If your child finds reading or spelling difficult, multisensory learning can give them the boost they need to get back on track.
Before we explain how it works, it helps to understand what’s happening in the brain when a child learns to read.
Reading Is Not Natural For The Brain
We explain this in more detail in our article, ‘Why Learning to Read is Difficult‘. However, a simple analogy is to think of your child’s brain as a dense, tangled forest. Learning to read a word is like trying to clear a path through that forest:
- The First Attempt: The first time your child sounds out a word, there is no path at all. Pushing through the thick undergrowth is slow and tiring, and it takes a huge amount of mental effort. This is why reading can leave them feeling worn out or frustrated.
- The Single‑Sensory Path: If we only show a child a word on a page, they’re relying on just their eyes. Their brain forms a tiny, fragile trail rather than a clear path. When they’re tired, distracted, or stressed, that faint trail can quickly disappear — and suddenly they “forget” the word they knew yesterday.
How Multisensory Input Builds Stronger Reading Pathways
Multisensory learning involves seeing, hearing, touching, and moving all at the same time.
When a child:
- sees the letters
- hears the sounds
- touches and moves alphabet cards while building the word, or traces the word
…several regions in the brain are activated simultaneously, and the nerve cells (neurons) in different areas interconnect. Neuroscientists tell us, ‘neurons that fire together wire together.’
So, essentially, multisensory activities help rewire the brain, and the extra connections build a stronger, more reliable reading pathway.
The signal from a single sensory input is weak because it travels along a thin, isolated ‘wire’. With multisensory inputs, several ‘wires’ join together to form a thicker, more robust connection which:
- speeds up processing
- strengthens memory
- provides backup routes if one sense falters
- makes reading feel easier and more automatic
Why Hands-On Activities Help Beginning Readers
For young readers, phonics concepts like phonemes, graphemes, blending, and segmenting can feel very abstract. However, when children build words with alphabet cards or write them on paper, these ideas become more concrete and easier to understand.
This matters because research suggests that abstract ideas can place heavy demands on a child’s working memory. Concrete examples and hands-on activities provide additional support, helping children focus on understanding sounds, letters and words without becoming overwhelmed.
Over time, this can help children develop greater confidence, reading fluency and comprehension.
Examples of Multisensory Activities
Writing is an important multisensory activity. As children develop their fine motor skills by tracing and writing letters, it forces the hand, eyes, and inner voice to work in synchronisation.
From Effortful Reading To Automatic Reading
Multisensory learning is effective, but it’s not a magic bullet. It still takes a lot of practice before children develop automatic word recognition.
Regular practice produces a substance called myelin in the brain. This wraps around the nerve fibres, forming an insulating layer. Just like the plastic coating around an electrical wire, it protects the nerves and allows electrical signals to travel faster and more efficiently.
