Sorting Preferences from Needs with Your Child’s Learning Style [Show]

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Gretchen Roe: 00:00:04.544
Welcome to The Demme Learning Show. Our mission here is to help families stay in the learning journey wherever it takes them. This bonus episode was previously recorded as a webinar and was not created with the audio listener in mind. We hope you will find value in today’s episode.

Gretchen Roe: 00:00:22.236
Hello, everyone. My name is Gretchen Roe, and it’s my very great pleasure to welcome you today to this conversation we’re going to have about learning preferences. Amanda Capps and I have talked about this multiple, multiple times, and in our everyday lives, we speak about it with homeschooling parents probably multiple times a week. Today, what we want to do is we want to share with you some thoughts and ideas about the latest information with regard to learning styles versus preferences and what you can do as a best-practices idea in your household to be able to get the best out of your children as you meet their needs but help them learn on all levels. So I’m delighted to welcome my colleague Amanda Capps today. My name is Gretchen Roe. I am the community outreach coordinator here at Demme Learning, and I am the homeschooling parent of six, five of whom are now college graduates. And our youngest is a senior in high school. So my academic journey with my children is about at its end. But Amanda’s still in the middle of hers. And I’ll let her tell you about that. Amanda?

Amanda Capps: 00:01:34.359
Hi, I’m Amanda Capps, and I work remotely for Demme Learning. I’m coming to you from Northwest Arkansas. I’m a second-generation homeschooler. I was homeschooled all the way through my education, and I am continuing on with that tradition in my own family. I am the mother of eight. My oldest daughter is actually turning 20 today. And they go down in age until they end up on the caboose at age 2. And we have a very crazy and eclectic homeschool style is the way I like to call it. I’ve worked for Demme Learning in customer service for the past 13 years. And I love coming alongside our parents and just providing support and information that helps them on their homeschool journey.

Gretchen Roe: 00:02:27.670
Amanda, I am delighted to share the opportunity to talk about this subject with you today because you and I have had so many productive conversations in the past. Let’s begin with that conversation about what is a learning style versus a learning preference. And let’s explore those in a little bit of depth. How about you talk about what your learning preference is and how you discovered that? And then what do you see as differences in your children?

Amanda Capps: 00:02:57.483
Absolutely. So I would say that my learning preferences would be visual and auditory. Those are probably the two biggest senses that connect information and really provide the best catalyst for learning for myself. When you have eight children, there is no formula and every single one of them is different. And so it has been my pleasure and sometimes my frustration to observe them and to figure out what their preferences are– or styles are and then figure out a way to incorporate that into the curriculum that I choose, the way I choose to present, the material that needs to be covered. It’s been quite the journey, but ultimately, it has given me the opportunity to be an avid observer of my students and to really plug in what’s going to work best for them.

Gretchen Roe: 00:04:09.985
Okay. So how do you, as a parent, start to sort learning styles in your children? At about what age do you go, “Oh, that child’s learning preference is” whatever that child’s preference is. Can you do that with your two-year-old or are we waiting around a little bit longer?

Amanda Capps: 00:04:33.526
That’s a fantastic question and it’s one we do get quite frequently. Because there’s a lot of change in development that’s happening in those formative years. From about birth until five, there’s a lot going on with a kiddo and they’re kind of coming into their own personality. Hand preference, whether they’re right-handed or left-handed. There’s just a lot of development going on. And so sometimes if you are really observing that child, you can think, “Oh, well, this is it. This is the one. This is really where I need to focus.” And sometimes it’s very obvious from a very young age, and other times they can really change it up on you and you can be left kind of scrambling. My personal opinion is that what I see the most success with is just overall the more senses we can get involved in the learning process itself, the more effective your time and your energy is going to be. And one of the things that doesn’t get brought up very often is you’ve got to also remember no one is going to be able to sustain a learning preference or time management or focus beyond what is reasonable to expect of a child based on their age and development. And that’s where a lot of parents get into trouble is because we’re expecting these things to be sustainable for a long period because that’s the experience that we’ve had or that we’ve been encouraged to follow. Hour blocks of time for each class. But let’s be real, even as adults and parents, it gets to be 45 minutes or beyond, we’re checking out and our attention and focus isn’t there either.

