Help My Child Succeed?

Kinesthetic learners are some of the most easily spotted learners in a class, but they are also some of the most underserved students. With class sizes swelling to 30+ in almost every public school, teachers can’t incorporate learning into their lesson plans. There simply isn’t enough room! Unfortunately, kinesthetic learners also tend to be very bad at auditory learning, which is what the modern school system uses the most often.

To help your child succeed, you need to figure out a way to get them moving. This could be by using manipulatives while doing something like math or science, building out labs or projects that require them to physically move around. For English class, buying an audiobook and having them walk on the treadmill while listening can be helpful. 

With younger children it is a bit harder, but if you can find dances, plays, or activities that require them to at least stand, which can be helpful.

Consider the environment as well. Kinesthetic learners benefit from standing desks, peddlers, yoga balls, and even fidget toys. Teach your child how to calm themselves down when they get the urge to move around the room. If you can control the classroom or the schedule, make sure your child has breaks to get in movement. If you don’t, talk to the teacher to see if he or she can schedule some movement. Teachers often need a student to run errands for them, and kinesthetic learners are great for that.

MindFinity Helps Kids Learn Through Play

Our award-winning program helps your children expand their brains and learn polymath thinking skills while dancing, playing music, doing martial arts, and moving around! You get a new game each weekday, which takes about five minutes a day. And you can expand on the games and have your child put their imagination to use. For auditory learners, many of the basic skills are taught through music and patterns, which they then learn to transfer into visual and kinesthetic disciplines, helping them to develop the skills that they need to thrive.

Interested in learning more? To learn more about MindFinity and sign up for a free trial, click here.

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Parenting

How To Increase The Potential In Your Kid

As a parent, it is normal to want to increase the potential in your child. We all want the most for our children and hope that they will become the person who cures cancer, becomes President of the United States, or just goes on to live a successful, happy life – whatever that will mean. Still, it can be easy to sit back and watch other children and think that your child doesn’t have as much potential. These are the conversations we are afraid to have, but we think about them late at night.

So what can you do to increase the potential in your kid? There are a few steps you can take now to increase their potential in the future. Let’s break them down:

Start Teaching Them A New Language

Almost everywhere in the world, children learn a second language other than their native language. Most often, it is English if they don’t speak English already. Other schooling systems start them early because they know that younger children learn languages better than teens or adults. Any language will help them to succeed, but Spanish or Mandarin are the most important languages for employment.

Introduce Them To New Things

The more exposure your child has to new, exciting things, the better they will be prepared for life in general. Introduce your child to different cultures, events, activities, and world. This could mean signing them up for a square dancing class, taking them to an Indian restaurant, or going to a museum. It could also mean buying them books that teach about different cultures that maybe aren’t as accessible.

Your child won’t always like or take interest in these new things, but even if they only do something once, they at least have that knowledge to pull from moving forward.

Make Them Work Hard

As parents, we often want to make our children’s lives easier, but that doesn’t always help them in the long run. Your child has to know how to struggle and then how to come out the other side with the knowledge to tackle similar problems.

Of course, you don’t want your child to go hungry or stress out over things they shouldn’t, but it is okay for a kid to struggle through learning how to ride a bike or have a hard time mastering a skill.

Encourage Emotional Intelligence

The more emotional intelligence your child has, the better off he or she will be in life. You want to teach your child to know about their own emotions and how that translates into other people. For example, if your child is sad about something, allow them to cry. Don’t encourage them to hold it inside. If your child has an opinion, allow them to share it.

The better at explaining their emotions your child is, the more likely it will be that they are successful in working with other people into the future.

Think About How School Serves Your Child

Often, we think that the only way to really determine whether or not a child will be a success is through schooling and grades. To be honest, it is a huge indication if only because good grades can open doors that bad grades cannot. Unfortunately, not all students are served by the modern schooling system. While most parents cannot homeschool their children or even afford private tutors to help them, there are some things that you can do at home to prove to your child that they are capable and foster a love of learning.

