Your Baby Can Read

[Lil Chickie Mama]

I will read those links, be sure! Again, thanks for input from your 5 year old I had a child development teacher that her point of view was that teaching academics (especially the hard stuff) was harmful too young. I agree! A child's job is to learn, but that doesn't mean sitting down at a desk writing lines or doing times tables. It means learning how to interact with their environment. Part of that in this house will be sitting on mom (me, can't wait!!!) or dad's lap and reading or watching us read the bible every day. That's how I learned to read. Sitting on my dad's lap reading, "One fish, Two fish, Red fish, Blue fish" until I decided to grab the book from him and read it to him and God love him, he never let on that he got tired of reading the same book every day. I have started my collection of easy to read books, a good children's Bible, and many books that follow Seuss type story rhymes. This is the way that we will implement reading, but that would be as far as we go until mandated age. If I had my way though, I wouldn't start my kids on "formal" education instead of as they want to learn until 6-7 (as recommended by the child development teacher) at the earliest but don't get me started on government sticking their nose in things and creating sweeping mandates for all situations despite how people are individuals. But enough of that.

 

[jessejames]

there was a two part series on ideas a radio show here in canada on cbc i think called the hurried child. this was a 2 hour doc on how this new industry of edu play(baby einstien etc.) for the very young is actually doing more harm than good. i wont go into the details but i will find the episodes you will be able to hear via archive on cbc radio. i will post as soon as i get.
the one thing i will say is that i lost the battle to keep the TV off and those videos out of my DD life and at this point 2.5 she is way behind as far as speech interest in reading etc. it breaks my heart but i am still doing what i can she gets tonnes of books from me and we read together all the time, from my experiance learning to read myself and what i have seen in other kids that have been read to alot one day we just decided to read. sure there where lots of whats that word etc. etc. but i can remember reading all the signs we drove by to the point of driving my mom insane!!! lol
i will try to find that show now!

 

[jessejames]

its called the hurried infant you can find the episodes at cbc radio website just search the show title and you will find both episodes. i highly recommend listening to them. they speak to my point so exactly that i have not been able recommend to my DDs' mom because it would be taken the wrong way.
hope you enjoy

 

[ellie_may12]

This program angers me every time I see it advertised. I was a public school teacher for ten years and quit when I got married and had a child, who will be homeschooled. I would have loved for parents to get more involved in their child's education, but expensive programs for babies is not the way.

The Your Baby Can Read program teaches reading via the sight word method which has been proven to be an ineffective reading program in years past. Phonics is far superior to any other reading method. It is a proven method from before any of us where born. Why don't schools stick with it? Because educators are swayed by textbook manufacturers that need to publish new and exciting programs every few years. The textbook sales people spend large amounts of money trying to woo the state, local and schools into buying their programs.

Phonics gives kids the tools to read anything. I wasn't taught phonics in school and know personally the pitfall of not learning the basic rules.

I also totally agree with what others have said about reading not being age appropriate for babies. They need to be exploring their world, spending lots of face time with their caregiver, being talked to and with. They need to develop the language that they will be reading in a few years.

My four year old has spent countless hours with adults since her older siblings are 19 and 21 years old. She communicates far beyond her years and uses vocabulary that even some adults don't use. She is just now showing an interest in reading. We have started to work on sounds and letter recognition. It is an amazing process, but one that with work will be successful.

If you want a great phonics site, check out www.starfall.com. They have a great program there.

 

[pioneergirl]

I did for my son what my grandmother did for me, and it really helped a lot.

I would sit him on my lap and read the newspaper out loud. Of course I wouldn't read about the horrific stuff, just informational articles, or even (which is most of a paper these days) the nonsense ones. I would turn them into a story (hopefully better than what was written) and point at any accompanying pictures. It worked well for both he and I, as at the age of 11 he loves to read, like me!

 

[tortoise]

I'm not sure about that program, but my MIL bought me the book, "How To Teach Your Baby To Read".
It involved using flashcards with the words (simple ones at first) printed in lower case, bold, large (think 50pt on a word program) type. You show the card and say the word, and then put that card away, fairly quickly.
You start off with 1-2 cards, adding a new card every few days. Once you have about 15 words, you can start dropping the first few & adding new ones, so you've got an ever-evolving set of words.
The major emphasis was on making it short and fun. You show each card very quickly, for a short amount of time and keep the number of cards down so you aren't spending much time on any given session. You stop before your child gets bored and don't force them to look at the cards if they are in the mood to crawl around.
I taught my DD to read at speaking age, around 11 months. She got fluent about the same time she got fluent with the spoken language. We had some setbacks when she went to public school (local issue) but she's reading like a madgirl now I found the bathtub to be a good place to start.

