Types of Intelligences

One idea I strongly believe is that when parents understand why teachers do activities in the classroom, everyone involved is happier.

Explaining the "secrets" behind teaching and lesson planning has always been one of my goals with this blog - to encourage parents to teach and to create a bridge from the classroom to the home.

Lots of my writings on this blog deal with ways for parents to incorporate the eight intelligences into their children's lives. Completing a variety of activities with young children helps parents understand how their children learn, which then leads to parents helping their children more successfully with school work, and parents having confidence to speak to teachers concerning their child's strengths.

One idea I always stress is that parents should not pigeonhole their children into an intelligence. For instance, parents may want a little engineer. Working with math skills is fabulous, but only doing math skills may backfire. Work with your child in a variety of ways.

My mathematical-logical oriented child, camping and fishing.

Additionally, children will build connections between the intelligences parents won't see. A child presented with many learning opportunities (not necessarily costly ones!) will learn in different ways - an important part of life.

Teachers know this. A large portion of a teaching training program is studying different ways that children learn, and how to incorporate those ways into a classroom.

That is why your child may not care for every assignment. A teacher may assign work that you and your child groan over. It was hopefully assigned with a purpose, hopefully to teach a concept a different way, to hit different kinds of learners.

For instance, Ty would rather read a nonfiction book than a fictional book. He does not thrive on imaginative play like Za does.

This is rare for Ty to play pretend.

His teacher does assign him creative writing and drawing projects. He needs to develop those skills, and for other students, those projects are addressing their strong suites.

What I can do as a parent is to support his teacher, and encourage him to do these assignments well. Ty takes no probing to finish math homework, but he does draw out writing projects.

I understand that he has a preference, but it is detrimental for a child's parents to explain away an assignment or belittle the teacher.

Aside from building a skill he may not voluntarily concentrate on, he is learning that a part of any job requires completing assignments you may not love. (Ever have a job where you loved every bit of your assigned duties? I have not).

What do you think? Do you work to incorporate all intelligences in your child's life? Do you see this in your child's school work?