One of the ways you can do that is through MindFinity. Instead of rote memorization and boring lessons, MindFinity will have your child moving around,drawing, making music, dancing, and yes, learning. 

For more information about MindFinity, visit this page to discover how we help you to nurture your child’s love of learning.

Focus On Building Up Your Child

It is essential to build up your child and help them to believe in themselves. You can’t do that if you continually compare them to other students and children, as we all grow and bloom at our own speeds.

If your child struggles, find ways to help them.

MindFinity is one way to do that. MindFinity provides parents, grandparents, and caregivers a great tool for younger children and their families to connect with one another, and have fun learning together. It takes just a few minutes every day. For more information, reach out to our team today to get started

Categories
Parenting Schooling

So Your Kid Is An Auditory Learner – Now What?

As we have already discussed, there are a few different learning styles and everyone has one learning style that is their strength. For some, it is visual learning and others excel in auditory learning, meaning they operate best when they hear information or examples. While the school system does try to teach all types of learning, auditory learners often do fairly well because of lectures and traditional teaching.

Kids who are auditory learners may even choose to close their eyes and listen to lectures instead of taking notes, though that often doesn’t go over well with their teachers. If your child is struggling in school, it could be that they aren’t getting information in a way that helps them learn. For example, simply copying down notes isn’t going to help kids who are auditory learners.

MindFinity helps you to teach your children and increase their Inventive IQs through various activities that strengthen all of their learning styles. Our games will have your children learning while dancing, singing, cooking, and more. They only take a few minutes every day, but they will quickly become your favorite time with your kids. To learn more, click here.

For now, let’s talk more about your auditory learner and how you can best help them to succeed.

What Is Auditory Learning?

As mentioned, auditory learning means that someone learns best when they listen to directions, facts, or discussions. They prefer to sit in a lecture over reading a textbook. Some auditory learners prefer to listen to teachers, whereas others prefer general conversations in class. These are the students who need to hear directions instead of reading them on a piece of paper.

Of course, these learners can get information in other ways, this is just the best way to reach them.

How Do I Know If My Child Is An Auditory Learner?

Auditory learners can be slightly more difficult to identify than other types because we tend to explain something and visually show it, so we don’t pick up on those children who learn better from hearing things. However, early signs include:

  • Well developed communication skills
  • High-level vocabulary
  • Good imagination and storytelling skills
  • Strong listening skills
  • Not afraid to speak in public
  • Easily distracted by background noises or conversations
  • Talks to oneself out loud when solving problems
  • Reads directions out loud

There are other signs as well, including general interest in music, podcasts, radio, and other forms of “listening” entertainment.

How Can I Use This Information To Help My Child Succeed?

If this sounds in any way like your child, you are pretty lucky in that there are some easy ways to help your child succeed. The first is that you need to use your voice when helping them with schoolwork or even just teaching them something about life. 

Children who are auditory learners will benefit from repetition, so repeating information that you need them to know and remember is important. If your school offers it, maybe consider recording lessons so that they can hear them again.

Another way to help your child succeed is to simply have conversations with them about what they are learning. Engage in that conversation, when they hear you say things, they will remember it. Just make sure that what you are saying is accurate.

This may be easier for certain subjects, such as history or science, but consider supplementing with YouTube videos, documentaries, podcasts, and other mediums that they can listen to instead of reading textbooks. You may even consider getting audiobooks for their English classes.

MindFinity Helps Kids Learn Through Gameplay

Our award-winning program helps your children expand their brains and learn polymath thinking skills while dancing, playing music, doing martial arts, and moving around! You get a new game each day of the week, which takes about five minutes a day. And you can expand on the games and have your child put their imagination to use. For auditory learners, many of the basic skills are taught through music and patterns, which they then learn to transfer into visual and kinesthetic disciplines, helping them to develop the skills that they need to thrive.
Interested in learning more? To learn more about MindFinity and sign up for a free trial, click here.