by Pat Lamb (Author of: Let the Children Come; Children, Come to Me; When the Stars Fall Down; Widening the Church Doors to Teach the Narrow Way; My Thinking Book. Available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and www.patlambchristianauthor.com)
Train up a child…
Some Children are Picture Smart
We make a mistake as parents, teachers, and grandparents when we believe that children will act and respond in the same way that we do. God created each of us uniquely and each person is born with dominance in particular intelligences. That dominance influences the way we think and act. Sometimes children are born with the same dominant intelligences as their parents, but often they are not.
Experts in the field of personality have isolated seven intelligences of humans. They are verbal/linguistic, logical/mathematical, visual/spatial, musical/rhythmic, body/kinesthetic, interpersonal, and intrapersonal. These intelligences are also known as word smart, numbers smart, picture smart, music smart, body smart, people smart, and self smart.
Picture smart children are those who have a sense of spatial relationships. They think in images and pictures. They are often aware of colors, shapes, objects, and patterns in their environment. They have strong opinions about colors that go together, textures that are appropriate and pleasing, and decorating. They can “see with the mind’s eye”. They can pretend and imagine. They are our artists.
When teaching children who are dominant in the spatial/ visual intelligence, we need to give many opportunities for graphing, drawing, working with clay or other mediums. Using posters and charts will be the most effective way of presenting material. They are definitely visual learners. Appealing bulletin boards in classrooms are very effective. Since they are good at “seeing with the mind’s eye”, they will be able to visualize scenes and act them out. Role-playing past times in history helps in reinforcing learning in history lessons. Color coding parts of written material with highlighters is effective as well.
Children who are dominant in the visual intelligence may grow up to be an engineer, surveyor, architect, artist, graphic designer, photographer, inventor, pilot, layout editor, designer, interior decorator, or any career requiring skills such as drawing, painting, visualizing, creating visual presentations, graphing, or filming.
It is interesting to observe children for behavioral characteristics that are clues to dominant intelligences. Many of the Navajo children that my husband and I were privileged to teach displayed dominance in spatial intelligence. I recall an incident while teaching second grade on the Navajo reservation when I asked the children to draw a picture about a field trip we had taken. One little boy drew a school bus on a road with puffs of dust coming up from behind the exhaust. There was a tree with a squirrel and bird in it watching the bus go by. A little rabbit was peeking from behind the tree watching the bus. Children were waving out the windows of the bus and the sun had a smile on its face. I was astonished at so much detail in this one picture. He was definitely picture smart. Most Navajo children that I taught seemed to have the same love for art. Some children do well to draw a stick house with a tree and a sun. When a young child puts a lot of detail in drawings, it is probably an indication that there is some dominance in the visual/spatial intelligence.
It is nice that we have different personality tendencies. It certainly makes the world more interesting. It is of great value to understand these characteristics of children in order to better prepare them for their future.