Helping Kinesthetic Learners Succeed

If you’re like most parents, you learned your reading, writing and arithmetic by sitting at an assigned desk and completing “dittos” with faded purple ink. Hopefully, you didn’t need hands-on activities to learn. However, many students aren’t so lucky. They learn by doing and need to move around the classroom and touch things to better understand the lessons. They have difficulty sitting at their desks for extended periods of time. In times past, these kids were considered hyperactive and difficult to teach.

Now we know better. These students aren’t being difficult, they just learn differently. They are kinesthetic learners—they learn best when they can move around and engage their small and large muscle groups. As a school counselor, I work with many kinesthetic learners and their teachers.

Oftentimes, kinesthetic learners feel their way of learning isn’t as good because they just “can’t sit and do the work.” I explain to these students that different doesn’t mean worse, and that there are lots of ways to maximize their learning style.

Kinesthetic Learners Usually:

• Move around a lot
• Like to touch people they’re talking to
• Tap their pencil or foot while doing schoolwork
• Enjoy physical activities
• Take frequent breaks when studying
• Do not spend a lot of time reading
• Have difficulty spelling correctly
• Like to solve problems by physically working through them
• Like to try new things
• Are coordinated and agile
• Are considered hyperactive
• Express their feelings physically (i.e., hugging, hitting)
• Move their hands when they talk
• Dress for comfort, instead of style
• Lay on the floor or bed when studying
• Enjoy touching things
• Have difficulty sitting still for extended periods of time
• Excel in athletics and the performing arts

Strategies to Help Kinesthetic Learners Succeed:

Provide your child with hands-on learning tools, including:

• Abacus (manual math tool with horizontal rods and moveable beads)
• Modeling clay
• Number lines
• Models
• Sandpaper and carpet to trace letters, shapes, and numbers
• Drawing materials
• Puzzles
• Wooden numbers and letters
• Globes and maps
• Blocks and cubes
• Felt boards
• Computers
• Geoboards with rubber bands (a square board with vertical and horizontal lines created by pegs used to teach shapes and geometric concepts)

Provide your child with hands-on learning opportunities, including:

• Experiments
• Field trips
• Role playing
• Projects
• Games

Final words of wisdom? Kinesthetic learners do things differently. But that doesn' t mean they do them worse. Encourage your child to study in several short blocks of time, instead of one extended time period. Teach concepts with concrete examples (for example, teach greater than and less than with a crocodile puppet, rather than just numbers on a chalkboard). Have your child memorize information while moving. They can walk, jump rope, or skip as they're learning the material-- they don't need to sit at a desk, at least at home! Encourage your child to clap out sounds or syllables they hear in words.

With a little help, kinesthetic learners can find tricks that make the system work in their favor. They just need some motion with their math, some rev with their reading. So get moving on getting them on the move!