19 Activities for Kinesthetic Learning
You may have heard that multisensory instruction involves three types of activities:
- Visual
- Auditory
- Kinesthetic
Visual obviously refers to sight, and auditory refers to hearing. But what does kinesthetic mean?
The term kinesthetic refers to touching, doing, experiencing, or being physically active, and it’s one of the three main pathways to the brain.
Kinesthetic Activities Are Important for All Learners
You may already know that when children are taught using all three pathways to the brain, they learn even more than when they are taught only through just one pathway (Farkus, 2003)1. The more senses we involve, the more learning occurs. So even if your child is an auditory or visual learner, it is still important to teach through kinesthetic activities as well. By doing so, not only will you be sure to teach to your child’s strongest pathway, but you will also maximize long-term retention of the information.
Kinesthetic activities help ingrain learning into long-term memory by turning a lesson into a physical experience. When a child is engaged in a kinesthetic activity, he is moving and touching and interacting with his lessons. And a great side benefit is that kinesthetic learning activities are usually lots of fun.
10 Free Kinesthetic Activities to Try with Your Kids
Visit these blog posts to get free kinesthetic activities to try with your children.
9 More Activities for Kinesthetic Learning
Most hands-on activities can be completed with minimal materials and with no advanced preparation. An effective spelling activity can be as simple as writing letters in the air or tapping out syllables on a kitchen counter—no materials required!
- Activities that use letter tiles are some of the most effective activities for teaching reading and spelling. In fact, every lesson of All About Reading and All About Spelling includes letter tiles.
- Live near the beach? Trace letters, words, or phonograms in the sand. Is it winter? Go outside and stomp giant letters in the snow.
- For some ooey-gooey fun, fill a zip-top baggie with shaving cream, whipped cream, liquid soap, glue, or pudding. Seal the bag and have your child write letters or words on the bag.
- Spell words while jumping on a trampoline, bouncing a ball, or playing catch. Yell out one letter for every jump, bounce, or toss!
- Use playdough, pipe cleaners, or Wikki Stix to form letters and words.
- Write letters or words in each square of a hopscotch grid. Follow standard hopscotch rules, using beanbags, stones, or bottle caps for markers. When the child stops to pick up his marker, he reads the letter or word in the square.
- Use a marker to write letters or words on a large beach ball. Have your child throw the ball in the air, catch it, and say the letters or words closest to his thumbs.
- Have a “snowball” fight using ping pong balls, Nerf balls, or crumpled paper. Write letters or words on index cards and tape them to the wall. As you call out letters or words, your child must find them and throw snowballs at them.
- Play hide and seek with words and sentences. Write them on pieces of paper and hide them around the room. When your child finds a piece of paper, he must read it before searching for the next one.
Kinesthetic Learning Is Fun—and the Possibilities Are Endless!
Do you have a favorite hands-on activity for teaching reading and spelling? Post in the comments below!
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1Farkus, R.D. (2003). Effects of traditional versus learning-styles instructional methods on middle school students. The Journal of Educational Research, 97(1), 42-51.
Karen
says:I listen to you! Tomorrow, we are using the emojis for fun – expression reading, writing sentences, and we have to pick one (touch) that we can’t see to use – (Seeing the sentences we write, Auditory – hearing the sentences we read out loud with expression and, Kinesthetic – pulling an emoji out of a jar. Learning is fun with you Marie
Robin E.
says: Customer ServiceSo, how did the Fun with Emojis activity go with your student, Karen? I hope it was helpful in adding some fun and multisensory learning.
Martin Moses Anguria
says:It was wonderful and productive lesson to me.
MARIA CLAUDIA
says:Congratulations! Do you have suggestions for online lessons for adult kinesthetic students?
Robin E.
says: Customer ServiceNot really, Maria. Online learning itself reduces the ability to add tactile and kinesthetic activities because, by its very nature, it is not possible to interact with the material physically.
You don’t mention what subject matter your students are studying, but the best approach would be to have them physically use whatever they are learning as much as possible. Printed textbooks are important even with online classes for this reason.
I’m sorry I’m not much help.
Dorina
says:Excellent!
Robin E.
says: Customer ServiceGlad you like it, Dorina!
Laticia W
says:This is perfect for my wiggly little Kindergartner! We just started using the AAR curriculum through our HS and I can’t wait to dig in! We don’t have the wooden pieces at our disposal so I improvised using popsicle sticks and pipe cleaners and it was a huge hit! Will start using the letter tiles this week! :)
Robin E.
says: Customer ServiceIt’s great to improvise, Laticia! I hope this week goes really well for you.
Kimfa Johnson
says:I’ve recently noticed my daughter is a kinesthetic learner and here in our country of Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean, we do not cater to their needs as much as we should. So I am looking for any advice and/or help I can get to assist my 10yr old daughter who is now in the 4th grade. (we call it standard 4 down here). This reading above was very helpful and will be put to good use. Thank you.
Robin E.
says: Customer ServiceI’m glad this was helpful for you, Kimfa. Take a look at our Multisensory Teaching for Reading and Spelling blog post as well. Research has found that students learn best of all when they learning using visual, auditory, and kinesthetic methods all together, even better than when one is used alone, even if it is their strongest one.
If you have any questions or need ideas, please let me know.
Betty Ann Blackford
says:Hi, Marie I really love this set of information and activity tips you sent. I will definitely share this information with both parents and students.
Robin E.
says: Customer ServiceThank you for sharing our blog, Betty Ann!
Elvia
says:Thank you so much.
