Classic Toys For Tots

It seems that learning is becoming easier as we progress. It is becoming harder to measure but I estimate that my son already knows to read around 20 words consistently. It is very impressive since we just started 5 weeks ago. I am really encouraged by it and keep thinking about new ways to enhance the learning procedure. This week I started creating a book for him that includes familiar words.  The purpose is to give him an opportunity to start reading a book by himself. I will let you know how he responds to it once it is printed.

Educational Toys – Teaching your toddler to read

This week I decided to move to the next DVD earlier than suggested as my son started to lose interest in the starter DVD. It really worked!!! his interest level went up again and he started to learn new words. I noticed that the learning process is faster now, as if he got the idea and becomes more familiar with the written word. When I read stories to him he often points at the words and asks me what it says which means that he realized that these “symbols” have meaning. I feel that a whole new world has opened for him to explore and I hope that soon enough he will be able to read single word books by himself and be encouraged and intrigued by the ability to do so (I might create a book for him to read with his favorite words). This week he added around 4-5 new words to his vocabulary and I must confess that I didn’t really practice with him this week so it was basically acquired from watching the Video.

Educational Toys – Teaching your toddler to read

So another week has passed and I must admit that it was pretty hectic and I wasn’t so good with practicing the words with my son. During this week he watched the video twice a day as usual but I could see his level of interest in the video started decreasing and he wanted to do more things while watching. However, he is still interested and whenever we participate more and challenge him while watching the video, he is much more focused and enthusiastic about it.

In order to be faithful to this little experiment, I checked  his familiarity with the words this evening and I was very happy to discover that he could read in an arbitrary order 8 words: Tiger, elephant, gorilla, eyes, cat/s, dog/s, Hi and Baby.

It seems that as the days go by, some of the words are very easy for him to recognize; even if he cannot read them he will know to differentiate them from others. It is very encouraging when realizing that 3 weeks ago he had no tools to recognize these words and now he reads them so easily. Even if this program will not be as miraculous for him as it seems on the videos I watched, he is still gaining confidence, knowledge and familiarity with the written word which is a very satisfying.

Until the next post…

Educational Toys – Teaching your toddler to read

So two weeks have passed since we started following the “Your baby can read program”.  So far my son can identify and read the word “Hi” easily. Regarding the rest of the words I have noticed that when I go over the book or the cards with him he will recognize  some of the words (such as: eyes, elephant, tiger and so on) but it looks as if it is related to other clues that he remembers, such as the order of the words in the book or the color of the card. The reason I am saying that is that when I try to show him the same words in a different form (on other flash cards or when I write it down) he doesn’t recognize them. I guess that the first stage is memorizing and only later comes the stage of understanding  the words structure and the sound that each letter makes.

According to Dr Titzer’s  it takes a month for a child to learn the first batch of words so it is still early to say. But my son is curious about it and is getting used to this new world of words that is becoming more familiar and intriguing as it receives more meaning. I have faith in this program and I’m curious to see what will happen next.

A note that I would like to add is that my son knows all the upper-case form of  letters  but until recently he was not familiar with the lower-case letters. So I was thinking to start playing a game with him of  matching the upper-case letter with the lower-case letter since it might help him recognize the words in the video (they are all written in lower case letters). Another thought that crossed my mind was to create a game in which he will need to match the photo with its relevant word starting with the words that are suggested in the program.

I will keep you all posted…

Quick update… I just finished writing the post when my son was watching the video. I started going over the words with him using the book and cards after the video ended.  I showed him the words in the book in a random order. he read 5 words straight (not including “Hi” which I didn’t show him: Tiger, Gorilla, eyes, cat and elephant). Few minutes later I showed him some of the same words again and he couldn’t tell me what they were. I assume the first time he sees the word he automatically extract the stored information but when he needs to think about it again, it is harder for him to repeat. It is encouraging, though, since it shows he is taking in the information and processes it.

