A 10 years old Swastik goes to his School everyday with same feeling that everyone around me is angry with me, as I don't like to study. Swastik hates studies, hates his School and also hates numbers...
And also he thinks Numbers are angry with him and they hate him.
One fine day Swastik's mom asked him to get 4 tomatoes out of the fridge. Swastik picked up some random tomatoes and gave to mom without counting them. His mom noticed that every time she asks him to get somethings in specified number he would just randomly pick it and give to her without counting it. When she particularly asked him to count he would just say 1,2,3,.....,8,9,10.
Eventually she realized the boy can identify numbers and write numbers but doesn't understand the concept of numbers. She broke into the tears as she couldn't imagine the struggles of little boy facing in his school everyday. No wonder why Swastik thinks that numbers hate him. No matter how much he would try he could never solve simple numbers problems related to counting and calculations in his school.
While Swastik was labeled as Slow, Dumb in his surrounding, He and his mom learned that he is Kinesthetic Learner.
Their journey with Divya Place started by learning about this new term.
To start with the term kinesthesia means being aware about the body parts and being aware about how they are moving related to surrounding space. So the Kinesthetic learning can be referred as a process of learning through feelings and experiences of body movements. Hence the kinesthetic learners learn faster when they are presented with practical information and than reading theoretical concepts. Classroom lectures might be boring for them as compared to activity based learning.
Some of the Typical Characteristics of Kinesthetic learners are:
Understand more when learning through hands-on experience
Tend to get bored in a traditional classroom
Learn through movement
Enjoy sports and physical activity
Enjoy being outside the classroom when learning (field trips, expeditions)
Like to build things and work with their hands
Love experimenting and testing things
Tend to use their hands when talking
Enjoy working with tools or instruments
Love trying new things
Tend to trust what they can experience or perform
Remember spelling words better when they write them several times
Tend to gesture while speaking
Tend to be killed at solving puzzles and completing mazes.
Think more clearly when able to move
So how did this learning style helped Swastik to get along well with numbers...
We started with simple play activities with the random, colorful objects available in surrounding with TWO STEP RULE:
Pause Rule : Taking Pause of 5 seconds after each number.
2. Stop Rule : Stopping at the said number by teacher.
With these two easy rules he started counting different shapes, objects and images initially from small to gradually bigger numbers.
After enough practicing on bigger surfaces with colorful objects Swastik got comfortable in writing on paper in his notebooks gradually.
Currently Swastik is learning about additions with small numbers.
We still have subtractions and multiplications and many more to deal with... but Swastik isn't afraid of school and numbers now as he says we are good friends now!!!