Multiple Intelligences in Early Childhood

Picture Smart - Hands-On - Visual

1. Magazines - Build collages; make hanging mobiles of pictures; make badges, sashes, hats and necklaces.
2. Sidewalk chalk
3. Collect photographs for a kid's album
4. Computer programs - graphics, drawing, making cards, making posters.
5. Video - Make a movie based on a favorite story; have the child read the story on video or retell the story on video.
6. Make a scrapbook in order to build vocabulary.
7. Playdough, modeling clay, beads, strings, lacing, legos, cars, trucks, construct a town.
8. Aquarium - Pet Day - Collect posters of animals, build a petting zoo; find local playgrounds.
9. Science - use a microscope, a telescope, magnifying glasses, measuring cups, volcano kits (vinegar, baking soda), tornado (2 liter bottle, colored water and glitter).
10. Use cereal and glue to make decorations; use chocolate pudding on paper as a paint;
11. Make up household math problems. If everyone at the table gets 1 carrot, how many carrots do we need?
12. Collect picture books - Teach shapes, colors, and size; Make graphs;
13. Build your own Art Center - Have paints, brushes, crayons, magic markers, plenty of paper, scissors available in one place.
14. My Room - Let the child work with you arranging their furniture and organizing the room. Draw a map of the room and teach them the vocabulary for each item in the room.
15. Arrange and plant a flower garden - Build a butterfly garden; Categorize flowers by shape, size, and color. Take pictures of your vegetable garden. Eat the results!
16. Discuss art pictures. Go to museums.
17. Arrange clothing and toy drawers.
18. Build "I Spy" books from treasures discovered on nature walks.
19. Build craft projects together - Collect trash and build trash crafts.
20. Find special colors in the newspapers. Cut them out.

Music Smart - Teaching Rhythm, Poetry, and Songs

1. Pots and Pans - Teach rhythm and tones with pots and pans.
2. Tapes, CDs, Radio, and TV - Use tapes, CDs, and Radio to teach listening skills. Have family sing-a-longs.
3. What kinds of music do you have in your home? Find ways to expand those choices.
4. Make homemade musical instruments from bottles, pans, baskets.
5. Dancing - Go to concerts and musicals. Free dancing - dancing to the music.
6. Provide music lessons: piano, violin, other instruments, vocal.
7. Join a children's choir.
8. Record unusual sounds in nature and in the city. Teach your child
9. Teach nursery rhymes and poetry.
10. Act out nursery rhymes.
11. Make animal sounds. The other children guess the animal.

Nature Smart - Working with Plants and Animals and the Outdoors

1. In the Backyard - Identify local plants; animals; look for insects; count birds; build a bird feeder; look for dead items.
2. Aquarium/Terrarium - Identify the creatures; print a list of responsibilities; Practice caring for the aquarium; compare living with non-living things.
3. Weather - Cloud identification; proper clothing for the type of weather; describing how rain works; how thunder works; what is lightning?
4. Build an Ant Farm.
5. Care for a gerbil or hamster.
6. Indoor gardening - sprouting seeds, transplanting plants outside.
7. Build a water table and a sand table.
8. Build a bug box.

Self Smart - Building personal responsibility

1. Help set up a tent outside or build a tent out of sheets indoors. Give the child a place all of his/her own.
2. Set up a small partition in the room that can be a personal corner for reading, a private spot in the house.
3. Build a comfortable reading area in the house.
4. Teach your child to build collections.
5. Let the child plan the family field trip.
6. Look at the interests of your child and plan related activities.
7. Caring for a plant through all of its cycles helps a child to see the larger picture of growth.
8. Make a collection of famous people's faces from the newspaper. Decide why they are famous.

People Smart - Learning to work in teams

1. Get your children involved in clubs, scouts, sports teams.
2. Inviting friends over to the house. Practicing hospitality.
3. Finding ways to help needy families in the community.
4. Planning a party - budget, decorations, games, invitations.
5. Learning manners.
6. Role Playing; story retelling to a large group.
7. Games that teach teamwork: relay races, baseball, soccer, basketball.
8. Home Helpers - Responsibilities for waking other brothers and sisters
9. Take your children to community events.

Number Smart - Math Skills - Logic - Problem-Solving

1. Cooking - Let your child follow recipes. Measure, pour, cut, sort, set table, fill up dishwasher.
2. Chores - Laundry sorting, feed pets (measure food), shopping with the allowance, chore charts, cleaning room-sort toys.
3. Count clothes.
4. Water play - pouring water from different containers. How many cups make a gallon?
5. Play games together - Yahtzee, Monopoly, Dominoes.
6. Have building blocks available for making patterns and measuring.
7. Count all the change in Dad's pocket and Mom's purse.
8. Measuring, cutting, and building in the garage.
9. Plan out a family trip on a map. Draw a map of the route to school.
10. Teach your child how to brainstorm solutions to a problem.
11. Look for patterns and shapes in each room.
12. Search the newspaper for number hunts.
13. Cut coupons out of the newspaper and take your child shopping.
14. Have your child name the steps for doing something (i.e., making a sandwich, brushing teeth). Emphasize the words: "what is first....what is last....what is next?"

Word Smart - Reading and Writing

1. Have your child pick out things in your pantry that begin with the class' letter of the week.
2. Turn the kitchen into a store, cut out magazine pictures, sort mail, enjoy computer strategy games together.
3. Act out favorite stories.
4. Quiet reading time.
5. Visit the local library frequently.
6. Build a collection of age-appropriate games and play together as a family. Learn to play Junior Scrabble.
7. Build up a computer software library of reading games and interactive stories.
8. Build a collection of puzzles.
9. Take time to talk to each child individually every day. Listen to them.
10. Help them keep a diary with drawings, photos, and pictures. Take dictation - copy down their stories and adventures.
11. Tape your child's favorite stories.
12. Have children retell stories using puppets.
13. Build a large library of audiotapes, picture books, encyclopedias, and dictionaries.
14. Label objects in a room.
15. Build an audiotape of the oral history of your family. Involve grandparents, aunts, uncles, and great grandparents.
16. Search for opportunities for your child to be a pen-pal with someone in another state or country.
17. Print a family newspaper with everyone contributing pictures and stories.
18. Make a box of story starters. These would be pictures or one-liners that would get a child started on writing or telling an original story.
19. Build a travel scrapbook.
20. Build a picture dictionary using photos from the newspapers and magazines.
21. Cut out comic strips and see if the child can put them together in the correct sequence.
22. Letter Hunt - Search for a favorite letter (A) in all shapes and sizes. Cut the examples out of newspapers, ads, and magazines.
23. Make cards of interesting faces - Crying, laughing, smiling, angry. See if your child can guess what the person is thinking or feeling.
24. Make your own family weather chart - Collect information on each day's weather.
25. Use the newspaper to make a set of famous sports figures cards with statistics and biographical information.

Body Smart - Action, High Energy

1. Expand your family's variety of activities: roller blading, hiking, visiting parks, walking the neighborhood, fishing, camping, yard work, trampoline, swingsets, jump rope.
2. Exercise together. Clean the house/yard together.
3. Play "Mother May I?"
4. Organize a regular recycling routine.
5. Take bike hikes together.
6. Get involved in drama classes.
7. Let the children help plan the house decorations for each season.
8. Build climbing and balancing equipment.
9. Introduce your child to children's exercise videos.
10. Build a backyard obstacle course.