Playing to Learn;What is Multi-Sensory Learning?

This is the first article in a five part series on Multi-Sensory learning.

As your child quietly looks through her favorite alphabet book she is using her sense of sight to learn. Read the book to her, and you add sound to the learning experience. Invite her to trace each letter with her finger as you read, and she's now using sight, sound, and touch to learn about letters. The method of involving as many senses as possible in the learning process is the multi-sensory approach to teaching. It's not only a lot of fun for a child - it works! Research has shown that multi-sensory techniques are the most effective way to teach basic language skills such as the alphabet and phonics. Because multi-sensory instruction encourages action and interaction, it's the perfect approach for active preschoolers who enjoy learning by doing. The more senses that are involved, the more fun children have playing and learning. Multi-sensory learning is also the most natural way to learn. Our brains obtain and interpret information more readily when all our senses are stimulated. We make important connections and understand concepts more easily when the learning experience includes sight, sound, and touch.

By seeing, hearing, and touching the letters of the alphabet, your child is learning how letters sound and how they are formed, so that she can reproduce those sounds and shapes - skills she needs to eventually become a successful reader and writer. You may have noticed that, when learning, your child is beginning to favor one sense over another. She may be a predominately auditory learner, and therefore more likely to recall the alphabet if she recites the ABC song again and again. Or she could be a visual learner, preferring to look through alphabet books. Or perhaps she is mainly a tactile/kinesthetic learner who likes holding alphabet blocks in her hand and tracing the letters with her fingers, or experimenting with writing letters using crayons and paper.

(Excerpt taken from Parent & Child Magazine 2002)

Encourage your child to look, listen, touch. At the Family Resource Center we offer a variety of toys, books and games to enrich your child's multi-sensory learning experience.