Gretchen Roe: 00:06:32.830
Right. And I think it also has to do with whether you’re interested in the subject. I’m going to check out a lot faster when it has to do with math only because that’s not my preference. Language, words, I’ll be fascinated for a very long time. So it has to do with juggling multiple plates. First of all, to be able to observe your children. And we often say in these webinars that you are the most ardent observer of your child. You know them better than anyone. And sometimes they’re going to surprise you, as Amanda has said. I had a child in my family that I would have bet money was a visual learner. And it turned out when he was a teenager, he looked at me one day and he said, “You know–” he said, “I really am an auditory learner.” And I said, “No, you’re not.” And he said, “Oh, no.” He said, “I know I’m an auditory learner because when I’m studying something all by myself, I’m reading it out loud to myself.” Because he said, “That’s the way I stay focused.” And I was so surprised to hear that. But it taught me something in the process that I need to observe more carefully what my children’s learning preferences are. I am end-to-end a visual learner, and I knew that. I learned that when I homeschooled because my kids would say, “Mom, it says here.” And I would say, “No, no. Bring me the book. I have to read it for myself because I have to read the words to be able to understand what you’re saying.” But often, like yesterday, I had an assignment where I was taking something that was auditory. And in order for me to wholly understand, I ended up with four pages of notes because I needed those notes to be able to help my brain process the process. And I know when I began homeschooling back in the early ’90s, this was really big on learning what your child’s learning preference is and tailoring your curriculum to that. And I had homeschool friends who turned themselves into pretzels while they were trying to meet each child’s preference. And it was probably four or five years into my homeschooling journey before somebody said to me, “Your child’s boss is not going to care what your child’s learning preference is.” And I was so shocked. It had not occurred to me. I had not even thought of that. So Amanda, what I’d like you to talk about now is you have said you’re more of a visual learner. How do you adapt yourself as the parent to your children’s learning style, maybe an auditory learner?

Amanda Capps: 00:09:31.484
Absolutely. So I think learning styles can very easily go down the same path as love languages. We tend to teach, or we tend to give love in the ways that we prefer to receive. And that can really cause some fireworks at times in a homeschool environment, because we can be in love with a particular curriculum or a particular method. And yet, if it’s not really connecting with our kid and our student, and it’s not really engaging them, it can be a real battle to go, “Wait a second. Who’s the one that really has the real need here? And what about this environment am I trying to do in learning this subject?” And I would agree with you. Math is not naturally my forte. It’s not something that I’m very naturally good at. But I think one of the reasons that my bandwidth is shorter when it comes to math is the amount of effort I have to put into focusing and paying attention to the details and remembering all of the steps. And so I don’t necessarily think it’s like, “Oh, I just don’t like math.” It requires a lot more from me to engage and to do it well. And so as humans – I mean, this is a human thing, this isn’t a teacher or a kid or a student thing – we naturally gravitate to the things that we are good at, that we enjoy, that we want to do. I have ADD and dyslexic kids that can sit on a video game console for hours, forget to eat, sit there and not need to go to the bathroom. And I’m like, “You guys are killing me here. What is the deal?” But I can’t get that kind of engagement on a school subject. And then the other thing that I think is really important to bring up too is you talked about four pages of notes, and that was how you engaged and stayed with the material that you were needing to focus on. And we, I think a lot of times as parents, assume kids have these ideas and these skills and they learn these things naturally on how to be a good student. And that’s just not the case. That stuff has to be taught. Good study habits have to be taught. Sometimes other adults, other siblings, the other parent, they might have some really important feedback because everyone’s observing from a different perspective as to what it is that really makes your student tick and how they process information the best. So my encouragement would be, don’t get so laser-focused and trying to figure it all out on your own. Look at your options, look at other people in your environment and who interact with this child and pick their brains and go, “Hey, what do you think makes so-and-so tick?” It finally dawned on me that I have certain children who can get up and start school, and I have certain children that if I try to open a book with them before 10:00 a.m., I might as well throw the book at the wall. I mean, nothing productive is going to happen because their brain doesn’t engage until about 10:30 or 11 o’clock in the morning.

Gretchen Roe: 00:13:16.891
Sometimes I think that that is a valuable observation as far as when is your child at their best. I am an early morning person. I wake up with the birds, and my feet hit the floor and I have a hundred thoughts and you’re going to get 97 of them in the first five minutes. And of course, I married a man who doesn’t want you to say a word to him until he’s had his second cup of coffee. So we have a combination of that in our children. And so being able to observe your children to figure out who begins their day at what point in time makes a huge amount of difference. And you may also– I was engaged in a conversation yesterday with a parent saying, “Remember to hold on to your expectations loosely because as your children age, their preferences will change. And that will look different in a 15-year-old than it does in a 10-year-old. Can you talk a little bit about engagement as far as how long a student can spend on a task, particularly when it’s new information? Because I think sometimes we are so used to imparting this information to parents, but some parents have not thought about it. So we set expectations on an eight-year-old that are impossible for them to deliver.