Rashanda
says:These are helpful ideas especially for wiggly young boys!
Robin E.
says: Customer ServiceGlad you liked this article, Rashanda!
Claudine Palmer
says:Brilliant information, this has confirmed my suspicions that I’m am not crazy. Now i know what i can do to help my child.
Thank you, Very help
Robin E.
says: Customer ServiceYou’re welcome, Claudine. Let me know if you need anything else.
Nina Beck
says:Interesting site! Thank you .
Robin E.
says: Customer ServiceYou’re welcome, Nina. If you have any questions, just let me know. 😊
Shara
says:What a great website. Some amazing and yet simple ideas to help children with their learning. I have always been a fan of kinesthetic learning and yes children always enjoy the learning and retain the information for longer. Thank you.
Merry
says: Customer ServiceThanks, Shara! Have fun teaching your students!
Kristy Walker
says:Do you have any templates I am able to print out as a copy for any of the activities above.
Merry
says: Customer ServiceHi Kristy,
Yes, many of the ideas above have templates (word-flippers, swatting phonograms, tactile letter cards and many others do)–just click on the one you are interested in to go to the page with the template. Enjoy!
Audra Wilburn
says:Looking for tips on how to help my child distinguish when and how to use a capital letter versus a lowercase letter. For example when she writes the word mop she’s using a capital P at the end almost every time. Please help!!
Robin E.
says: Customer ServiceAudra,
How old is your child? This sort of error is common with younger students and will resolve in time with gentle correction. If she is 5 or 6, just point to the letter and tell her, “This needs to be a lower case letter, not a capital.” Discuss that capitals are used only in very specific places: the first letter in a sentence, the first letter in a name, and for some abbreviations. Otherwise, we use lower case letters. (She may point out that billboards and signs often use all caps. Let her know that advertisers just do whatever they can to get our attention.)
If she is older, say 9 or 10 or older, you may find this article on Dysgraphia informative. Dysgraphia is a learning disability that affects a person’s ability to write and spell. One of the symptoms is placing capital letters in random places well after other students have stopped doing so. If she is 7 to 8 years old, see if she has a lot of the other symptoms of dysgraphia too. If she doesn’t, it may just be that she needs to spend time consistently every day working on writing and getting the use of capitals correct for a while for her to master them.
I hope this helps, but let me know if you have further questions or need more information.
Susan
says:Need kinestetic activities to slow a fast reader down in order to comprehend and pay attention to punctuation
Merry
says: Customer ServiceHi Susan–that can be tricky sometimes! Check out 10 Solutions for Kids Who Read Too Fast: https://blog.allaboutlearningpress.com/child-reads-too-fast/.
Lindiwe mlambo
says:Hellow
Help me please, on how will I use Edu-kineseology to promote reading,writing and learning to my grade R learners
Robin E.
says: Customer ServiceLindiwe,
I’m happy to help. This blog post gives lots of ideas for kinesthetic activities, but we have many more. Take a look at:
Reading Readiness: The Top 5 Skills
5 Ways to Teach Rhyming
Fun Ways to Develop Phonological Awareness
Activities for Learning the Alphabet
Please let me know if there is something specific you are looking for.
Tulisha Scott
says:Thank you for so many great ideas!
Kevin McCabe
says:Many thanks for these great ideas
Karen
says:Thank you for the wonderful user-friendly ideas.
Jenilee Forst
says:We are going to be practicing spelling in the sand this summer for sure. Great ideas!
Adel
says:Thank you for the information it is helpful
Connie
says:Am curious about how to go about teaching my kinesthetic learner to do creative writing.
Robin E.
says: Customer ServiceGreat questions, Connie. However, without knowing your learner’s age or how she or he is doing with reading and spelling it’s hard to give specific advice. Children need to be doing well with reading and spelling before they are ready to begin writing their own compositions. Our blog post Language Arts in My Household has more information about this.
If your student is doing well with reading and spelling and is ready to do formal writing, one thing you can do is break writing down into incremental steps so he or she can know exactly what to do first, then second, and so on. There are a number of writing curricula that are incremental like this. Let me know if you need recommendations.
Cynthia Pinto
says:Thank you so much for the hard work and putting in so much effort and thought in creating this blog. I love it for the loads of information it provides. I’m so excited to try all the activities explained here. God bless.
Suzy
says:Thank you for the easy and fun ideas to make learning fun!
Name Pinyana
says:I m teaching these kinds of learners l need this information like anything because they are really struggling and I want to help them.
Emeli
says:Board games are great learning tools, especially in the last decade or so when the popularity of board games has swelled and you can find some much variety in them now. You can find a board game to go with pretty much any subject!
Robin E.
says: Customer ServiceWe agree, Emeli! We recently did a blog post that discussed Using the Game Boggle to Build Language Skills. We have other game reviews and printable games available too.
Meghan
says:That snowball fight activity sounds like something my son would love!
Jeannette
says:These are some wonderful ideas to use with my child who has multiple learning disabilities. Thank you for these resources
Merry
says: Customer ServiceYou’re welcome, Jeannette! You might find these tips for working with struggling learners helpful too.
Janette Harris
says:Thank you so much for these wonderful ideas! I have a kinesthetic learner who also has some special needs. It has been challenging to find enough activities to reach her. Our favorite hands-on reading activity is playing board games.
Robin E.
says: Customer ServiceJanette,
Board games are great learning tools, especially in the last decade or so when the popularity of board games has swelled and you can find some much variety in them now. You can find a board game to go with pretty much any subject!
Mia
says:Thanks for the kinesthetic learning ideas!