Motivated Parent - Successful Child: Hands-on Learning Experience

Friday, October 12, 2012

Hands-on Learning Experience - Butterfly's Life Cyrcle

Many children tend to be visual learners and traditional methods of instruction can often be slightly discouraging them from finishing a task. Hands on projects use principle of multisensory learning, combining visual, tactile, and verbal stimuli to teach new skills and concepts. This technique is very appealing to all sorts of kids, especially to theses with any type of learning difficulties. In fact, all children can benefit from the combination of activity and education that these modalities offer. In an integrated learning environment, hands on projects can help children to interact and cooperate with other children, promoting understanding and fostering those vital social and communication skills. Active learning can be a great help in keeping children focused, alert, and engaged, making it easier to stay on task. If attention span becomes an issue when hands on projects are underway, the experiment can be divided into small steps with breaks given after each one. Lengthening those intervals between breaks gradually can help the child slowly build a more appropriate attention span. Getting to see the final result is a substantial reward for a job well done. Hands on projects can be integrated into nearly any learning experience. For example, while studding a life cycle of butterfly a child can gain new vocabulary, practice sequencing, following simple instructions with the help of tactile stimulation to maintain attention, learning math skills through counting days, adding or subtracting them and gaining competency in following directions.

For the feedback please see a “Life cycle of butterfly by Basia”. It took us few weeks to see the final effect but it was rewording to watch smiling Barbara and freely flying butterfly. During these period we had time to read different sort of books to learn about butterflies, watch and share observations, draw the stages, practice writing, spelling, counting, adding or subtracting days, sequencing pictures, telling or sharing sorties with our friends, using technology, or searching the Internet. It was great fun for both children and adults.

"4 Stages of Butterfly's Life Cycle by Basia"

I Egg - II Caterpillar - III Chrysalis - IV Butterfly