Amanda Capps: 00:14:46.427
Absolutely. So the general rule of thumb is a child’s attention span is their age plus two or three minutes. So an eight-year-old would probably have 10 minutes of max, laser-focused, I’m engaged, my brain is engaged, and I can focus on this task or this subject. That gains a little bit with the years that pass and the maturity, and abilities certainly can grow. But it’s amazing to me the number of parents that I talk with where their children are even in Delta, Epsilon, Zeta, they may be 10, 11, 12, 13 years old, and they are frustrated because that child still needs their involvement. And two things I think need to really come to the forefront here. I’m a busy mom. I’m getting split multiple ways. There are eight people plus a husband who need my time and attention on the daily, plus I work. So I’ve got a lot going on in my hours of my day, but every child needs a certain level of my involvement, my checking in, my presenting of a concept, dialogue conversation. We’ve talked a lot about external and internal dialogers and what that brings to the educational table, and really taking some time to ponder and figure out which one is my child. Are they an internal or an external?

Gretchen Roe: 00:16:31.240
I’m going to interrupt you there for a hot minute. And can you explain that? Because this was something that was revelatory for us in this past year. And I think the conversation ensued talking about teaching a child to drive. But I think this was a really good observation for us to have as parents of how does the dialogue proceed for your child, and how does it proceed for you? So maybe you can explain a little bit more.

Amanda Capps: 00:16:59.627
Absolutely. So an internal dialoger is someone who’s got an internal conversation happening all the time. They’ve always got something running in their mind: the next task on their list, the things that they need to do and get done. But it’s all happening inside. No one else around you is aware of what is going on because you’re internalizing your dialogue. An external dialogue would be the child who never shuts up. They tell you every little detail of every little thing they’re doing, sometimes in a sing-song voice while they’re doing it, or they’re making up a skit, or the music’s on and they just can’t stop moving. I mean, everything about who they are is out there and available for you to see at all times. That is an extra– as they’re doing a task, they’re talking themselves through the steps. If they’re reading a recipe, they’re going down through the ingredients and getting everything out on the counter ahead of time, and they’re talking themselves through the process. So what I realized when it came to teaching a daughter to drive was, wow, she’s sat in the passenger seat a million times. But I don’t know that I’ve ever actually verbalized out loud the steps and what I’m doing in the driving process, what the engagement with the traffic signals and the certain signage and, I mean, just all of that. I don’t think I’ve ever really spoken any of that out loud. It’s just an internal, natural thing that I do. And a friend pointed out, “Hey, you might have more success and she might be more excited about driving if you started making it a point to do a little more of that external dialoguing and bringing her into the experience, even asking questions.” Driving’s a great time to throw out word problems or to have those meaningful conversations and that dialogue with our kids. Because I think a lot of times we assume they know, or we, as wives especially, do this to our husbands. He should be able to read my mind. He should know me. We’ve been married 15 years. Why doesn’t he get this yet? And yet, we have a lot of responsibility to make sure that we’re actually being effective communicators.

Gretchen Roe: 00:19:21.833
Right. And I think that makes a tremendous amount of difference. Tangentially, I think it’s important as parents, if you have more than one child in the home, you’re going to have internal dialogers and external dialogers. And you need to make sure that you’re marrying up the right kind of kids because the external dialogues can drive the internal dialogers absolutely bananas. And so it’s important for you to recognize that. And maybe you need to have a conversation with your internal dialogers so that they can disclose to their externally-oriented siblings what they’re doing. Does that mean I want a play-by-play or a blow-bly-blow? Not at all. But where I have seen conflict arise in my own household is where an internal dialogue or sets up something and starts to do something and another kid comes along and interferes with that. And the intention of the interfere-er, if you will, is not malicious in any way, but it seems that way to the kid who got interfered with. So being able to say, “Okay, guys, I’m working on a project here. Can you guys just leave me alone for a little while?” Being able to set that up in advance can alleviate a lot of anxiety on the part of the more internally focused child, but it can also help you know how to guide and keep somebody in the right place at the right time. Tell me a little bit, Amanda, about how you take your more visual auditory personality and work with your kids who are much more kinesthetic. So how do you adapt in that situation?

Amanda Capps: 00:21:25.432
So honestly, that’s just where I have had to take the time to teach myself. That’s one of the reasons I love, in particular, our Math-U-See curriculum because we’re given tools for every learning modality. It’s very multi-sensory in that we’re trying to hit as many of those senses in our process of learning a new concept as we possibly can. I mean, I think the only one that we don’t encompass is taste. [laughter] I mean, literally. So that is where, with that being my not natural way that I would present a concept or work with a math problem, the videos and the step-by-step and seeing that modeled has been invaluable. I look for curriculums that have that element of support for me to help me be more effective in how I teach concepts and so that I can make sure that I’m putting as many senses into the learning process as possible.

Gretchen Roe: 00:22:35.159
And I think also that it’s important for us to recognize when we’re doing that process to bear in mind that 8 or 10-year-old child, as an example, you got to keep within those learning parameters. Now, when Amanda identified that as your child has an attention span of their age plus two to three minutes, my caveat to that is always, until they hit puberty, and then you need to subtract two to three minutes. So it’s always a really good practice to learn to say to your students, when you’ve asked them to do something, then ask for feedback. What did you hear me ask you to do? Because so often, I have found, in retrospect, unfortunately, that what they heard and what I said were two vastly different things. So being able to help them learn to process correctly what you have said is hugely important. Amanda, I want to turn my attention now to some of the questions we’ve asked. And I have a couple of tips here for this parent who is looking for strategies to help an easily distracted learner. And I know you have some tips as well. So we’re going to start with your ideas, and then we will go go from there.

