Using the Kidzmet Personal Playbook for Learning Kit to Help an Emerging Independent Learner Embrace Their Learning Styles for Success

Does Learning Style Matter?

Yes! Those of you who know me know that I take learning style very much into consideration when choosing what and how to homeschool my children. That’s why I ordered an audio cd WITH the textbook for Princess, and why I give Little Prince pipe cleaners to play with while he listens. I’m also fascinated by personality types and how that plays into the way my kids learn and grow.

My kids’ learning styles and personality types affect the curriculum I choose, the approach I take, and the projects we do. Princess is older now, though, doing 7th and 8th grade work, and starting to do more work independently on her own. I feel this increasing awareness to make sure that I’m teaching her how to learn and study on her own, how to make use of her strengths, and how to overcome her weaknesses.

Personalized Learning Style Playbook from Kidzmet

Kidzmet’s Personal Playbook for Learning is a customized handbook for how our kids learn and think. After taking a (super easy) learning and personality assessment on their site – that part is FREE, go try that out! – Kidzmet made a playbook for Princess that has her name on the front and throughout, and is tailored for her learning and personality style combination.

The Personal Playbook for Learning addresses things like how to organize, take notes, learn new concepts, prepare for tests, learn in a group, and motivate Princess for success. It’s colorful and divided into tabbed sections and easy to use. As soon as it arrived in the mail, Princess grabbed it up and hopped into a chair to gobble up every word. The playbook also comes with a disk of printable templates for your child to use to organize and plan.

Using your Kidzmet Playbook

The first thing I did with our Playbook for Learning was to let Princess read it herself. Not only was she curious but I thought it would be best if we were both on the same page. Then I read through it myself, noting things that immediately stood out to me that are true of Princess, that I already do but can increase, or that I saw as existing problem areas with tips for improvement.

For example, Princess is a J, a Judger and I’m a P, a Perceiver. Judgers delight in the destination, Perceivers enjoy the journey. Judgers are purposeful and systematic while Perceivers are more flexible and open ended. Reading through Princess’ personality type and her needs for learning, I was immediately able to key in on these differences between us and how that may affect our school day. I had already been wondering if one of the reasons Princess has been a little resistant with her history notebooking was how open ended and vague the assignment was: “Write whatever you want about something from the lesson.” I changed tactics and asked for something more specific instead, “Write 3 things that happened in today’s history lesson” and guess what I got? Three things about the history lesson! Quickly and without whining. SUCCESS.

Something else that Princess recently began doing on her own, which we now see supported in her Learning Playbook, is retreating to her room to work on her math. Math is done after the group subjects are over and I have no reason to prevent her from retreating so I’ve been letting her do it. After reading through the book, she also told me how she goes through a process when she gets in there, smoothing out the blankets on her bed, creating a clean and tidy space to sit in, put her book on this side and the laptop on that side, just so. We could see these as a part of her learning style and personality type as outlined in her Playbook for Learning so I’ve decided to keep doing that and let her do other individual work in her room as well.

We will continue working through the ideas and suggestions that we found but I will also have the Learning Playbook to refer to in the future when some kind of conflict or stumbling block arises. I’m definitely interested in the section on motivating Princess when she underachieves and applying these suggestions (with some of the printouts and suggestions from other sections) to help her succeed in writing assignments, which is something of a struggle for us.

101 Learning Activities

Our Kidzmet Learning Styles Playbook also came with a small book called “101 Learning Activities to Stretch & Strengthen Your Child’s Multiple Intelligences.” This is a book that I can use with all three of the kids at the same time because it doesn’t matter if the chosen activities plays to a strength or a weakness, by participating in a variety of activities they will all grow their multiple intelligences at the same time.

To get started with it, I chose to have the kids participate in activity one which is called “Yay, Learning” – a “body smart” exercise where you create a cheer for school with accompanying stretching type movements to get the body going for those who need to activate their bodies in order to activate their brains. I involved the girls and asked them to help me write a “chant” for our homeschool and motions to go with it. Our school name is “Faith Family Home School” so we used that as our inspiration.

