Discover Your Kids’ Hidden Strengths
In homeschooling circles there is often talk about learning styles and strengths. If you’re like me, you’ve probably done little questionnaires to discover your kids’ (or your owns!) learning styles or personality traits. Have you ever been curious to discover your kids’ hidden strengths – those little areas of interest or gifting that might not be so obvious?
We recently had the opportunity to try out Thrively, a free site that allows kids to explore their strengths through a fun questionnaire. It then matches the results with extracurricular activities. Kids uncover their strengths through a strength assessment developed by two board-certified pediatric neuropsychologists.
Here’s how Thrively was described to me (and why it captured my interest):
We have the largest directory of activities in the country, including internships, field trips, over 18,000 camps and 25,000 educational apps to search from. Our strength assessment is the first of its kind that has been designed specifically for children. It is an extremely positive way of kids to discover (or affirm) the characteristics that make them unique and awesome.” (emphasis mine)
Megan (12) was my first guinea pig since Josh was out of town. She really enjoyed taking the assessment, which takes about 20 minutes or so unless you have a child who wants to offer running commentary on most of the questions. Not that I have one of those. {ahem}
Josh (14) is the kid who has always disliked anything that remotely smacks of school, so I had him do the assessment one afternoon between regular school assignments. He actually found it rather interesting and didn’t complain about “extra work.”
The thing that surprised me most, though, was that Brianna (19) came home while Josh was doing his assessment. When he completed it, I was reading his results aloud. Brianna piped up and said, “Can I do that?”
See? There are lots of us who enjoy doing those little surveys that confirm the things we know about ourselves and uncover little things we might not have considered.
It didn’t surprise me at all that Megan was identified as creative and fun-loving with a strength of balance. She is my little gymnast, after all. Based on her strengths, a list of suggested activities was pulled up, including a summer camp not too far from here that offers things activities like rock climbing. She was very interested in that. I’m not sure I’m ready to send her off to a camp with strangers, but we are definitely going to explore rock climbing at a local indoor facility.
Josh was identified as a verbal, fun-loving, creative thinker. No surprises there. What did surprise me is that he was also flagged as analytical. The next surprise was finding a suggested activity right in our own city that I knew, as soon as it popped up on the screen, would be something he would love – skeet shooting. I had no idea there was anywhere to do that locally and he was, not surprisingly, immediately interested. I see a field trip in our future.
Brianna’s results were right on target, too – she’s an assertive, creative, global-thinker. Some people might not guess the assertiveness, but that’s been evident to us for years – not in an annoying way. She’s just not afraid to speak up for herself. As a very non-confrontational person, I like that quality about her. I don’t want her to be rude, but assertiveness is not a bad thing.
Kids can mark as favorites the activities that interest them, so that they can come back to them later. In addition to suggesting activities, Thrively also has an fantastic video library to help kids learn more about their strengths and interests. For example, it suggested a TED-ed video (love those!) for Josh featuring Sting talking about how he started writing songs. There was one on artist Alex Pardee for Brianna.
As homeschooling families, we often talk about helping kids explore their natural gifting and talents, but it can be tricky to do that when our own knowledge about how to do something or where our kids can get involved is limited. Thrively can help break down those barriers with their huge video library and activity database – and you can’t beat free!
As Thrively grows, they are continuing to improve the site by:
- Adding prices for activities when available
- Adding thousands more educational apps, that can be searched for through the directory, sorted by price, and also sorted by device (Kindle, iOs, and Android)
- Making the videos searchable through the directory
Your kids can begin taking advantage of all Thrively has to offer and learning more about their natural areas of gifting by taking the free strength assessment. There is also a free journal you can download to help them process what they’ve learned about themselves.
And, what’s in it for you? You may get to enjoy some back-to-school or just-for-fun shopping because as an added bonus, everyone who downloads the journal and completes the assessment by August 31, will be entered to win a $50 Amazon gift card!
Follow the directions on the RaffleCopter widget below to enter.
Rules: This giveaway is open to United States residents, ages 18 years and older only. Giveaway ends at 11:59 PM (ET) on Sunday, August 31. The winner will be selected at random using Random.org via RaffleCopter.
The winner will notified via email and given 72 hours to respond. You must enter a valid email address to win. In the event that the winner cannot be contacted by email or does not respond within 72 hours, the prize will be forfeited and and alternate winner selected.
Click to read the complete rules. By entering this giveaway, you indicate that you have read and agreed to abide by these rules.
Kris Bales is a newly-retired homeschool mom and the quirky, Christ-following, painfully honest founder (and former owner) of Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers. She has a pretty serious addiction to sweet tea and Words with Friends. Kris and her husband of over 30 years are parents to three amazing homeschool grads. They share their home with three dogs, two cats, a ball python, a bearded dragon, and seven birds.
We have only done this with one child so far and I am absolutely shocked with how accurate it was! I loved the question at the end of the journal about how ti use your strengths in the family, etc. Thank you, Kris!!!!
That’s cool, Jess! We were very impressed with the accuracy, too. My kids really had fun with it.
This is absolutely perfect timing! My middle child has severe dyslexia and has struggled with self-esteem issues. I have not done a very good job of finding her strengths in outside activities, mostly due to cost. But I recently committed to getting her out and involved ASAP. This is the perfect starting place. She was excited to take the assessment! Thanks so much, Kris!!
That’s great, Leigh! I’m so glad I could help.
Hi Kris,
Thanks so much for an awesome review! If anyone has any questions about the site, or suggestions as to how we can make it more homeschool or special needs-friendly, you are welcome to email me anytime at [email protected].
Thanks again, and enjoy the last moments of summer.
-Adrienne
This is perfect for us! I’m going to use it to find out where my kids real interests lie. 🙂
How exciting! I’m so glad my son and I checked out Thrively.com; we both learned some things about him that surprised us. And, of course, I’m thrilled that I won the giveaway! Thanks, WUH & Thrively!