Top 10 tips on the benefits of creative writing

1. Encourages creativity and imagination. It broadens the thought processes by allowing the child to think outside the box. This is great in preparing the child for problem solving and analytical skills in the future. 

2. Allows for self-expression. It is a perfect channel for children to express their emotions and feelings through characters, settings and plots. Creative writing helps them make sense of their own feelings so they can share, understand and reflect on their own lives. 

3. Provides language skills practice. By writing the children can practise their writing skills learnt like grammar, spelling, word choice and punctuation. 

4. Teaches self-discipline. While creative writing is imaginative, it requires discipline to order thoughts on paper in a clear and concise way to make it believable. 

5. Can be therapeutic. Sometimes it’s difficult for kids to define their emotions and feelings. Creative writing provides an outlet by writing in the third person point of view to tell us what’s bothering them. 

6. Discover themselves. Creative writing allows kids the opportunity to look anew at the world around them. They are forced to question and seek. 

7. Develops self-confidence. When children receive praise for their writing efforts, it increases their self-confidence because they have achieved success. 

8. Develops self-esteem. Through creative writing, children have the chance to assert themselves by voicing their opinions. When their efforts are well received by their audience, it builds self-esteem. 

9. Improves skills in other areas. Studies show that children, who are involved in creative writing practices, tend to perform better in math, science and foreign languages. The challenges faced in creative writing give them the confidence and discipline to succeed in other areas of their life. 

10.Teaches persuasiveness. Children need to convince their readers through characterisation, storylines and themes to make it believable so they learn persuasive language techniques.

Top 10 tips on understanding visual learners

A visual learner is one who learns by looking or seeing. All concepts, ideas and information are learnt in terms of images. They need to see it first before they can make sense of it. Some ways to recognise a visual learner are: they like reading, they are generally neat and tidy with their workspace, room or handwriting, they can work silently, they love colour and art activities and they learn better when concepts are visually explained by charts, pictures or graphs. Here are some tips on understanding the visual learner. 

1. They need to see the big picture. Before they learn the parts and the details, they need to see the big picture first. Once they understand the concept as a whole, then they can understand the “nuts and bolts”. 

2. They need to look away in order to process information. Don’t insist that they look at you as it is too distracting to them. It is often thought that they are daydreaming when in fact they are just trying to cut off too much information like people’s faces. 

3. They often need time to think about questions before they answer. Don’t expect instant answers from a visual learner – they need to process the answers in their “mind’s eye” first before they can answer. 

4. They prefer neat and ordered work spaces. Visual learners are often thought to be perfectionists – they are easily distracted by clutter so they like everything around them neat and tidy. 

5. They often lose all sense of time. These learners are usually creative and imaginative so they can get distracted by something that gets their attention and therefore lose track of time. It is often handy to have clocks and timers so that they can focus on the task at hand and manage tasks according to time limits. 

6. They are poor listeners. They find it difficult to follow when information is spoken to them. It is advisable that they write out what they hear and later read this information to make sense of it. When giving them instructions, keep it simple and give it one at a time as they can’t follow a whole string of instructions. 

7. They prefer complex, advanced and abstract activities. They get easily bored by rote memorisation and being asked to do easy and repetitive tasks. They prefer creative and challenging tasks. 

8. They prefer information to be visually organised in order to learn. Visual learners learn by mental images, patterns and colour. They learn well by graphs, diagrams, illustrations, mind maps, highlighting words as well as other visual technology like video tutorials and PowerPoint presentations. 

9. They can’t show how they arrived at their answers. Visual learners are intuitive thinkers and they often arrive at answers to complex problems in multiplication or division but they can’t explain how they arrived at the answer. They just know the answers. 

10. They are usually quiet and observant with a keen eye for detail. They are usually not talkative and have a keen sense of beauty for the physical surroundings and visual art. They love colour and art activities. 

Our success at Kip McGrath centres is recognising the visual learner and providing them with learning experiences so that they find the concepts explained, meaningful. Contact us for a free assessment to determine what is your child’s preferred learning style is.

Top 10 tips for fidgety kids

Does your child struggle to sit still? Or is your child constantly moving around or fiddling with objects around them. Most often these kids are labelled as “ADHD” and are constantly being scolded to sit still. Here are some useful tips in dealing with kids that are “movers”.

1. Not all children that fidget have ADHD. These children may just have a kinaesthetic learning style. In other words, they may be more of a mover instead of a looker or a listener. 

2. Fidgety kids actually do concentrate on what is being taught. In spite of being fidgety, these kids show evidence of listening and grasping the lesson at hand. They show the ability to concentrate even while moving or wriggling around. 

3. Fidgeting in children is quite normal. Children are generally full of energy and like moving their hands and legs around. Some educational psychologists say that children actually tend to take in more when they move their hands and legs around. At home, children could sit on stability balls so that they could move around instead of a fixed chair. 

4. A fidgety child could well be a gifted learner. Often, children fidget when they are bored and the lesson lacks challenge. More stimulating and challenging work could help the gifted learner to stop fidgeting. 

5. Allow children who fidget to hold onto some small object. Instead of stressing about a child drumming on the desk or throwing things around, rather give them some small object to channel their energy into like a squeeze ball or a beaded bracelet. I often give my kids coloured pens and a sheet of paper to doodle when they have to listen for more long periods. Instead of focussing on keeping still, the child can then focus his energy on the lesson. 

6. Break up long activities into smaller sessions with breaks. Instead of an hour-long activity, break it into smaller 15 minute chunks with breaks in between for the child to move or stretch. This gives them a chance to get rid of the pent-up energy. 

7. Rotate the type of activities to refresh the child’s focus. Instead of expecting the child to sit and listen for an hour, get them to listen quietly, have a discussion with others, do some written work, engage in a computer activity and so on. By varying and rotating their activities, their concentration is refreshed each time which minimises fidgeting. 

8. Allow the fidgety child to do their activities moving around as far as is practical. They could pace while reading or do their math while standing up as long as they are not a distraction to others. Giving them errands to do also helps in using their energy. 

9. Children need to move around and exercise more. Due to our modern lifestyle, children are not moving around and playing outdoors like they used to do before. This results in poor core strength and vestibular balance which makes them to fidget. 

10. Introduce more “hands on” learning material. Learning aids like flash cards, board games, puzzles, floor activities interactive computer activities work really well with fidgety kids as it allows for movement. 

The Kip McGrath Education Centres are perfect for fidgety kids as activities are rotated after every 10 minutes so the child is constantly on the move with teacher-based, computer and worksheet activities.