What's Your Style, Baby?

Have been pondering Emily's learning style today. Not that I can quite figure it out!

My musings were prompted by a bit of a meltdown this morning when I suggested she do some pages in a maths workbook. Now, a few months ago Emily was actively asking to do more maths, and it was her first choice for any kind of sit down activity (apart from history!). She was doing really, really well, and was covering stuff aimed at Yr 3 children with ease, well ahead of the Yr 1 level she's "supposed" to be. Yet this morning she apparently "couldn't do" very basic KS1 stuff from this workbook. Now, bearing in mind her previous enthusiasm, I was a bit worried as to what was going on there.

After much probing, it turns out she's distracted by all the cartoons and stuff in the workbook, and thinks it looks far too babyish and off-putting. Lightbulb moment - the stuff she couldn't get enough of a few months ago was printed off the internet and was plain black/white no nonsense sheets, or stuff we handwrote ourselves. Spookily this seems to echo a discussion had a couple of days ago by someone on the MP yahoo group, whose son was also being distracted by the cartoony stuff.

OK, so we'll go back to the non-distracting stuff and ditch the cutesey cutesey colourful workbooks. Fair enough.

I also started wondering about her absolute fascination/obsession with learning through pretend. We spend hours role playing this, that and t'other, and she gets quite upset if circumstances mean she can't - but she learns so much through it, she just totally absorbs the information. OK, that would seem to fit with a Kinesthetic learning style....but then the love of workbook type things and her enjoyment of sitting for hours reading non fiction books - well, that doesn't fit with Kinesthetic well at all, unless I've misunderstood the whole learning style thingy (quite possible!).

Oh the joys of having a child who won't fit into the nice neat boxes she's supposed to fit into ;-)

A lovely Tudor paper dolls book arrived this morning, obtained from Sarah and apparently produced by a home ed teenager. Mightily impressed. Many hours today have been spent intricately colouring Tudor costumes, as well as drawing an A3 size Tudor lady and labelling her various layers of clothing - the first "task" Emily chose from the role play thing I made yesterday was to advise Queen Liz on what to wear at her posh explorer's banquet.