Early Childhood Education and multiple learning styles.

Early childhood education must facilitate multiple styles of learning or risk losing the interest of early learners.

In early childhood education it is more important than in any other grade to incorporate the tools needed to teach to multiple learning styles (See Gardner’s Multiple Intelligences). I am reminded of the cartoonish idea of trying to herd cats – it’s just not possible. And trying to teach a preschooler how to do math when that is clearly not something they want to do is much the same. In early childhood education, the trick is to make learning fun and integrated so the children don’t know they are actually working. Instead of trying to teach them math by counting dots, we read books about numbers, count teddy bears and hops on the floor. We color pictures of flowers with corresponding numbers and go on nature walks to find a certain number of rocks. And, there are, of course, many counting songs to sing!

Howard Gardner made a breakthrough in early childhood education (and all levels of education, for that matter) when he came up with his theory of Multiple Intelligences. He has found that there are nine (and counting) different ways people learn: through hearing, reading, doing, interacting with others, thinking – both intrapersonal and existentially, art and music, mathematics, and the natural world. A well rounded person will be able to learn through any style but most of us tend to gravitate to one or two in particular. As we get older, we are expected more and more to be able to conform to all styles of learning. Not so with early childhood education – it’s like herding cats! Preschool teachers have to have many tricks up their sleeves to keep the short attention span of young children engaged. Check out Leap and Bound Academy Simi Valley at Cochran and Stearns to see great teachers in action.