Amanda Capps: 00:24:04.012
Sure. So I do have some very easily distracted students. They do have diagnosis’s to that extent. And so what I find– and not everybody has this option, but the way that our house is set up is we have a full basement, and in the basement is where our classroom is. And then we also have our main dining room, which also has a huge table, obviously, if there are 10 of us. And so I have the ability to have two separate learning areas, which is invaluable when I am working with my son in particular. He tends to be my kiddo who he’s so worried about everything that’s going on around him that he’s not able to focus and pay attention to what’s right in front of him. And so I have learned with him in particular, we have to keep it a closed environment. If people are coming in and out, if stuff’s going on in the background, if there’s a radio on, if there’s something on the television in the room next door, he’s not going to engage. He’s not going to be with me. He’s going to be too distracted. So for him specifically, I make sure I’ve got a quiet and focused learning environment.

Amanda Capps: 00:25:23.492
My daughter, who is a DD, literally can’t focus without something going on in the environment. So for her a lot of times, unless it’s something that I actually need to physically be talking to her or engaging with her in, she does headphones, and most often has some sort of classical music or music that doesn’t have any lyrics to it piping through the headphones because that actually helps her maintain her focus– and my husband is the same way. He does the same thing. Or if they’re reading– because dyslexia is an issue for my son, he needs to read out loud to be able to process and hear it back just very similar to the way that your son did. But with my daughter, she needs to hear it coming in her ears, and she’s following along in a book with her finger and with her eyes. And so you’re just, again, learning, okay, this is what works for this kid, and you’re not trying to do everybody the same and causing a bunch of headaches.

Gretchen Roe: 00:26:29.972
Sure. One of the things that I learned here just in the last two years with having attention deficit myself, if I want to have really focused time, I actually put in earbuds that are noise canceling. So I take all the noise out of my environment, including the fan on my computer and all of those things, and I’ll stay much more focused for a longer period of time. And that is a little bit of trial and error because as you have described two wildly different kids, so are our listeners’ children very different, so they need to be able to engage each child as that child sees fit. Now, you mentioned earlier that external processor who’s going to talk through everything, and I wanted to give parents a tip to be able to rein that constancy in. I had one of those children, and she was the one who loved to distract the learning day by asking questions. And she would ask questions that were wildly afield of whatever we were trying to do collectively together as a family. So I learned very early when she was in about first grade to put five poker chips down by her plate in the morning. And she got to take those poker chips with her, and every time she asked a question, she had to surrender a poker chip, and when she was out of poker chips, then she was also out of available question asking until I returned more poker chips to her. And so that is a way to keep a distracting child from distracting what you might be doing in a group environment, like a reading assignment, or a history assignment, or a geography assignment. The other thing that is sometimes difficult, particularly with children who are easily distracted, is time management skills are just non-existent. They don’t know how long something takes. So they don’t know how long it’s going to last. And they keep thinking they’re there forever. We laughingly call it Stephen Hawking’s theory of time expansion. That time slows down. And so we have a colleague, Michael, who has a son who has that distractibility. And one of the things that Michael has done is he’ll say, “Bud, I need 10 minutes of your attention.” And he’s done this from the time his son was about five. He’ll take five Duplos and set them right on the desk in front of his son. And every two minutes, he takes away a Duplo. And that allows his son to stay engaged in the process for that 10 minutes because he can see the timer counting down without being distracted of having to look at the timer itself and calculate, “Okay, how much more time do I have to stick with this?” So to speak. So I think that those are some valuable practical tips that you can use regardless of a child’s learning preference to be able to adapt in their environment to keep them focused. Amanda, what other tips do you have? Because I know you have some good ones.

Amanda Capps: 00:29:49.458
Absolutely. I think a lot of times we especially get questions from moms of larger families, and they’re like, “Ugh. How do you spread yourself amongst as many students as you have? How do you keep toddlers from destroying the house while you’re trying to engage in a subject with an older child?” And so there are some very practical things that you can do to set your day up for success that require a little bit of foresight and planning on mom’s part. One of those things is we always instituted a quiet time. So there is a time period of the day where everyone is assigned reading or playing quietly with Legos, or if they’re still in the napping phase, they are taking a nap. That can be a great time to take an older child where you really need some focused time with a specific subject and say, “Okay.” Literally, the rule is unless someone is dying or bleeding, we don’t get interrupted. You don’t come out of your room. They can stay on their bed. They can sit in a chair. They can lay on the floor with a blanket. I mean, you don’t have to be super uber strict about it, but it’s like, “Okay, this is your free reading time. You’re going to give me 30 minutes or 45 minutes,” or however you want to set it up time-length-wise, but that is invaluable. The other thing that is great is if you have little ones that you really can’t have out of eyesight, because then terrible things happen. [laughter] We’ve all had that experience.

