The Hands-On Approach to Lessons
People learn in different ways. Some read things and have the ability to figure it out, while others need to use the hands-on approach to learn. The old way of counting on your fingers and toes may be what some people need. There’s nothing wrong with either way as long as you know what works for you and how to get it done.
If your child is a visual learner and needs to do things on his/her own with their hands, there are many ways to make this happen. You can help them at home and if it’s serious enough you can make the same recommendations to the teacher as well. There’s no point in trying to teach your child how to do something and have the teacher try to do it the complete opposite way. Even though the teacher spends more time with your child than you might, it doesn’t mean you have to fight when it comes to teaching and helping your child learn.
It doesn’t matter if you’re trying to help your child with math or history, the hands-on approach will still work. Here are a few suggestions to help you get started.
Math
With math problems you can help your child learn the hands-on approach easily. You can use flashcards, pictures, or a counting stand. The counting stand can be helpful and often times resemble the blocks used when playing table games. Any of these tools will work, but may not work for every problem you’re trying to solve. The best thing to do is find the tools that work with each lesson.
Relating to the child’s likes may help with the learning process. For example, you don’t want to use cars if your child is not interested in cars, but at the same time you maybe wouldn’t want to use flowers if your child is a boy. When you use things that are interesting to them they’ll pick up on it easier.
History
History is a little harder to learn when you learn hands on, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get it done. When trying to teach a child history through the hands-on approach, you may need to use visual objects they can pick up or touch with their hands. These would include maps, items that are closely related to what you’re studying, or re-enactments. This is another one of those things that may need to be lesson specific, but it is possible to teach in this manner when you do your research.
There are no two people that are alike which makes it really difficult to teach things to others. Even siblings aren’t the same, which produces challenges for parents as well. The important thing to remember is they need to learn and you need to teach them.
If hands-on learning is what they need, then you need to help make it happen. Almost every subject can be taught in this manner if you put some research into it and find out what needs to be done.