Visual Spatial Resources
Bright Kids at Home – an overview with a few helpful links.
Hoagies’ Gifted Education Page — Many articles about visual spatial learners.
Gifted Development Center – Assessment, articles and links for gifted children, may not be free.
How to Use the New IQ tests in Selecting Gifted Students — If we decide to test this might be helpful for understanding the results.
Spatial Strengths – Some articles about Visual Spatial Learning.
Visual Spatial Resource — This includes a list of characteristics with resources.
Homeschool Diner — Visual Spatial and Creative Learners page with links.
Throwing Marshmallows – A blog with right brain ideas.
Apple Stars – A blog and resource for right brain learners.
The Visual Spatial Learner in School – This is one of the most helpful links for me. There might be other assessment tools out there but I read this and confirmed that Hunter is a Visual Spatial Learner. He might have other learning styles too but this is his dominant style.
I went through last night and added up each characteristic as ”Yes, No, Maybe and Too Young.” Some of this won’t apply unless he attends a traditional school. The only big exceptions to this list were that Hunter does not love music and often finds it to be a sensory annoyance. However, he does like classical music and has very recently started enjoying some kids songs with Chandler. He also does not have any hesitation with conversation and makes eye contact. Socially he does not look any different. I notice his VSL characteristics in the way he learns.
When I looked at this a year ago, I thought he might not be VSL because of his big vocabulary and comprehension. I thought this was an auditory trait. But at the end of this characteristic list, it says:
May have wide discrepancies on different portions of IQ tests. Scores may be much higher on spatial relations (e.g. Block Design) and measures of verbal abstract reasoning (e.g. vocabulary, similarities, comprehension, information) than on measures of attention and sequential memory (e.g. arithmetic, digit span, coding).
I think he is too young for an I.Q. test but I am happy to know what “verbal abstract reasoning” is a strength for VSL’s and this learning style makes more sense now.
We need to adapt the way we present the material. I need to reconsider the way I teach since I’m pretty much a sequential learner. Kelly is most likely a VSL too, so he naturally teaches in Hunter’s style. Here is the tally from this list:
Yes 67 — No 9 — Maybe 8 — Too Young 19
Do you have favorite resources for a Visual Spatial Learner?
Updated February 1, 2012: Fixed broken links.
WOW! This is soooo helpful! Thank you for sharing it!
So, how do I know if my younger children (6 and under) are visual spatial learners? Also how do I as a visual spatial learner teach my non-visual spatial learner?
I suspected with H around 5 to 6 yo because of his interests and some of the advanced ways he would understand things, those “aha” moments. As he is resistant to rote memorization and sequential learning, this is further confirmation. Also, the way he describes things as if he is seeing it in his mind is really incredible. He’ll build something in his mind and tell me what supplies he needs for it and what he is going to do. He gestures too as he explains it…
As for your non VSL children, if they are sequential learners then I would think many of the homeschooling products for reading and spelling will work for them. School is a left brain world for the most part.
I’m a little intimidated with teaching him to read. I guess we can cut things out of a magazine and I can label them with words, what do you think?
I remember loving the Richard Scary Books as a kid because everything was labeled and I could see the pictures and the words at the same time.
Thank you for the reminder Natalie! He loves our Richard Scary book so I will look for some more at the library.
Fantastic links! You should post this to the SecularCM blog and Facebook page. So far we have nothing like this in either place. I think Tracey (Bright Kids at Home or is that someone else we mutually know?) also has a yahoo group and Facebook page called All Kinds of Learners. I consider her somewhat of an expert on the topic due to all the work she has done with her boys in this area.
Will do. I am on that group and it is good. There is a lot of information to sort through, much of it we are not ready for or it doesn’t fit my son’s interests. It is really nice to have a place to ask questions, since we are going to need to get creative with learning to read. Yesterday I mentioned to Hunter that when we start school in a couple of weeks (since I haven’t really started it LOL) we’ll need to work on reading every day. He said, “OK” in a way that tells me he is open to it. Usually he says, “NO!” or groans or something. Maybe the suggestions from Daddy are helping? A willing student is more than half the battle. I’ll just need to be sure to keep the lessons short…. OK rambling now. You know me, this is my biggest concern.