Gretchen Roe: 00:31:31.440
Yap.

Amanda Capps: 00:31:32.524
Enough said. But they have busy boxes. So these are boxes that have specific toys, specific things in them, and they are only allowed to play with these during specific times of the day when I’m trying to do certain subjects. And one of the other things that really has made a huge difference for us is I keep all ages on the same history, the same geography. And so I make it more difficult and much more engaged and involved for my older kids. I keep it middle of the road for my middles, and I keep it super, super fun and engaging and short for my littles. But they’re all learning the same thing. So I’m not having to spread myself out. And I’m doing American history here and world history here, and we’re doing Asia with this group and Africa with this group, and America. So you can do yourself a lot of favors by not trying to overwhelm yourself with too many things going on, doing too many things within one subject. The other thing too is you can really count so much more for school than you think you can. If they are cooking, and they are, in our case, always doubling, tripling, or quadrupling a recipe, that’s math. It’s also budgeting. How much did this– how much did this cost us if eggs cost this much and butter costs this much. You can make anything math-related or economics-related. I mean, you would just be amazed at the everyday routine, mundane tasks. Perfect example. My son literally the other day, just out of the blue, he goes, “Do you realize that we have 100 toes and fingers in this house if everyone’s home?” And I’m like, “Well, you’re totally right.” And that’s phenomenal and kind of weird to think about. And that makes sense why my windows and my baseboards are always dirty and covered in fingerprints. Thank you, son. I really appreciate that observation. [laughter] So I mean, sometimes they just come up with things on their own, and then you can flip that around and turn it into, “Okay, well, how would you set that up as a word problem? How would you set that up as an equation?” And there you go.

Gretchen Roe: 00:34:01.841
Well, I want to circle back to what you said about taking history and geography and taking the same materials and adapting them. Here, you can also take the child who has an auditory learning preference, the child who appreciates something being read out loud, and they can be your reader as long as they are comfortable in that process. And sometimes, as a parent, we need to come alongside them and help them become comfortable in that process. I remember with my dyslexic son, once he had cracked the code of reading, which was not until he was about nine and a half, I panicked because there was the requirement for him to read a paragraph out loud at Boy Scouts. And he’s my auditory learner, but I thought, “Oh, my gosh, have a dyslexic read out loud in a public sphere.” So what we did is the two of us practiced all by ourselves until he was comfortable in that process. And sometimes that takes a little bit of rehearsal. Sometimes it takes a little bit of time. And as a parent, if you know their learning preference, you can speak to that and make them more comfortable in the process. Long story short, by the time he got to the point when he was called on to read out loud in Boy Scouts, it was no harm, no foul, no big deal. And I think I had a lot more anxiety about it than he did. So it was wonderful to be able to see that be successful. Amanda, we’ve had a question about how do you identify a learning preference. And we’ve talked a little bit about that, but I want to circle back to this again because I think this is something that sometimes parents miss things. So in that identification process, what do you look for in your children when you’re trying to determine their preference? Because I’ve already told you I’ve gotten it wrong a couple of times, so.

Amanda Capps: 00:36:08.295
[laughter] Sure. So in a kinesthetic learner, I mean, they’re the kid that’s going to be– they have to be doing something with their hands in order to engage any other sense. So typically, that means if I’m reading history aloud, they’re coloring, or they are building with Legos, or they are doing a puzzle. And sometimes I think parents are like, “Oh, gosh. No. We can’t do any of that. They’re not learning. They’re not listening. They’re not paying attention.” And yet, for some kids, it is critical for them to have something to occupy their hands. They make things for chairs where they can swing their legs, and there are fidget spinners, and there are things. But yes, if you have a kid– [laughter] because I was pregnant so much, we always had a weighted exercise ball. And so sometimes just literally sitting there and bouncing up and down on that in a rhythm, I mean, that would just engage that kinesthetic learner. In math, they want to be touching things. They want to be making tally marks. They want to be– they want to be with pennies or– so it’s not that we want to encourage them to stay with something like that and count because that’s not the goal and that doesn’t show mastery, but it does clue us into the fact that they need something to manipulate something in their hands, something to touch in order to engage their brain. A kiddo that is auditory, they’re going to ask you to repeat yourselves more than once, maybe, or they’re going to– like I said, they need that blocking everything else out because all the sounds and all the noises are coming in. That’s a really good way to say that a visual learner, I mean, they need to see a list written out. They need to take notes. They are visual spellers. They’re the ones that have to write it out, and they can see it and tell you, “Oh, that’s spelled correctly.” But if you just try to get them to do it verbally or off-the-cuff, they’re going to struggle or flounder. And you’re going to be like, “Well, you know this word.” But they’re that kid that– and I’m that way very much. I’ve got to be able to write it down. I can tell you if a word is spelled correctly if I can see it. That’s just how I’m wired.

