{Guest Post} Book Tour – A Parent’s Playbook for Learning

Today, I have Jill here to guest post for us!  Jill has just published a book… how cool is that?!  Jill has all kinds of parenting know-how and that’s what her book is about.  Learning styles and how to help your kids learn to their best potential.  So, without further ado… 

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A Parent’s Playbook for Learning – Virtual Book Tour

As a longtime Facebook fan of WhileHeWasNapping, I was thrilled when Krista asked me to write a tutorial for a WHWN stop on my virtual book tour. Even though Monkey and Gator are still wee ones, as moms and dads, we start to see personality type shape the ways in which our kids interact with the world very early on. My daughter’s extraverted nature and my son’s introverted disposition both became apparent to me before their first birthdays…and got further cemented by age two. In personality type realms, though, introverted and extraverted don’t mean “shy” or “outgoing”…it’s how someone recharges his batteries. My daughter gets her energy from people and finds alone time draining. This is the opposite of my son, who seeks out time by himself after a long day. Both kids have their shy and outgoing moments and are learning to both quiet themselves when it’s appropriate and speak up in groups, but what they each find draining or energizing remains constant. It’s generally accepted in personality type circles that a preference for extraversion or introversion is apparent by age two.

Determining whether your child is an extravert or introvert is what forms my first tip for personality type and learning. 

If your child gets energy from interaction and discussion, embrace this preference when learning and allow her to think out loud as much as possible. When kids are young, this may mean answering a string of “why” questions with answers and a new question in the same vein in order to create a lively discussion. It may mean learning to read by going for a walk with words on cards and having her point the words out in the world rather than reading books all the time. (E.g. C-A-T, S-K-Y, G-R-A-S-S, C-A-R.) You can also use this technique to build phonemic awareness and have your child break apart a word into parts when they see one. (E.g. “There’s a T-R-EE!” or “I see a B-I-R-D, Mom.”)

If your child gets energy from alone time, then he will have more of a reflect->discuss->reflect learning progression. When teaching your child to read, allow him to look at a page first and wait a few beats before encouraging him to read it aloud. This will give him an opportunity to reflect on the contextual cues in a picture and attempt to sound out the words on the page silently before trying it out loud. Or, use index cards with capital and lower case letters and have him match them up or find match up blends that make the same sound like “ea” and “ee.”

The next piece of the personality type puzzle generally becomes clear before your child’s fourth birthday—whether your child is a tortoise or a hare. Tortoises are called “Judgers” in personality type circles and this isn’t because they are judgmental. It’s because they find pleasure and comfort in a slow-and-steady-wins the race routine to life. Hares are called “Perceivers” in personality type circles and tend to enjoy more spontaneity and adaptability within family schedules. 

My second learning tip comes from determining whether your child is more of a tortoise or a hare.

If your child is more of a tortoise, then it’s a good idea to teach him to have a list of things to do and prioritize it by what can be done quickly first and what will take longest last. If there’s a task on the to-do list that will take several days to complete, encourage him to think about how he could break up that task into smaller chunks and move toward his goal each day. Judgers tend to feel overwhelmed much more often than perceivers, so focus on what’s been accomplished so far versus what lies ahead. For instance, when learning to read, post sight words he has learned as he learns them on a kudos board rather than showing how many he still has left to learn.

Hares are the opposite. If your child is more of a hare, she gets energized by deadlines. For perceivers, it’s important to help them learn to prioritize to-do lists by what will take longest first and what can be done quickly last and give a time of day that everything needs to be completed. In this way, your hare will be incentivized to keep moving toward the finish line with ten items on her list rather than crossing off eight quickly and feeling like the last two will be a snap, too. Unlike tortoises, when learning to read, hares will do better by seeing ALL the sight words and phonemics she needs to learn along with a goal date for completion. Use star stickers with a date to indicate when a word or sound blend has been learned to not only show everything she’s learned so far, but how much she has left to learn by a certain date. If you want to take this a step further (since hares need to be coached into better time management skills) you can talk with her about how long it took her to learn the last 5 sight words, then make a guess at how long it will take her to learn the next 5. Encourage her to see if she can “beat that time.” In this way, you reinforce better time management before her first day of Kindergarten.

I hope you’ve found these tips to be helpful as you prepare your kids for their school experiences! If you do find them to be useful, I hope you’ll consider taking a look I hope you’ll consider downloading my book—A Parent’s Playbook for Learning. (You can also just ask for it at your local bookstore and check it out before you decide to buy it!) It truly is the best of the research-backed information I’ve spent thousands of hours reading, comparing, and verifying validity across multiple sources before putting into the book. I hope the techniques and strategies will have the same effect on your household that it has on mine:

1) an awareness in your kids that not everyone learns best in the same ways and 

2) a greater understanding of how they each are uniquely wired to learn best that they can apply to their school experiences from Kindergarten through college and beyond.