A Parent’s Guide To MI
One of the foundational pieces to ensure a good education for your child is knowing their learning style. Many experts believe that a child’s learning style is “hard wired” in by about second grade. If we, as parents and educators recognize and nurture these varied ways of learning, we give children the best chance to become confident learners and creative problem solvers.
In 1984, Howard Gardner, a Harvard psychologist, wrote a book called Frames of Mind in which he proposed a new view of intelligence and learning. Gardner challenged the idea that we could give a paper and pencil test to determine intellectual aptitude. Instead, Gardner insisted that there are at least 7 different intelligences. He called these Multiple Intelligences (MI). In 1999, Gardner published Intelligence Reframed adding two additional intelligences bringing the tally up to 9.
All people big and small have all of the intelligences. But we each have them in different combinations of strengths and weaknesses. It is vital that we discover these strengths and nurture them, both in ourselves and with our children. MI can be explained to young children by using the following simplified terms: word smart, logic smart, picture smart, body smart, music smart, people smart, self smart, nature smart and ‘being’ smart.
Orange Tea School’s pedagogy is centered around nurturing your child across all the intelligences regularly. With every subject we study, the curriculum is built using the MI “rainbow wheel”. You will notice the color coded reference guide on our curriculum. Each activity, project, book and song is accompanied with a note on the intelligences that we feel most highly correlate. One of our goals in using the MI framework is to familiarize children with their own learning style. The earlier they can learn how they learn, the more empowered they will be throughout their educational journey.
There are many ways to explore and play with MI at home. One place to begin is to have your child think of people they know who represent each intelligence. These could be people in their personal life, perhaps mommy is nature smart and daddy is picture smart. These could be famous people, for example: Dr Suess (word smart), Mr Rodgers (people smart). They could be characters from favorite shows or books, Tweak from Octonauts (logic smart), Angelina Ballerina (body smart). Another fun way to introduce MI is to have your child match an animal with each one (this will really appeal to a child who is nature smart): a gorilla (word smart), a cheetah (body smart), a whale (music smart). They can see their own strengths reflected in the intelligences of the animals they choose. At OTS we refer to these animals as our “heart animals”.
As a parent you have many opportunities to catch your child being smart. What games are their favorites to play? What books do they love? What shows do they like to watch? What kinds of things do they remember and talk about afterward? Do they prefer to play in groups or do they happily spend a lot of time by themselves? Do they pick up song lyrics and/or melodies easily? Do they ask surprisingly existential questions? Do they love to take things apart and see how they work? Have they always loved and been gentle around animals? Do they crave outside time in all weather?
As you begin to look through the lens of the 9 intelligences you will see things about yourself and your child previously unrevealed. Education, in its true meaning, is a process of excavating and uncovering the treasures within us. MI is an amazing tool we can share with our children to empower them with the knowledge and freedom to explore the many ways they are smart.