Defined with characteristics:
- Use one’s mental abilities to coordinate one’s own bodily movements
- Ability to understand things by using one’s body or parts of the body
- Use body to solve a problem, make something, put on a production
- Respond well to nonverbal communication
- Frequently can’t sit still, need to touch things
- Adept at all sorts of athletic and fine motor activities
- Typically chooses to be a participant rather than an observer
- Challenges the popular belief that mental and physical activity are unrelated
- Most controversial of the proposed intelligences
Potential careers:
Dancer, athlete, mime, actor, clown, comedian, craftsperson
Tools for Teachers:
Acting, drama, dancing, exercise, physical gestures, experiment, inventing, movement,
role playing, human graph, demonstrations, hands-on thinking
(See also: Multiple Intelligence Menus & Using Intelligence Menus)
Tips for Parents:
- Involve children in dancing, acting, or sports.
- Provide a variety of manipulatives (clay, fabric, blocks) for experimentation.
- Walk, jog, hike, bowl, play tennis, or bike as a family.
- Enjoy sliding, swinging, and riding toys.
- Provide chores like sweeping, setting table, emptying trash.
Play games like charades, Simon says, and hide-and-seek.
