visual learning style

This is the best excuse for taking lots of videos of kids–to help both their memory skills and readiness for kindergarten. Memory, like other thinking skills, is something that develops as kids grow and develop. Memory grows by using it. This is where a video, either camera or phone, can help.

Take short videos of your child, maybe at the park, playground, building with blocks, coloring, a playdate with a friend, visiting at someone’s house, or going to the zoo. When there’s an appropriate quiet time, have your child watch that video and talk about it together. What is happening, where is it, who are the other people there, etc. Does your child remember that event or activity? What else does your child remember about it that is not on the video? Not only does this challenge the remembering skills it helps with visualizing. After all, when we visualize something we are creating our own movies in our minds. Visualizing is an important skill for kindergarten readiness and learning to read.

As a bonus, short videos of fun times can be shown to your little ones when you have to wait somewhere and keep them on a chair or lap. They work in airports, the dentist’s office and waiting for your order at a restaurant! Do you have one to share?

This week one of the grocery stores had a 2 for 1 sale flyer. In less than 2 minutes I made sure it was quite useless for anyone else in the family to read because I cut it up. I made a Matching Pairs game to use for a kindergarten readiness memory activity.

Did you ever play the card game called Concentration or Memory where you have to turn over the cards and match up pairs? Even quite young children beat me at that game and I’m convinced there’s a great deal of luck involved, not just memory. These days there’s on-line and I-pad versions with lots of different objects for kids, but this picture shows a low-tech one that has the advantage of low-cost, too. It’s still fun to play, especially when the kids beat the grown-ups. (I have the 1 lone matching pair, a 3-year old has the other 3 and that was just my turn that didn’t match. Sigh.)

If you haven’t played, the idea is to use pairs of cards that are the same and place them face down in a group. Each person takes a turn to flip over 2 cards. If the cards do not match they get flipped back upside down. If the cards do show the matching pair, that person takes the cards away (counting 1 point) and the next person has a turn. 3 or 4 picture-pairs are good to start with; 5 or 6 pairs add more challenge. After all the pairs are matched, turn the cards over, mix them all up and play again.

Besides being a great way to exercise visual memory, kids also practice some social skills such as taking turns and following simple rules. There’s counting and lots of language involved, too. These are all important for readiness for kindergarten development. Two kids can play together or even one child alone can find the pairs. Who gets more in your house?