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Teaching Tips November 2010 |
“Why does God’s Spirit have so many holes?” “If the Holy Spirit lives in my heart to guide me, how can he see where we’re going?” Go ahead and chuckle, but these were real questions posed by some very concerned children. Some very literal children. Concrete thinkers par excellence! It’s not surprising, since most young children begin life as concrete thinkers. They have to see, touch, handle, and quite possibly chew on whatever they encounter – as any parent of a toddler knows! In a few years, some of these children will shift gears and begin to think like full-blown abstract or random thinkers. Abstract thinkers focus on ideas, principles, and the big picture. They ignore details, problem-solving steps, and rules – no matter how many times Mom reminds them. Random thinkers, on the other hand, often pay attention to details; it’s just that those details are totally different from what everyone else seems to notice. They think outside the box, usually in ways that make no sense to their concrete parents or siblings. They have their own view of what is important, and it usually does NOT include multiplication facts, grammar rules, the correct way to spell a word, or specific answers on a standardized test. Whatever the peculiar mix of thinking styles God has put together in your family, it’s not unusual for at least one of them to go against the familial trend. It’s enough to leave the rest of the family dazed and perplexed. Where on earth did THAT come from? If you’re an out-going people-person, you may chalk it up to God’s sense of humor. If you’re a more conscientious, deep-thinker, you may point to it as theological evidence of God’s omniscience. Either way, it’s intentional on His part. It causes us to dig deeper to understand what makes one another tick. It causes us to be relational. It forces us to stop, if only for a moment in our hectic lives, to consider how and why the other person thinks that way. It teaches us how to be open to other perspectives – particularly the Creator’s. In homeschooling, fitting different thinking styles together can be a challenge. Most of what children have to learn in the early elementary grades is concrete, sequential information. If that is not your child’s natural way of thinking, it will take much longer before learning clicks. It can seem as if they will never get it. But if you take the time to observe what is really happening, you can adjust how you present the material and the type of practice that you assign, to better fit how your child thinks. Later in middle school, when the curriculum begins to synthesize facts and concepts together, and then later still in high school when the emphasis shifts to abstract ideas and varied applications, your random, abstract, global thinkers can shine. It’s your concrete, literal, sequential thinkers that will struggle. Here’s another piece of the puzzle: if you, the parent, are a concrete thinker, you will be attracted to concrete curriculum. If you are a global thinker, you will be attracted to materials and resources that are less routine, have less structure, and integrate a lot of different strands by some common thread that appeals to you. But does that approach fit the framework of the child you are trying to teach? We typically seek out what is familiar or comfortable to us. But is that what God has in mind to train our uniquely-designed children? Thankfully, there are so many resources available to homeschoolers these days that you can pretty much find whatever will work for your children. The key is finding the approach, method, and curriculum that will set the proper borders for your puzzle pieces (aka: children). 626 Words To view more 'Teaching Tips' Articles please 'Log In' and visit the 'Achives' page. |