Educational Toys – Teaching your toddler to read

Recently, I’ve been pondering about teaching my son to read. When I shared my thoughts with people around me, they were surprised that I’m considering doing that in such a young age (28 months). My gut feeling was that it is the right time since in the last few months my son has been eager to learn letters and was absorbing new information like a sponge. in addition, he loves books and is asking us to read him stories many times during the day and memorize them. I had my doubts, though, since I try not to be a “pushy” mom and it is important to me to be tuned in to his needs and feelings and make educational decisions accordingly.

Picture taken from parentsprecinct.com

Eventually, I figured that my son’s behavior signals  that he is up for the challenge and decided to make some small first steps towards this goal. At first I bought him the Magnetic Alphabet toy to help him learn the phonics and thought of buying some Flash cards with words and pictures, than I thought of placing words on objects in the house so he will eventually make the connection between them; but I didn’t really have a solid plan for teaching him.

It happens that on the same week I stumbled upon an article that challenged the idea of babies and toddlers ability to read. Obviously it immediately caught my attention… In this article there was some information and a link to a program which is called: “Your Baby Can Read”. This is a program which is based on Dr. Titzer’s research of Infant learning and designed for teaching children to read starting from infancy (around 3 months). the videos of the reading children in his site were very convincing and after reading and watching some videos of Dr. Titzer interviews I realized  it’s worth trying.

The price for buying the full kit is $199.95 but they also offer a 30 day trial for $14.95. I decided to give it a try and see how my toddler reacts to it. According to Dr. Titzer videos 75% of our brain develops by the age of 2 and 90% of it develops by the age of 5. He claims that there is a natural window of opportunity for teaching the child to read that starts to close around the age of 4 and therefore it is much harder to acquire the same skill later on. After watching videos of 9-18 months old reading babies, a funny thought hit me – my son is one of the “older” candidates for this program. On one second I felt that I might be starting too early, and on the second, I felt like time is too precious to waist. I already pictured him sitting in a classroom at the age of 6 sweating his way to learn how to read when the window is already closed; and on the other end, imagined him at the age of 3 surrounded with books and happily reading Dostoevsky (not really) -but I do believe there was a soft music on the background…

Picture taken from closedstacks

So I purchased the trial  kit and after a few days it arrived in a heavy box. I must say I was impressed with the content of the package. It contained 5 DVDs with 5 matching sliding card sets, 50 Word game Cards, 82 Double sided Word cards, 5 Lift A Flap books, window book, music DVD and parents guide/workshop (book and DVD). All in very good quality and appealing to the eye.

The Idea behind this program is that if you expose the child from a young age to words accompanied with other simulations such as movements and photos, he will at first memorize these words and later on will understand the patterns and sounds of the words and letters and will be able to read words that he has never seen before.

It all made sense to me as it is very natural to remember information better when it is accompanied with a sensor stimulation and there are so many examples of people who learned languages as children with no effort that you cannot argue with.

We started following this program a week ago and I was thinking it will be interesting to document the progress of my son weekly as a service to the people who are considering to try this program as well and as a way to keep a journal of the process.

During the last week, he watched the starter DVD (one out of five) twice a day as instructed. He is supposed to watch it for a month until moving to the next one (this is approximately the time that takes to learn the first words). In addition, it is recommended to read with him daily the starter book and play with the matching cards but I wasn’t following it strictly until now. He is very fond of this DVD. He requests to watch it twice a day – first when he wakes up and also when he comes back from daycare, which is terrific since I don’t need to make him watch it, he loves watching it. Since he is already a toddler and has a large vocabulary, it is easy for him to recognize the words and follow the simple instructions (such as: “arms up”) but the challenge is to recognize the written words.  in the first five days I didn’t see any sign of him recognizing the words (which was understandable), but in the last 2 days he randomly recognizes a word, but not necessarily could repeat when I ask him again. This is an encouraging sign for me to see that he is in the process of taking in the information. I’m aware to the fact that it might take weeks until I will be able to see and measure the results but I can already see that he is processing the information and more importantly find enjoyment while doing so.

I will be recording his progress weekly through these blog posts hoping you will find it helpful. To be continued…