Progress Report #2

TJ has been watching the Your Baby Can Read Starter DVD for about 2 weeks now. I figure, he has watched it almost 28 times. Each word is shown on the DVD anywhere from 2-5 times. This means he has seen most of the words somewhere between 56 and 140 times! Wow! In Glenn Doman's book "How to teach your baby to read" he recommends that babies be shown words (on flashcards) 3 times a day for about 5 days, or about 15 or so times. Now I see why many parents are reporting that their children get horribly bored and cannot tolerate the DVD for the full 4 weeks, and moved to the next volume after 3 weeks. I will be playing it by ear for the coming week. As of now, TJ clearly loves the DVD but only certain parts. He actively participates in the DVD the FIRST time the word is shown consistently. However, when it is shown later in the show, he rarely participates even if I encourage him to by doing the activity myself (ie clapping, pointing to body part, reaching). He loves the Eentsy Weentsy Spider, and is sort of into Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, so the music really helps us get through the DVD. I am thinking he will be up to a "test" some time this week. I will show him two cards and ask him which card says a particular word, and if he picks the right one then I will know he is absorbing some words. I have tried showing him flashcards, but that has been sort of a pointless exercise because he decided he wants to touch and hold the card, and slide the picture in and out. He really really likes items with moving parts. It's not so much that I don't want him to play with the cards, but he will figure out a way to destroy them. I kind of want to keep the materials in decent condition and he's already folded several of the regular flashcards so we will try to work without them until he can understand how we use them.