Child Learning Styles

 by: Mary Joyce

Many homeschool parents ultimately end up designing their own homeschool curriculum for their child. Tailoring the learning process to match the child's learning style. For those who have worked through this process somewhere along the way came to the realization that when it comes to homeschooling one size definitely does not fit all. But that’s ok! After all in the end, probably the greatest single benefit to homeschooling is the fact that you can tailor the homeschool education to fit the motivational profile of your child. The key concept in the last sentence is the motivational profile. What motivates your child to learn? What is the child's learning style? This is a key concept that you must come to understand in order to insure maximum homeschooling results.

An important aspect to understand about learning styles of the children is that ultimately the learning style of your child is probably more of an eclectic mix of different styles rather than one that you could classify neatly and put in a box. Learning is greatly influenced by motivation. And what motivates can be directly influenced as the mood for the day, and the fatigue level or lack thereof.

There are several identifiable types of child learning styles as identified educational scholars. It is out of the scope of this article to go into each of these categories. However, it is important that you have at least a high level understanding of these different types of learning styles. Knowing of these and having a decent understanding of them will aid greatly in your curriculum decisions as you first begin to understand what type of learner your child is.

A bit of research on the internet will bring you back much information on the different types of child learning styles and how to recognize and tailor a program that best fits the style. The idea is to work to determine how you child learns then fine tune your curriculum to make use of that learning style. Accomplishing this will create an motivation filled environment. And motivation to learn set sails in the right direction.