Teach your children to master their memory

A few months ago, we sent out a newsletter featuring numerous tips on how to improve your memory, and we received overwhelming feedback from our readers who wanted to find out more.

This is why today’s blog topic is memory. Many scientific articles and books have been written on the subject. By now, it’s general knowledge that you should:
· eat more salmon (rich in Omega 3),
· exercise your brain (if you don’t use it, you lose it),
· think positive (tell yourself that you will remember, and you will),
· use mnemonic techniques (acronyms, method of loci, etc.)

(If you’d like more information about any of the mnemonic methods, please
contact us at Creative Learning on http://www.creativelearningcentre.com/default.asp?page=contact.)

What’s truly amazing, however, is that so little attention is given to one of the most important aspects of memorising anything from faces and names to important dates: namely, your Learning Style.

Your children’s Learning Style is responsible for the way they learn and memorise best. Your children have their own preferred style of taking in information and then recalling it later.

Just like you may need to put a bit of cheese on the vegetables for your children to eat it, you may need to present information to their brain in a certain preferred way in order for them to respond.

In other words, if your children are visual, they will learn best by using colour coding, pictures and diagrams. Use plenty of sound with auditory children. If your children are not auditory, however, making up rhymes or chants like “In fourteen hundred and ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue” is not going to help them very much.

What do you do when your children are tactile? Or kinesthetic? Do you know what kind of environment stimulates their memory best?

We at Creative Learning recognise the important role that the learning style plays when it comes to remembering things. That is why the multiple page report that you get from us with every Style Assessment contains many useful tips about memory techniques that work best for your unique child.

Please visit us at www.creativelearningcentre.com and get a Learning Style Analysis (LSA) for your children. It’ll be their first step on the road to success.

Your children can get straight "A"s in school.

Simply let their brains work FOR them, not AGAINST them.

When communications break down in your relationship

Have you ever looked at your spouse or romantic partner and wondered why the person who’s so close to you, can also FAIL TO UNDERSTAND YOU so completely? Why he didn’t hang up the washing even though you TOLD HIM twice? Why she can never stick to the shopping list and why she always has to switch on the radio the minute she walks into the room?

There are times in every relationship when communication channels seem clogged up. Nothing you say penetrates. Your good intentions get misinterpreted. You hate the way he or she hangs up the toilet paper roll and you are beginning to wonder what on earth you saw in each other in the first place.

That’s when it’s time to stop, take a deep breath and learn to talk to your partner all over again in three easy steps. It’s easier than you think, because you have a magic tool to help you along the way....

Step 1:
Take out a piece of paper and write down one thing that you used to like about your partner when you first became an item.... Was that easy? I hope so! Because now you will write one thing that you like about your partner AT PRESENT. It could be his blue eyes, or his honesty, or the fact that she brought you a cup of coffee yesterday.

Step 2:
Here is when you bring out the magic tool I mentioned earlier. Learn something new about your partner by checking out his or her Working Style. The Working Style Analysis is available on www.creativelearningcentre.com and it is a treasure chest of information about your partner’s communication style, stress resolution and problem solving approach.

Step 3:
Do your own Working Style Analysis and check how compatible you are and what areas need attention. Do you handle stress the same way? Is one of you a morning lark and the other a night owl? Does she communicate by talking while you have trouble listening? Is he a systematic person who insists that the dishwasher be loaded in a specific way (his way) even though it’s you who’s doing the loading? Find out all that and more on www.creativelearningcentre.com or by clicking directly on http://www.creativelearningcentre.com/products.asp?page=WSACOR.

That’s all you have to do. By drawing strength from your similarities and recognising your differences, you will be able to bridge that communication gap. You might learn to write to-do lists instead of reciting them verbally, or you might come to understand the other person’s need for clicking their knuckles.

Most important of all, you will discover something new and important about your partner. And you might also learn about yourself along the way.

