Master of Memory: Accelerated learning, education, memorization - MMem 0462: How to teach “gifted” children

Episode Date: December 15, 2015

Kai has a 4-year-old daughter in a “talented and gifted” program, and she asks about how to teach her daughter how to learn. In my response I talk about the value of learning about the child’s own learning methods first. What do you want to learn? Leave your question at http://MasterOfMemory.com/. Music credit: Maurice Ravel’s String Quartet, 2nd […]

Master of Memory 462. Welcome to Master of Memory. I'm Timothy, and I'm here to answer your accelerated learning questions every day and to inspire and empower you to learn anything you want to learn faster than ever. Kai asked at masterofmemory.com slash question, how can I teach my daughter, a four-year-old in a talented and gifted program, to memorize and retain more at such an early age? So Kai, I have one main thing that I would recommend that you do, and that is first, before anything else, see if you can identify what she does differently from other kids in terms of tactics and interests already on her own.

And for me, the interest side is probably the stronger one. So the main thing is that the reason that she's in a talented and gifted program or the reason that she's exhibiting this aptitude and this knack for learning things is probably because of either natural aptitudes that she has personally or personal interests that she has, some sort of thirst for knowledge or love of making mental connections. And those aren't all the same thing. You need to see the nuances of that. So let's say hypothetically that she has a huge aptitude for math. She, for some reason, really loves doing stuff with numbers and seeing different numbers add up to different things and multiply to different things.

I don't know as a four-year-old what you're seeing, but basically you can interpret that in a way that will let you know what it is that she'll be interested in and that you can utilize to help her learn more things further on. More than anything, I think the important thing is to cultivate a love of learning and of making connections. And it's always been my experience that children really love to make connections like that. That's the reason that they like interesting and mind stimulating games because they make connections that they didn't make before. At least that's one of the things that has always motivated me. I go, wow, you know, these numbers multiply to this number. And yet when you multiply them the other way, they also multiply to this number.

Like three fives is also the same thing as five threes. That really fascinated me. And then eventually that same fascination with that sort of connection that always works ended up translating to other subjects like history and things like that, just because I loved making those connections and I loved learning things. And eventually I just loved the fact of knowledge itself.

But the big thing is recognize what it is that motivates her and what it is that she's particularly good at and see if you can nurture that and inspire and motivate her to do other things with that as well rather than making her learn things use her motivation because motivation is the strongest thing in any project really and so if you can use the natural interest that she has and the natural i don't know even the things outside of learning the things that she just likes to do and use those as teaching opportunities tying them back to what she loves about learning that's the best way that you can keep her interested in learning

and keep her interested in memorizing and retaining information. As far as the particular tactics that I recommend for children, you can just search online for teaching children or teaching and then just query Google for my website, Master of Memory, and you'll be able to see some stuff that I've said before about teaching children on that and some specific tactics. But the number one thing that I recommend for you, Kai, in this particular episode is just be very aware of what she's interested in and what keeps her going and feel that more than anything.

Thanks for the question, Kai. And for everyone listening, please go to masterofmemory.com slash mandarin to see our new Kickstarter project. Well, I guess it's not so new. It's actually going to expire on Friday, so you might wanna check it out as quickly as you can. This project, our Mandarin course, is not just to create a free course for learning Mandarin,

which is something that's fairly lacking online, but it's also a way to get the ball rolling for further projects at Master of Memory so that we can create more and more free courses for history, geography, our poetry memorization course, and our biblical Greek course. Getting the word out about the Mandarin project and getting it funded by Friday, December 18 is the best way that we can get the ball rolling quickly on these other projects, and so just go to masterofmemory.com slash mandarin to find out about that. Meanwhile, what do you want to learn? The world's knowledge can be yours. Leave your learning request at masterofmemory.com slash question, and I'll talk to you again soon.