Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Learning Styles

I have been told that my DS6 is a "block learner" meaning that when something catches his interest his entire focus becomes learning everything he can as quickly as he can. Once he's satisfied that he knows everything he needs to, he moves on to another subject. It's a really interesting thing to watch especially because he seems to learn the basic concepts and the advanced concepts and kind of skips everythiing in the middle.
I'm curious about learning styles with these kids and if my DS is fairly usual or if he's unusual in this as well.

I've never heard the term before, but I think this is what my DS7 and I are, and probably my DH, too. We all find an "obsession" and really dig into it. When we've exhausted our interest in that topic, we move on to something else.

I don't know if it's a common learning style or not, but I would say there are at least 2--and maybe 3--more of us in the world besides your son!

This sounds like what I've been calling "immersion learning." DD's seem to dive into a subject and don't come up for air until they've exhausted their curiosity. It seems to be my learning style too, but I didn't get to use it much during formal schooling. It may appear more uncommon than it actually is because it's not what's supported in our schools. Now I'm making up for lost time.

My 10 year old homeschooled son tends to learn like this with one to three subjects at a time. He is not satisfied with just reading a book about the subject he is interested in. He always has to look up more info on Wikipedia or other sources as he is reading and he wants to stop and discuss what he is learning. Even that is not enough for him. He almost always finds educational videos online on his own to go along with whatever he is studying. For example, when he was studying U.S. government he found "Electing A U.S. President in Plain English" and he liked the way the information was presented. When he is through learning a subject this way he usually seems to have a better understanding of the subject than I do.

LOL - My DH husband teased me about being like this even before DS12 was born. There was my 'Passive Solar Energy' Phase, and my 'Rewriting Nursery Rhymms' Phase. I was so in Gifted Denial at the time!

I've come to call it the 'Unit Studies' approach, with a nod the the homeschoolers who do things this way.

I've also read one paper that posited that there were 'Accelerative Gifties' and 'Encrichmentive Gifties' with the EGs being block learners, and the AGs not really being emotionally involved with choosing what they are learning, just wanting the pace and level correct. With that one paper I understood myself and DH SO much better. That was a long time ago, and I have know idea who I'm misquoting, but would love it if anyone has that info.

That's DS6! We call it obsessions. He spends months on one subjects and then moves on. He is so happy (and much well behaved) when he has one. Right now he is in the middle of one and I love it.

Yes, we do that around here. I used to work in a bookstore right after college, so that was a bit funny. There was the time I read a good chunk of the gardening books, organic food gardening mostly, but design and other types of books were read as well... I ended up knowing a pretty large number of plant names sort of by accident. It is pretty funny to me that I can walk through an unfamiliar garden and still name a lot of the plants.

Ds has done this with yu-gi-oh cards most recently. When he was very little he had a dinosaur thing. Mostly this is in the form of reading certain books over and over, looking at websites, videos, etc.

Dd has only been on the earth long enough for one obsession, ballet/nutcracker, but she's really working it. Books, videos, cds. Over and over.

Dh is on a food thing, with little mini-blocks where he'll read alot about and then work for a few weeks on a particular dish. (Cooking and retrying with slight variations)
Right now he is working on a really cool bread recipe that he found, and also some amazing lentil soup. Perfectionist, too.

When I was in school there was no internet and it wasn't easy for me to get to a library. There was no way for me to learn anything beyond what the school taught. Kids today are so lucky to have easy access to all this information.

I love learning this way right along with my son. He and I enjoy a lot of the same things. He says that he thinks he can learn just about anything by reading on his own and that he doesn't really need a teacher.

I love watching educational channels with him with the laptop nearby so we can look up more information when the show is over. He finds his newest "obsession" usually by wanting to know more about something that he saw on the science or history channels or it could be something that is happening in the news and he wants to know more about the events leading up to it.

He has had some interests that bordered on obsession that have been constant--vocabulary (he has always been a word nerd), history and current events.

My husband sometimes comes home from work and asks our son questions that our son knows the answer to but young college graduates who work in his office do not. When my son talks to his adult sister about things we think she would certainly have learned in school we find that she doesn't know what he is talking about and these are things that I remember learning in school. I am surprised at the number of people I see who don't see learning as something fun and once they get out of school they don't read or even care what is happening in the rest of the world.

h'mm, sounds like there are quite a few of us around!

Yup we do the same thing - me, DH, DS1 and not so much DS2 (poor out of the loop kid but he accomodates well)

Total obsession. We call it sequentially focused...

Sequentially focused...That sounds so much nicer than "his crazy obsession that we're all sick of and he can't stop talking about."