This post is brought to you by Progress Pre-School Gold.
When I was a preschool teacher lifetimes ago, I had the great privilege to teach at Ingenium School in Marikina. In 1999, Ingenium started as a preschool. Now it teaches kids up to high school level! I was one of the first of four teachers. It was a new kind of school, a multiple intelligences school. I've never heard of anything like it. But I truly saw how each child we taught blossomed because we taught them according to their strengths and interests, or multiple intelligence.
There are various forms of intelligence: brain, body, and people. I remember one student, J**i, who transferred to Ingenium because his teachers in his previous preschool said he had behavioral problems. We believe he was just bored! We observed him for a couple of weeks and noticed he just couldn't sit down, making it difficult for him (and us teachers) to learn anything!
Finally, one morning, I noticed he was running around the school. I yelled to him as he ran past, "One!" and he yelled back, "One!" When he passed me again, I yelled, "Two!" and he shouted back, "Two!" We did this counting with every lap. By the time he was tired, he had learned counting 1-20. Yes, he had a lot of energy! J**I is definitely body smart. That means he learns faster and better if he isn't sitting down. He has to be moving!
This multiple intelligences applied to the other kids. And, fast forward to now, I'm happy that I can apply it to my kids, too! For example, my second child, Iñigo, learns fastest through music. He learned his alphabet and numbers and shapes and colors and words simply by us singing them to him. We had tried that with his older brother, Vito, and Vito just wasn't interested. What Vito liked to do was visual play. He liked to sit with an iPad or watch TV or draw with paint and crayons. For him to learn, he has to see it unfolding before his eyes.
 |
| Vito loves visual stimulation. |
 |
| Iñigo loves to learn through song and dance. |
 |
| They both love learning via play! |
Of course, parental involvement and encouragement are also huge factors in giving our children an edge with multiple intelligence. For example, a parent must discern what his child's intelligence is. In Vito's case, for example, the iPad works. It doesn't help Iñigo much unless he plays with an app that has a lot of music. But if a parent can't see beyond what traditional education says, then he or she'll just think, "Oh, all iPads are bad!" or "Something must be wrong with my kid because he doesn't like music!" or "Why is my kid so makulit and malikot? He must be naughty!"