When Your Child Won’t Do Homework

Children, especially right-brained (holistic) children, need to know why they have to do homework. What’s the benefit of doing something at home that you’ve just done in class? How does homework fit into the general scheme of their education? Explain to your children that homework is important to reinforce skills that have been taught at school. It also gives teachers a chance to monitor the students’ progress. If the children allow it, homework can also be a great way to learn to work independently!

Analytic children, on the other hand, aren’t as interested in the big picture. If they refuse to do homework, it’s probably because the task at hand seems to big and they have trouble breaking it into manageable details. Help them organise the work into step-by-step portions and sub-tasks. Create a list of all the things that have to be done that day and let the child tick them off as they go along.

(If you’re not sure whether your child is holistic or analytic, please take the quick test by clicking on www.creativelearningcentre.com and letting your child fill in an LSA questionnaire.)

Bear in mind that you need to set up an appropriate environment and atmosphere for doing homework. There are many elements to consider when setting up your child’s homework area: the lighting, the temperature, time of day, the correct furniture (that is, furniture that is correct for your child, not furniture that the so-called experts say is good for education purposes), music, and so on. Some children like to have their parents close-by, to interact with and to have them check progress; while others prefer to be left alone to get on with their tasks. Children who thrive on variety might like the study area moved or redecorated several times a month, while children who prefer routine need to do homework at the same time of day and in the same spot every day.

Let your child do the LSA to discover exactly what he or she needs when doing homework.

Underachievers: the Misunderstood Students (and their Learning Styles)

The word “underachiever” is often used as a euphemism for a student who is failing, getting poor grades or consistently not doing their homework. The actual definition of an underachiever, however, is “A child whose academic performance is below what one would expect based on age, IQ, achievement test scores and potential.”

I’ve met very bright underachievers who were consistently getting A-scores in subjects they loved and C-scores in the rest. While an A-C report card is a perfectly respectable result for a child who works hard, some A-C students could have easily got straight A-scores had they only applied themselves a little.

So what makes some otherwise bright children underperform at school? Part of the challenge may lie in their Learning Style. It may be that the child’s motivation system is incompatible with that of the school’s, or that the teacher doesn’t recognise the child’s learning style needs. A bright underperformer may also display a preference for non-conformity. In addition, gifted children may deliberately choose to underperform in order to fit in with their social group.

Creative Learning’s new tool, Learning Style Analysis (LSA) Junior MINI, provides a quick and easy way to assess a student’s Learning Style. Find out whether your child may be underperforming at school and learn how to provide a perfect study environment at home according to your child’s Learning Style.

Your child’s Learning Style consists of 48 elements unique to them. How many can you name?

The Learning Style of Pooh

A.A. Milne was a great author and an even better observer. The characters in his “Winnie the Pooh” books all have very distinctive personalities. Pooh, for example, is a very easy-going, likeable bear, who is slow and doesn't get upset very easily. Tigger loves to try new things and will barge ahead, full of false confidence, living in the moment. Eeyore is the eternal pessimist.

Now, A.A. Milne wrote the books a long time before Learning Styles were discovered, but even so, it’s not difficult to analyse the Learning Styles of the Hundred Acre Wood dwellers.

Pooh is a reflective person. He is a problem-solver who needs intake when thinking (it could be honey or Roo’s watercress sandwiches). Piglet, who is frightened of almost everything, has a definite non-preference for change and relies on other people to give structure to the tasks he tackles. Rabbit is a highly analytic animal who loves order and doing things the correct way. Tigger is impulsive and thrives on change. Roo loves his friends and would probably learn best with a peer, and he’d like his work overseen by authority figures. Kanga is a multi-tasker (the way all mothers are). Owl works best in a quiet place and at night (he sleeps most of the day). Eeyore has a high persistency: he keeps rebuilding his house, which always falls down or gets knocked down by butterflies.

What about you: are you an impulsive or reflective thinker? Are you analytic, holistic, or a bit of both? Do you know what environment best suits your learning and what causes unnecessary stress in your life?

To find out the answer to these questions, or to learn more about Learning Styles, please visit us on www.creativelearningcentre.com.