Photo by majortk
Are you homeschooling a kinesthetic child who needs help focusing during activities that require concentration?
Your kinesthetic child's performance might not improve by incorporating movement before doing activities that involve sitting for long periods of time. In this case, being able to fidget while doing an activity or listening might help your child to focus better.
Have you ever seen "Akeela and the Bee"? Akeela used movement (jumping rope) to help her remember the spelling of words. Like Akeela did, you can incorporate movement during your child's learning activities.
• Let your child squeeze a "koosh ball", a "hacky sac", or a stress ball.
• Let your child chew gum such as "Bazooka" (it offers a lot of resistance).
• Have your child sit in a rocking chair or on an exercise ball while doing work or listening, or let your child stand up while doing work.
• Let your child doodle or color while you read aloud.
• Try to incorporate some kind of movement task into the work. For example,
- Toss a ball back and forth while reciting math facts or something else that needs to be memorized.
- Make cookies in the shape of the different states, and use them to construct a map of the United States.
- Have your child act out a story or use puppets before trying to write it down.
- Organize a scavenger hunt to find examples of things that are the same color, shape, length, sound, etc.
Colleen Felz is the Homeschooling Coach. Read her blog, Homeschooling Coach, for tips & curriculum ideas as well as stories about the joys & trials of home education. You can also read about her experiences as a mother on her blog, Living as a mom.
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In the game Odds and Evens
Two players.
One chooses to be the odd winner.
The other is the even winner.
At the same time they show some fingers.
If the number of fingers is even the first person wins.
If the number of fingers is odd the second person wins.
This is a wonderful kinesthetic game for helping children to understand the concept of odd and even numbers and the algebraic rule that two even numbers make an even answer and the an odd and an even make an odd number.
Oh-my-goodness I love these ideas and want to try them out right away! I've always thought about getting my daughter an inflatable seat cushion or something to sit on and wiggle while doing seatwork. But I never have and I have the hardest time getting her to sit and do work. She acts out instead. I very much like the idea of tossing a ball or jumping rope while learning facts. Thank you so much!
We have a "swing room" in our basement- really it's just hooks installed in the floor joists. My son's recent favorite homeschool activity is to bounce on a stretchy swing while passing back and forth an inflatable globe and finding new countries.
For Christmas, we got two new inflatable balls- one for addition and problem solving and one for multiplication and problem solving. He can do an hour of passing back and forth as long as he gets to bounce while we do it.
I've commented here before and I reference you a lot on my Mom is Teaching blog, so I thought I would throw in something on this post as well.
My degree is in physical education. And, if P.E. teachers across America were handling P.E. like they were taught (or should have been taught) in college, the public school P.E. class that has been shortened to 30 little minutes would be so much more beneficial.
Things I've done in the past…
1. Do sit ups and instead of counting 1, 2, 3 – I say 2 x 2 is and they do a sit and say 4, 2 X 3 is and the do the next one…..so on
3. I had huge posters with names of states on one side of gym and capitals on the other…..my classes that did this were separated boys and girls. The girls would do a jumping jack, a push-up or whatever and they would say, Alabama and the boys would do theirs by answering Montgomery, and son on
4. Take the spelling words from the grade levels and do the warm up exercises to the spelling words.
Then much the same during the cool down period. BAsically, with the sad state of affairs, 7 to 10 min in the beginning to warm up, 15 min or so to do game/stations/etc and then a few min to cool off using the same tactics above, this time using the multiplication facts to stretch.
They stretch out and answer math facts, history facts or whatever and then I say switch, they switch to the other leg, other side, etc and we do the same thing….
So, that's my 2 cents worth. Problem is, P.E. teachers basically don't do their job anymore….sad sad sad.