Note: This post is part of a series of posts about the three different types of learning styles. To see posts regarding raising an visual or auditory learner, please see the links below.
Raising a Visual Learner
Raising an Auditory Learner
This past August, Little Mister started preschool for the first time. I knew he wasn’t a big talker, but I thought preschool was going to do it – that he was just on the cusp of speaking long, intricate sentences. Then he would be off to the races! I thought he just needed an environment where he had to communicate with others (rather than depending on the baby sign language I had taught him) to really get him to be vocal.
I was wrong. About a month into school, he was given a short speech assessment where he failed every. single. part. I was later notified by the assessor that she felt he couldn’t understand the directions she was giving him, couldn’t tell her simple things such as where the cat was on the page, and pretty much ignored her for the majority of the assessment.
I was crushed. I felt like a complete failure. How had I missed so many things about my son? I started to doubt all of my parenting techniques and every way that I had taught him. I didn’t understand. He followed multiple step instructions at home! He communicates to me, his dad, and his grandmother. If you opened a book and asked Little Mister to point to the cat, he would tell you where the cat was and what a cat says and how the cat acts.
So what was I missing? Was he really missing an entire expressive language? Did he really not know where the cat was?
Luckily, I went back to his preschool teachers and spoke with them. It wasn’t until a comment one of them made that it all clicked. They said that when it seems like he is starting to ignore them or not pay attention, they give him a little strawberry to hold, and he will usually start to participate and listen better.
My son knows information and he can communicate (when he wants to and feels like it’s important enough for him to), but he learns best when he’s holding something or if the information is being delivered in a tactile fashion. This became abundantly evident when I took him for additional speech testing. When I thought he wasn’t paying attention to the assessor hiding the frog below a cup and changing the cups around because he was playing with a car and not watching, I was surprised that he consistently was able to tell her exactly where the frog toy was without hesitation.
I am a visual learner. I have known this a good majority of my life. I had the benefit of being raised by a mother who understood the different learning styles and accommodated them well in raising and teaching me. I fall back on this learning style, and had with Little Mister when trying to teach him basics. Now that I know he’s a tactile learner, I’ve developed different strategies for helping him learn and grow.
Characteristics of Tactile Learners
- Tactile learners will constantly use their hands. Whether they use their hands in expressive gestures when they speak or just holding an object to pay attention, that motion and touch response can help them to concentrate on the spoken directions.
- They need to move, touch, and do the instructions, not just listen. Little Mister’s preschool posts photos of their day and when it’s story time, I rarely see a photo of him sitting calmly in one spot. He’s moving around, doing things, playing with the carpet. But I guarantee you he knows what’s going on in the story.
- Tactile learners will excel in hand-eye coordination activities. If you give them a ball and ask them to hit a target in the distance, they will more likely be accurate on the first try.
- They may bore easily in lecture-style learning environments. This may lead to fidgeting or other external movements.
- They learn best through hands-on education. 3D objects or sensory-style learning will be very inviting for them.
- These children are your builders (and destroyers). They will likely opt to build a tower or to watch how objects fall.
Do those characteristics sound like your child? So many of them exemplified Little Mister that I remember when I first started researching tactile learners and discussing it with my mom, I was gobsmacked at how closely it seemed to identify him. Now let’s take a look at tools you can use to help your tactile children learn, develop, and be the most successful they can be.
Hands-On Learning Objects
From plastic fruits and vegetables that you can hold and play with to an actual shoe you can lace up, tactile learners will understand best when they can feel and hold the object you are explaining to them.
When teaching about letters, look for activities where you identify items that start with that letter. One activity that Little Mister’s preschool does is to have the letter on a paper and fill that letter with objects that start with it. For the letter “F”, they filled the letter with feathers and felt. For a letter B, you could glue buttons to the letter. Anything that will get your child moving will help them understand the letter better than pointing to it in a book or showing them a flash card. You could also make touch-and-feel cards with the letters. Think about cutting the letters out of things like sandpaper, felt, pipe cleaners, etc. Get creative! The item doesn’t necessarily have to relate, but the act of feeling something as they learn will help your tactile learner process the information.
When teaching math or colors, use manipulatives. The company Learning Resources has a series of toys that are excellent for teaching these concepts. My son received the veggie farm toy that has different vegetables in different colors. I can work with him on colors, numbers, sorting, and other concepts in a tactile way that helps him learn.
