The Foundation Blocks for Learning

The philosophy of “Learning Skills 4 Kids” is based on the belief that it is essential for a child to have a strong foundation upon which to build further skills. Our goal is to work toward building up the foundation to ensure that it is solid and strong. If a child has a weakness in one or more of the foundation skills, we believe that these areas must be attended to before one can expect the child to become an effective learner at school.

We like to use the analogy of a house. The foundation of the house is made up of the following 4 building blocks. These are the underlying skills a child needs in order to learn:

Visual Perception – This ability allows us to interpret that which we see. Specific skills include letter formation, spacing, line orientation, direction of lines, copying skills, scanning, sequencing, and visual recall.

Auditory Perception – This ability allows us to interpret that which we hear. Auditory perception involves listening to and following directions, listening to and remembering details in stories, sequencing and analysing sounds, numbers and words and discriminating between sounds in words.

Gross and Fine Motor Skills –

Gross motor skills involve the development and use of large muscles such as trunk and legs to perform activities for posture, balance, range of motion, sensory integration, and proprioceptive ( using our senses i.e. seeing, hearing, touch, taste, smell and balance) tasks.

Fine motor skills involve the development and use of small muscles to perform activities normally referring to the hands e.g. handwriting skills, pencil grip, scissor use and manipulating small objects

Language – This refers to receptive language skills( understanding of language), expressive language skills (talking and expressing oneself) and pragmatic skills (social skills) of language.

The walls of the house are the methods used for teaching a child to learn. If the foundation (underlying skills) is solid and strong, the walls (teaching methods) will be well supported and as a result, the roof of the house (reading, spelling and writing skills) will be successfully built.

Should one or more of the building blocks of the foundation be weak, this will create instability and the walls of the house may crack. This will not form a good framework for the roof. The result will be a house that is far from stable. Similarly, should the child’s foundation be weak (i.e. one or more of the 4 building blocks listed above), one would expect the child to experience some difficulty at school. It doesn’t matter how efficient the walls of the house are (teaching methods), without a solid foundation, the child will find it difficult to thrive. Our goal is therefore to ensure the child has a solid foundation upon which learning can take place.