Gretchen Roe: 00:38:29.243
I think it’s important as parents for us to recognize that those preferences shift a little bit as the environment shifts. And I found it really interesting when you were talking about your auditory learner who is not the one who is wearing headphones. It’s your kinesthetic learner who is wearing headphones so that she can remain focused. In my household, my auditory learner was the one who wore headphones because he was distracted by everything else that everyone was doing in the environment. So he wore headphones to block that information out. And I think that makes a difference for kids. As a parent, it really is a formula. You’ve got to figure out what the formula is. And the only thing I can promise you and guarantee is whatever formula you figure out for kid number one, you get to try something different with kid number two because it won’t be the same formula. Let’s see. Here’s a wonderful question. Gain some insight on other ways of teaching to cater to their learning styles. So I think you do a terrific job about this. You’ve touched on it already about what counts as school. How can I take a child child who’s very kinesthetic in their academic experience or their desires and learn something as mundane as history? And I’m kind of setting you up because I know–

Amanda Capps: 00:40:15.813
Not at all.

Gretchen Roe: 00:40:16.891
–to do this on the reg as far as bringing history to life. So can you explain how that works in your family?

Amanda Capps: 00:40:25.051
So history was my passion. It was my favorite subject growing up. And so the way you make history kinesthetic is you take it out of the book. So we live in northwest Arkansas, which is a perfect area to go to Civil War reenactments and to go to– so get into a museum, look for opportunities and field trip type situations where you’re talking with a living history person, and they’re in their persona, and they’re acting out a story, a real historical figure. And I mean, and they’ve got the gun and the costuming and the food and the– I remember one such experience, I was able to take a, it was called the candlelight tour of Fort Gibson. And what they did was they set up different vignettes of Civil War life. There was a going away party. There was a hospital scene. There was a battle scene. There was one where soldiers were putting down their arms and sharing, a cigarette and talking about their families, just different things like that. And I still remember to this day that hospital scene because I had done so much reading about this particular period in history. It was like the only thing that was missing was the smell. If they could have come up with the smell, I would have literally been like, [gagging sound] because it was just– it was so realistic, and it was so well done. Obviously, make sure you’re paying attention to age-appropriate type events for your kids because some children who are quite younger would probably find something like that very scary. But older kids would be super engaged. One of the things I got to do was learn Civil War dances. We learned about why they dressed the way that they did, the customs and the manners of the time. I mean, there’s so much that you can do. We did the same thing for Renaissance. We went to a Renaissance Festival. There are all kinds of incredible opportunities out there to take history out of a book, off the page, make it real, and make it something that really engages your student.

Gretchen Roe: 00:42:43.612
Right. And I think that that’s an important thing to recognize is that academics are not always paper and pen, to be able to recognize when you can change the environment and make that an advantageous change. Toward that end, though, there are times where we just need to gut it out and get it done. And you’re going to have children whose preferences are not what you’re going to ask them to do. So Amanda, how do you incentivize those times where the preferences can’t be applied, and they just have to learn something?

Amanda Capps: 00:43:25.255
So the biggest thing that comes to mind right off the top of my head when it comes to that type of a situation is learning our facts, our math facts: addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. I mean, almost everybody that I know can literally feel the anxiety build in their chest when you think about, “ooh, facts” and learning and rote memory and memorization. And for some kids, that comes very naturally. And for some kids, it’s a real struggle. And it’s really a lot of work to get and they may not even get full proficiency. They may not get 100% of their facts down. And that’s okay because even a 25%, 40%, 75% is better than zero. So the way I set the bar is anything above zero is good. We’re making progress. We’re moving forward. So incentivization is fine. We actually did prizes. So I knew how my kids were wired. I knew what would appeal to them. For one kid, it was earning screen time. However many minutes they would engage and work on facts, they would earn an equivalent amount of screen time you to play with their game console or whatever that may be. For another child, it was something dessert. She wanted to go out for ice cream. And I was like, “Okay, we can do that.” So we did kind of smaller prizes for the individual, addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, that culminated in a big prize when we got everything done or as close to mastered as I felt that child could. And that worked really, really well. We do the same thing when we potty train for crying out loud. I mean, here, have a jelly bean, have an M&M every time you successfully go to the bathroom. We do the same thing with our older kids. Sometimes when it’s those, “Hey, we just got to do this,” and it’s not anybody’s favorite, but it’s got to get done.