Utilize Touch Whenever You Are Able
Movement and touch are key to a tactile learner, and luckily, our world is a prime candidate for teaching lessons. Take a walk outside and choose a topic to focus on. Have a discussion about the seasons and use your walk to identify how we can tell what season it is. How does the temperature feel? Pick up some leaves and talk about the changing colors. Identify and touch objects that are a particular shape.
The key to this is not to just talk about whatever object you are identifying, They need to move, touch, and do the instructions, not just listen.but also to touch the object in question. What shape is the tire swing? Then draw your finger around the tire to form the circle. What color is the slide? Then go down the slide. The pairing of the movement with the instruction will help solidify the information for your child.
Invest or Create Quality Playdough
Playdough can be messy. It can get in your carpet and get stuck. I dreaded the playdough days when my son was first born. I wanted to avoid it. Then I found out he learned best through tactile instruction. I went to the store and bought whole kits of playdough and playdough tools. The great thing about playdough is that it can be a great agent for relating topics to tactile learners. Not only do you can an object you can play with and is moldable and open-ended, but the different colors and tools are conducive to a whole range of topics that developing toddler minds are learning.
Games with Movement
You can use structured games such as Simon Says or Charades to introduce and teach topics, you can make up imaginative dances to songs, or you can just make silly movements – whatever most interests your child. The movements don’t have to be simple. You can create multi-step instructions or complicated movements for them to complete. Think of things such as hopping on one foot in a square, using your nose to draw a triangle in the air, or grabbing three friends and laying down in the letter A (Sesame Street style). You may be pleasantly surprised at how complicated of movement instructions your child can do.
One activity that I originally started with Little Mister as a fine motor activity also works well to help calm and focus tactile learners. Using a colander, have you child thread pipe cleaners through the holes, back and forth. Often, if Little Mister becomes over-stimulated, he will now ask for the colander and pipe cleaners.
Touchy-Feely Books
Reading is still an important skill that children of any learning style need to have. Help set your tactile learner on the right path by finding books that have a textured or movement element to them. We loved the “That’s Not My…” books by Usborne when Little Mister was a baby. Now he loves the Busy Books by Usborne and some of the musical books (Noisy Orchestra is one that he loves to show his sister).
Of course there won’t always been tactile elements in the books they read, but instilling the general love of reading first is important. With that love, more books will follow, even without the added elements.
Don’t Be Surprised If They Don’t Listen (Or Appear to Be Listening)
The number one thing is: don’t be surprised if your tactile learner starts to zone out or seems to be ignoring you. And don’t take it personally. …They would give him a little strawberry to hold, and he will usually start to participate and listen better.Repeating the same instruction over and over will not help them follow it or learn the topic any quicker. Stop and think about how you are trying to relay the information. Chances are if you just tweak the way you are doing things slightly, you will get their attention back and can continue with the lesson. If not, take a break. Tactile learners need frequent breaks.
Example: Activities to Teach the Alphabet
Using the basic example of how to teach the alphabet to a tactile learner, you can use the tools above to help them be successful. You can start by creating a touchy-feely book of letters. Make some of the letters out of sandpaper, some out of felt, some out of satin or velvet. The next time you talk about the alphabet, you could work with pipe cleaners, bending them to form the letters. Later that week, take a beautiful afternoon walk and point out objects that start with particular letters you were working on. Lastly, you create a sensory table out of moon sand or shredded paper and have your child search for and match the letters from in the bin to a paper where they are printed. Approach this only a couple of letters at a time so that your child doesn’t become overwhelmed.
Adjusting your teaching style to help your tactile learner develop will save a lot of frustration for the both of you, especially if you are not also a tactile learner. It can also help them understand how they learn as they get older so that they can have a set of tools for when they are in school and the workplace.
Interested in what your learning style is? For more information and to take a learning styles quiz, check out these resources:
VARK Learning Resources
Some of My Best Friends are Books, Judith Halsted
Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences, Howard Gardner
Critical Thinking: What Every Person Needs to Survive in a Rapidly Changing World, Richard Paul
A Parent’s Guide to Gifted Children, James Webb, Janet Gore, Edward Amend, and Arlene DeVries