The theory is that it imprints on your kids brain, in the same manner that a person's face would. If you say Dada everytime you hand the baby to dad, they will quickly associate the word with dad's face. I wouldn't trust anything that told me I could set my kids in front of the TV and leave them there. I'm too paranoid for that.

I've done this with my son. Sporatically. He can read quite a few words for his age. He has been able to sound out words, but that is getting rusty.

I was thrilled when he sounded out and read "orange juice" - actually just orange. And it was on an orange juice carton so he figured it out.

Reading is interpreting symbols. Kids CAN read. It's most obvious in brand names. What kid doesn't know what the coca-cola image is? That is a word, a symbol. Yes - they pick up on the art, the package, the whole deal, but it is still recognizing and image and remembering what it means.

It is a matter of capturing that and making it fun. My son LOVES computers. He see us reading and writing on computers all the time. He will find the letters to type out emails!

I've done flashcards with him. Really really short and fun. He would beg to do flashcards. I think he had 20 or so cards - in a week. Typical kindergarten words.

He is into rhyming words right now. My mom teaches him all sorts of songs and she writes little poems to him in emails almost every day.

I have a little phonics tile kit. It has letters and sound on tiles. I'll have him put all the alphabet tiles in order. The pick out a tile like "ight" and go through and try every letter of the alphabet to see which make real words and which are "silly" - then we have a whole bunch of rhyming words. It is funny. Everytime we try to rhyme and it is a non-sense word, he busts out laughing!

ETA: "ight" is a really bad example because b-ight and k-ighte (bite and kite) sound like words but they're not right.

BTW, he is 3 yrs old.

 

[lupinfarm]

When I was a kid my mum read to me all the time but in the end of it all I listened and learnt how to read by myself. I taught my younger brother to read and that happens to be something he hates doing. He feels forced to read and doesn't often read novels at all despite being a very bright kid who excells with minimal effort in English. I was speaking, reading and writing well at a very young age but unfortunately our school board, once I started school, was not financially able to provide any "gifted" classes.

IMO, that program would encourage memorization. My cousin was "reading" at 3 years old, but truthfully she wasn't reading she was memorizing what her parents were saying while they read to her and she was repeating it back to them when they asked her to read. My uncle didn't realize this being away from home most of the time and it took my mum to show him his kid wasn't learning anything more than great memorization skills. She can read now at 10 years old.

 

[hwillm1977]

I started reading at a young age... around 3... but that was because my parents read EVERYTHING to me and I wanted to be able to do it on my own. They never forced me to learn anything, I LOVED reading (still do) by the time I was 4.5 I was reading novels on my own and just asking about words if I got stuck.

I would never try to force reading onto my baby (who I haven't had yet... lol) and I definitely wouldn't buy a program for it, but I would hope that by reading to him/her and showing them how much I love it, that love of books would get passed on.

I don't see anything wrong with playing games and having fun with it... but only if the child is having fun too.

 

[chandasue]

I'm suspicious of any infomercial... I've had several people recommend the book Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons so we're going to give that a try this fall. My son just turned 4. I'd have liked to started him earlier but he just wasn't interested until now. Keeping it fun and simple is important I think. I want to be sure he loves to learn starting young rather than dreading whatever Mom's going to dig out next.

 

[xpc]

I'm pretty sure that all the great inventions and discoveries by scientists and justified winners of Nobel's laurel were all born before e-phonics ever hit the 2am infomercial scene just as the silly placards are superfluous now. It is true that a bit of coaching may help a child along but is not necessary and is one of the reasons why human babies have such a long childhood - to learn at its own pace and fully absorb the wonderment it sees. if you push a child from its instinctual path you may also deviate it from what it was destined for - Mozart was a great composer but could completely suck as a narrator.

If Wolfgang's mother kept holding up a card with poop spelled on it we may just be wiping ourselves with a roll of Amadeus and listening to crap on the radio. Never mind bad analogy.

I believe a child is born with an infinity that is not always what a parent wants but what it is given by the gene pool or from what ever design you believe in, no amount of tutelage will turn a bricklayer into a doctor unless it is already instilled. Giving the youngster all the tools to learn without pressure is all you need - and if you don't know the answer to a kids question don't ignore it but go look it up together.

Google was invented for just that reason just as the person who buys $50,000 in tools was born - for your borrowing pleasure.

it = he/she