Multiple Intelligences
From the first day of his life, a child learns. He will, among other things, learn to eat, see, play, speak and walk! We sometimes think that some children learn more quickly than others or that some are more enthusiastic about it.
How Can We Help Children To Enter Learning More Easily?
Every day, in a child’s brain, millions of neurons connect and disconnect according to the stimuli given to them. Psychologist Howard Gardner is interested in the intelligence that we have. Great news, we have several bits of intelligence! We even have eight each.
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What is the intelligence that we have?
Intelligence kinesthesia: it is the use of the body. Every day our little ones learn to use their bodies and discover their capacities, and some learn more quickly with movements!
Naturalistic Intelligence: it is the attraction for the living, the non-living, nature, the earth with, for example, the observation of animals or the maintenance of plants.
Musical Intelligence, Dominant In Children: This intelligence does not mean “to be good at music” but needs everything sound! You may have noticed that music can help you calm your child down or even help him enter into learning; for example, by singing a nursery rhyme, children learn quickly!
Interpersonal Intelligence: this is about managing your attitude towards others. Our little ones don’t always know how to use it wisely!
Fortunately, ideas change! This intelligence is very much linked to abstraction. For a little one, it is not easy to conceptualize mathematical logic. The main thing for the child is to learn the cardinal, that is to say, to understand the number and not the ordinal (knowing how to count). To understand the numbers, he must know what four cars, two giraffes, three houses are.
Verbal and linguistic intelligence: know how to read, write, and speak! This intelligence is essential in our socio-cultural context.
Visual and Spatial Intelligence: see and imagine! Moreover, it is more interesting to make an image to a child rather than to let him be passive in front of the pictures. He must be able to make a mental representation in the absence of an image; that is the role of the imagination.
Intrapersonal Intelligence: knowing yourself, managing your emotions. To help him develop this intelligence, we must help him build self-esteem. The child must give personal opinions or understand his weaknesses, for example.
Having Multiple Intelligences Means Having More Possibilities To Learn!
When a child sees something for the first time, it takes no less than seven learnings to work in different and diversified ways to learn!
How Can We Help Him Learn More Easily Thanks To His Intelligence?
Our dominant form of intelligence influences us! It comes to parasitizing those of the children because we demand a particular way of doing things, which is not necessarily that of the child. To help him, we must seek the forms of intelligence specific to him and which are dominant in him. Why? Because this will allow you to help, the child can learn more efficiently. You can stimulate his work by helping you first with his dominant forms of intelligence and thus make him more enthusiastic by placing him in a situation of success from the first learning.
If you enter into a first apprenticeship with a form of intelligence with which he is uncomfortable, the child will be in a situation of failure. He will not wish to repeat the experience because he will remain convinced that he will not succeed. On the contrary, if you guide him towards more obvious learning, he will take advantage of his success to be enthusiastic and keep the desire to learn.
For Example:
if a child has dominant musical intelligence, you can teach them to learn conjugations or multiplication tables by singing. He will be enthusiastic and happy to know! You can then make him learn by stimulating another form of intelligence, such as mathematical logic or verbal and linguistic intelligence.
The advantages are numerous: he will have more self-confidence, be less resistant to learning activities, and not be bored.
Be careful, do not leave aside his other intelligence even if he is less comfortable with it. They all need to be stimulated to help them develop. It is not about categorizing children because all intelligence is interactive and correlated.
In short, the child must be given the desire to learn and take advantage of the positive effect of his success. Use games, music, or nursery rhymes to help them learn more efficiently. You will notice that this is an incredible time-saver because the child registers better what he does when he likes it and succeeds in doing it the first time!
The article is written in collaboration with Véronique Garas – Conference held aboard the 2017 Early Childhood & Parenthood Train, by Véronique Garas.