I read
Vocabulary Made Easy, in exchange for review from Homeschool.com. I got the book for free on Amazon on a Kindle Free Day. The book was written by Pat Wyman.
I took my time reading this book because I wanted to absorb the information. I would love for Brad to learn new words, despite his disabililty.
The first thing, which stood out, was the author provided links for three more free books on math, reading, and spelling.
Vocabulary made easy focuses on word association and pictures, which is what Brad's speech therapists use with him. Brad will recognize the picture and know the words more, than seeing a word and recognizing it. The book also talks about using visual, kinesthetic, and auditory learning styles. The author recommends taking a learning style quiz on
How to Learn before reading the book. From experience, I know Brad is more visual, while Kalen is kinesthetic (touch and feeling, movement). I also took the quiz for myself:
Learning Styles Preferences for Stacie D Wyatt
47% Visual
32% Auditory
21% Kinesthetic
Visual Learners
If your highest percentage is visual, you prefer to think in pictures or movies. This style is most effective when you want to create and recall images when you read, or when you are taking a written test.
School caters to highly visual learners because they make images when taking written tests, and can retrieve the information they learned much faster. The old adage, "one picture is worth a thousand words" is true for visual learners. Visual learners tend to be neat and organized and their learning style preference tends to most closely match most educational and company working environments.
Auditory Learners
If your highest preference is auditory, you prefer to learn by listening and often recall the words you've heard in your mind. If you are taking a written test, this tends to slow you down because you are speaking to yourself as you read.
Kinesthetic Learners
If your highest preference is kinesthetic, you prefer to be a hands-on learner and most likely love to move around frequently, like athletics, and to build things with your hands. Be grateful for your talents and also, it is important to know that most company and school environments cater to people whose highest learning style preference is visual.
The book also focuses on word association. If your children associate a word to a word or a word to a picture, it increases learning. For example, Romeo is associated to Juliet, or a song may help remember a memory. For example, I had an incident, which happened in 2001 and TLC's unpretty was playing in the background. I now associate that memory to TLC's song. You also can associate words to sounds. Another technique is to play music, while teaching your kids new words.
Anyway, the book teaches kids to learn one new word at a time, versus learning multiple words. Writing down 20 or so words and learning the meanings is not always effective either.
This was a great book. I would love to know if the techniques can be modified to special needs kids, more so, on Brad and Kalen's level. I definitely will try the index cards. I have been cutting up some of Brad's old home school vocabulary and making flash cards from the spelling sheets. Trying to match up the pictures to the words. Been a slow process though since I have a lot of work to cut up.