We put our FAITH in God, He’s the biggest and the best.
We love and care and serve, our FAMILY comes next.
We take care of our stuff, and make our HOME our nest.
We study hard and LEARN, and give God all our best!

Okay, we cheated on that last line. The kids had fun and it’s a good way to get the blood flowing to our brains before trying to use them. ;0)

To pick our next activities, I asked Princess to pick three that she wanted to do. To give you an idea of the kinds of things found in this booklet, I’ll share her choices here:

1. Font Formation – Create/draw your own font style, import it into a font generator to create your own font, and import it into your word processor. Use it! (Fine motor skills.)
2. Kine-Simon – Play this physical version of My Simon by choosing 4 actions (hop, clap, jump, spin, etc.) and have the leader lead the others through a series of actions to remember and repeat, adding another action each time. (Muscle memory.)
3. Melodramatic Mime – Have your child act out a favorite story while playing all the parts, encourage overly dramatic movements.

These are all body smart activities, and only 3 of the 101 ideas in the book. You’ll have to read the book to find the suggestions for music, nature, number, people, picture, self and word smart activities.

Kidzmet Playbook on Your Kindle

Raise your hand if you have a Kindle or some other kind of eReader! For those of you who are not like me (that is, overly excited about the color coordinated tabs and divided sections in the physical binder)– if you don’t need all that visual appeal then the digital edition is right up your alley! The digital edition has the same content as the physical edition, without all the frills and colors that make someone like me smile at the beautiful organization. It’s the same content, in the same order, easily navigable with a linked Table of Contents. It’s perfect for you “just the facts, ma’am” types. (That would be my husband.)

The only thing you don’t get with the digital version that does come with the physical version is the cd of printable templates and the 101 Learning Activities book. On the other hand, if you have more than one child, you may not want to order the full kit for all of them – you don’t need 3 or 4 copies of the same 101 activities, right? The Kindle editions are great supplements for additional children if you already have a full kit.

Kidzmet, “Kid Approved”

As I said, Princess was just as excited as I was when our kit arrived. I think she’s as interested in learning styles and personality types as I am! She’s also at that age where she’s ready to become more independent and take her education a little more into her own hands. She won’t be doing group science with us this year but will be doing her own 8th grade science, and that mostly independently, too. She is looking forward to this and both of us are looking for tips in the playbook to help her stay motivated and work on her own. I imagine the Personal Learning Playbook will come in handy this year as we break this new ground. It will be nice to have it all at our fingertips!

Going, Going, Gone Soon

The Learning Playbook like I have (in a half sized binder with colored dividers, etc.) is going limited edition and will only be available for special promotions, etc. In it’s place a NEW, paperback version of the playbook is going to be available! Along with a new set of options for ordering.

Effective October 1, you’ll be able to find:

• Paperback Playbook @ $14.99
• Playbook KIT (paperback Playbook, 101 Learning Activities book, CD) @ $19.99
• Teacher’s KIT (All 8 paperback Playbooks, Learning Activities book, CD, and 1 full year of a Kidzmet classroom account–where teachers can profile ALL of their students, send student snapshots to parents, use our student segmenter app, and find out how they “fit” with each of their students) @ $99.99 (<– So if you have 5 or more kids you probably want this one!)
• eBooks for on Kindle, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Smashwords and iTunes @ $9.99.

Win a Personalized Kidzmet Binder of Your Own

Kidzmet has provided a Playbook for Learning kit for one of my readers! Before they’re gone, you have a chance to win a Personal Playbook for Learning (binder),  for your child! You’ll also receive the CD and the 101 Learning Activities book. (US and military bases only – sorry!)

Snag one of these now limited editions by entering in this giveaway; follow the directions in the Rafflecopter app for more entries.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Don’t Want to Wait? Find Kidzmet Here:

• Kidzmet.com (Buy the Learning Playbook here.)
• http://facebook.com/kidzmet
• http://twitter.com/kidzmet
• http://kidzmet.com/blog/