Gretchen Roe: 00:45:32.331
Right. I often say laundry is my least favorite thing, but I’m too cold-natured to live in a nudist colony. So laundry has to get done. And sometimes we have to teach our kids that not every element of school is fun. And that’s a hard lesson. It really is. The discipline of staying engaged to the completion of the task, and then they can find something more enjoyable to do, I think it makes a tremendous amount of difference. I’m looking at our notes from our conversation before– when we were preparing and talking about visual learners who may live in pictures and stories, but it can’t be both at the same time. So taking that visual learner and having them learn to adapt themselves in an environment. Since we’re both visual learners, for me, my visual learning takes the form of copious note-taking. How does your visual learning manifest itself when you’re trying to learn something new?

Amanda Capps: 00:46:48.545
So I’m always looking for the details. So a lot of times when you’re a visual learner, there’s a lot coming at you. And 9 times out of 10, you’ve probably got something auditory coming at you. Maybe you have a presentation with slides or something, or someone sharing a screen, you’re in a meeting, that type of a thing. So that’s going on. So I’m always trying to go, “Okay, what are the bullet points? What are the things that are jumping out at me that are like, I know this is something I need to remember.” And then yes, I’m typically writing it down or– that’s one of the things that’s so great these days with technology. Most everybody has one of these and we look at them as sometimes a negative because they do take our time. But on the other hand, if you’ve got a dyslexic and they know their memory isn’t what it should be, giving them the ability to take an iPad or an iPhone and record a voice memo or put something in with our lifestyle, we have a calendar that anything and everything has to go on so that we know where we’re supposed to be at what time and who’s supposed to be there. Because if we don’t get that synced up and that communication happening, something’s going to get forgotten, someone’s not going to get picked up when they need to be, those types of things. The other thing that I would just encourage families, and it’s so important is I think sometimes one of the things that social media does to our current homeschool environment that homeschoolers at times past didn’t have to contend with is we’re seeing everyone’s highlight reel. We’re seeing all of the things. They’re doing this activity, they’re going here, they’re doing this and don’t spread yourself thin. Really take a look at your life, look at what really has to be accomplished, and then those are the big rocks in the jar, and then filter the sand in, but be very discriminating about what those things are. I’ve had children who have tried to guilt-trip me into, “Oh, well, I didn’t get to do this.” Or, “I didn’t get to do that.” And I would have been the star, a star gymnast or this or that or anything else. And sometimes I just have to have that conversation and say, “Look, there are multiple things going on with this decision to not do this activity.” It may be financial. It may be a time constraint. There is nothing wrong with telling your kids no. There is nothing wrong with saying, “I’m sorry, we just can’t do that.” Because again, it’s another opportunity to go, “We’re a family.” There are multiple people and this has to benefit everyone in the environment. We can’t make unrealistic and unreasonable sacrifices for one person. We have to do what’s best for the greater good, the common good. And those are all conversations and character-building opportunities with our kids.

Gretchen Roe: 00:50:13.951
So circling back as far as what you said when you are a visual learner, being able to encapsulate the context of what you’re learning, when you’re an auditory learner, being able to make auditory notes for yourself, be able to play those back and go, “Oh, yes.” To learn with an auditory learner, to be able to say, what did you hear from this? How did you hear this occur? An interesting thing that I learned from a neurodevelopmentalist several years ago, if you’re trying to figure out your kid’s learning style, ask them something and listen for if they say, “Oh, I hear you.” Or, “Oh, I see what you mean.” Do you see the difference there? They’re defining their learning style for you, which is really tremendously helpful. When you have a kinesthetic learner, I have said this for years that the greatest gift my kids ever received, my kinesthetic learners, was a trampoline because there was more learning that occurred in that trampoline than anything you’ve ever seen. And I was listening recently to a recording of a presentation that I did in California last year. We were talking about learning the state capitals. And for some crazy reason, my adult kids were standing around last May and something came up about the state capital of California. And one of my kids hopped like this and said Sacramento. So that kinesthetic element, when you can combine that, particularly for your kinesthetic learners, it sticks hard and long. And I think that us being able to ascertain how to make that happen for our kids is amazing.

Gretchen Roe: 00:52:13.880
Amanda, we’re also at the top of the hour and I had so many other things that I wanted to talk about, but we’re running out of time. So can you have a brief conversation with our families about how learning styles and love languages go together? And this could really be a whole presentation in and of itself, but I know that you speak well of this, so.

