Thank you to all our customers

Thank you for all your support during 2011. May 2012 bring you peace, joy and happiness.
(Please remember that our offices will reopen on 9 January 2012, but you can always reach us on email.)

Season's Greetings

Warmest Christmas and New Year's wishes from Creative Learning. Please be advised that our office will be closed until 9 January 2012 and we will attend to all your enquiries upon our return. Have a safe and pleasant holiday.

Stuck for that perfect Christmas gift?

This Christmas, give the gift that will last more than the lifespan of a battery. Give something that costs as much as a takeaway dinner. Give self-knowledge and peace of mind. Give the future.

The Khan Academy and Learning Styles

Khan Academy is an educational website. Its tagline promises to help you “learn almost anything—for free.” You can choose from over 2,400 videos explaining the principles of maths, science, and economics. Between 7 and 14 minutes long, the videos consist of a voice-over by the website's creator, Salman Khan. All you see is hand-scribbled formulas and diagrams as they appear on your screen. There are no fancy graphics and the videos are not interactive.

And yet, many teachers and homeschooling parents turn to the Khan Academy videos to aid with homework and exam preparation. The advantages, they say, are that the students can move at their own pace and rewind the bits they get stuck on.

The disadvantages lie in the students' learning styles.

Not everybody is suited to learning optimally through an online course. Kinesthetic learners who enjoy working in a group are better off in a face-to-face interactive workshop.

However, if you have a preference in 4 or more of the following, e-learning is for you:

• visual (reading)
• visual (watching)
• tactile
• learning alone
• stationary
• internal motivation.

Are you a good candidate for E-Learning? Find out.

Communication Disorders and Learning Styles

Difficulties pronouncing sounds and stuttering are examples of speech disorders. Mild cases can be sorted by a Speech Clinic, elocution lessons, drama classes or Young Toastmasters Club.


Trouble understanding others and trouble sharing ideas are examples of language disorders. Contact your local speech and language therapist for assessment and treatment.

Difficulty sustaining attention when somebody else is talking may be a sign of ADHD, or a mild hearing loss, or a non-preference in the auditory sensory modality of your Learning Style. Please contact us if we can help you make sense out of your learning strengths.

Learning Styles and Learning Problems

Sometimes your child's learning problems will not be caused by their learning style, although they may be made be co-related. For example, if your child's learning style is auditory and they have a hearing issue, the learning problem will be magnified.

Vision Problems
Your child’s learning issues may be due to poor vision, easily corrected by a behavioural optometrist with eyeglasses or special eye muscle exercises.


Eye teaming: the brain can't combine input from both eyes, resulting in double vision. Largely undiagnosed or misdiagnosed as dyslexia.


Children with tracking problems can't control their eye movements to follow the line of print when reading.


Focus: eyes get tired during reading and cannot stay on the print


Longsighted children cannot see detail at close range (the book).


Shortsighted child cannot see detail at a distance (the whiteboard). This usually manifests at age 7 up and goes undetected. Warning signs: a good student loses interest in schoolwork, doesn’t progress or becomes disruptive.


Vision perception problems: the child experiences difficulties in analysing and giving meaning to what they see.


Fine motor eye-hand coordination problems cause poor handwriting and, as time progresses, lack of learning progress.


If reading difficulties persist after optometric problems have been corrected or excluded, the child should be referred for Irlen Syndrome testing to see if they can benefit from reading through a coloured filter.



Hearing issues
Both learning and behavioural issues may be caused by hearing problems. Schools don’t test hearing routinely and may even misdiagnose mild hearing loss as ADHD.


If your child’s hearing is fine and they’re not ADHD, their inability to listen may stem from auditory processing difficulty (normal hearing but inability to process what they hear), so consult your local audiologist.

Learning Styles and Dysgraphia

Is your child's handwriting messy? Does your child find excuses not to do written work? It could be that their learning style doesn't lend itself to writing, but it could also signify a learning disability.

A specific learning disability that affects written language, impaired letter writing by hand and spelling, usually characterised by extremely poor handwriting. It sometimes combines strong verbal but particularly poor writing skills. Copying will be slow and difficult, even if the end result is neat (which it often isn’t).


Although children with dysgraphia do not have motor control problems, they may have difficulty touching the thumb to successive fingers on the same hand.


A student with any degree of handwriting difficulty may be labeled "dysgraphic" by some educational specialists, but may or may not need special education services. Conversely, most learning disabled students experience difficulty with handwriting.


Coping strategies include the child speaking their thoughts into a voice-recording device (if their learning style lends itself to this method of producing output), learning to type, learning shorthand. Dysgraphic children should be provided with all the learning materials and notes without the need to copy anything.