Amanda Capps: 00:52:39.557
Absolutely. So we have learning styles. Visual, auditory, kinesthetic, those things are going on. But a lot of times those dovetail into love languages. Your kinesthetic learner is probably going to be really your touch kid. They’re going to be the ones that receive love because you are hugging them or touching them and really connected physically to them somehow. So that learning process is going to be better if they’re sitting next to you versus across the table. Or you’re holding their hand while you’re having the discussion. Something like that would be a real easy way to kind of get a twofer, so to speak. You’re satisfying a learning, but you’re also satisfying a connection and a love language as well. Acts of service, quality time. Quality time is a huge one. Sometimes that’s your auditory learner, sometimes that’s your visual learner. Again, this is an opportunity to be an ardent observer. Your auditory learners, a lot of times, words of affirmation are going to be huge to them. They need to hear validation. They need to know that you are proud of them and that you appreciate the effort that they are putting into their educational journey. So those are all ways to incorporate those in. Your quality timers, they don’t necessarily need you to do anything for them, they just need you to be there. So sometimes just being in the same room– I could be washing dishes, but they’re sitting at the dining room table and my presence is there. That’s enough. That’s all they need. So gifts is another one. That one’s a little harder to put with a learning style, but I think sometimes that can be a kinesthetic learner. That can sometimes be a visual learner. That is one that is like you just want to know somebody recognizes and appreciates. Going out of their way, “Oh. I saw this and it made me think of you.” Or you bring them their favorite drink, or you bring them– or you make their favorite dessert or their favorite meal. I mean, those are the types of things. It doesn’t have to be expensive, it doesn’t have to be elaborate. Little things that just connect you with your kids. Because, let’s be real, the reason we’re homeschooling is we wanted to spend time with our children and we wanted to develop character and we wanted to give them an education. And we wanted that to be our responsibility. And we wanted to take that on ourselves. And so these are all really effective ways to mold them into the amazing people that they’re going to be.

Gretchen Roe: 00:55:41.625
Right. One of the things that my visual learners have appreciated so much over the years is notes of affirmation. So it’s really easy as a parent to say, “Hey. You didn’t pick up your room,” and, “Hey. You didn’t empty the dishwasher,” and, “When you clean up the kitchen, I expect you to also wipe the counters off,” and those kinds of things. But if you can write them a note every once in a while to say, “I noticed the other day when your sister was feeling down that you just sat down on the sofa and picked up a book and read to her. And I want you to know how much I appreciate that.” It doesn’t have to be War and Peace. It can just be a little note. But those visual learners will read those notes over and over again. And you’ll find that that’s a great way to fill their cup. Amanda, we’ve gotten to the top of the hour, and it went really fast. I don’t know how we did that, but it always seems to go too fast when we have the opportunity to talk. What closing words would you have for our parents today?

Amanda Capps: 00:56:46.115
I guess the closing that I would say is, this isn’t something to add one more thing to your plate. This is just something in our years of parenting, in our own journey to come alongside of our kids, that we have just seen really beautiful fruit. And so our encouragement would be, don’t beat yourself up. Don’t go, “Oh, I haven’t even been paying attention to this because I’ve been so overwhelmed.” I mean, there are definitely going to be seasons of your life that applying and looking for these types of things is going to be easier than others. If you are in the middle of just having had a baby and you are not getting to sleep through the night and you are trying to establish breastfeeding or bottle feeding or just whatever is going on, what I would encourage you is there are certain times in a woman’s life, in a mother’s life, in a dad’s life where you need to give yourself some grace. You need to go, “Okay, I just can’t fit this on my plate right now.”

Amanda Capps: 00:57:53.347
And then don’t let the condemnation, don’t let the guilt, don’t let that stuff creep in and poison that beautiful time because you’re not going to get that time again with that child in that season. And you can really bring your kids alongside and have them really have a beautiful experience if you’re looking at it as that opportunity, which I know sometimes it’s hard to do [laughter] during those mundane tasks. Laundry isn’t my favorite either, Gretchen. [laughter] It’s just not. But it’s one of those things that we’ve got to do. And so sometimes it’s fun to put on an audiobook and, “You fold the towels. I’m going to match the socks. You sort the clothes. You put them on hangers.” And you get everybody involved and engaged. And then, pretty soon, we all know many hands make light the work, right? And nobody likes to work alone, typically. There are people – I get it; I’m one of them – who sometimes just likes to focus on a task and get it done and not have anyone interrupt me. But there are really amazing opportunities in those mundane tasks to really have some wonderful time together and make some beautiful memories.

Gretchen Roe: 00:59:05.451
Absolutely. Amanda, thank you so much for your time today. Your wisdom is profound. And I hope parents have found merit in the conversation that we’ve had today. It was liberating and empowering for me to learn my kids’ learning preferences and then to be able to help them adapt to their environment. And I think that makes a tremendous amount of difference for parents as we go through the homeschooling journey. I want you all to be encouraged that we appreciate you. We’re so glad that you join us for these conversations because the conversations have merit because you’re here. This is Gretchen Roe for The Demme Learning Show. Thanks for joining us. You can access the show notes and watch a recording at DemmeLearning.com/Show or go on our YouTube channel. Be sure to rate, review, follow, or subscribe wherever you may be hearing this, especially if you really enjoyed it.

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