Milestones of Learning to Read as a Baby/Toddler
• Learning that the shape of the word is the most important factor
• Baby recognizes her/his first words
• Parent notices the baby understands a written word
• Learning to read the first 50 words
• Learning to read around 200 words
• Learning to read two- and three-word phrases
• Learning to read phonetically
• Learning to read sentences from left-to-right
• Reading a book from cover-to-cover
• Learning to read quickly
• Reading a book the child has never seen from cover-to-cover
Dr. Titzer posted these milestones on his blog, where he emphasizes that the child must first learn that the shape of the word is the most important factor (rather than the color, texture, font, etc.) I have no idea if TJ has reached this milestone, and can't really see how one would test for such a thing, but I am glad to have this guide of how things could possibly unfold in terms of learning to read while using this system.
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Animal Kingdom
I have watched all of the DVDs and the emphasis on animals is a bit much. The vocabulary lists include a lot of zoo animals, pets, and farm animals. I guess he chose these because the images hold the children's attention better, but TJ does not respond to any of these words, and I am worried it actually makes it more boring for him. Even if it doesn't for him, it makes it more boring for me! I would think dog, cat, and maybe horse or bird would have been more than enough! I may try to contact the Your Baby Can Read! people to try and find out how they decided on the word lists.
What does Your Baby Can Read Really Teach?
Honestly, this program has taught my child many things. I am a first time Mom, and having never grown up and been around young kids it is hard to know what development and skills you should be working on with your child. Add this to the fact that it is very hard to get honest answer on the internet. People with advanced children are more eager to answer questions about development than people with normal or sluggish developers, so if you post a question the answer will be skewed a bit. Also, people claim that their children accomplished advanced skills at ridiculously young ages, such as a talking 2 week old, or a running 6 month old, that I often have to dismiss more answers as wholly dishonest than I would like to. My rule of thumb is that if there is no video, and I can't find an equivalent demonstration of advanced skills on youtube, then I pretty much totally throw away the claim.
Keep in mind that I still watch the videos and interact with him, I don't leave him to watch on his own even though Dr. Titzer says it is not required.
I think it has been a more than adequate introduction to print. Now, when TJ sees words, he sometimes points to them with his index finger and pretends to read. He did this the other day with the box of Huggies that I had sitting on the coffee table. He also points to the words on the screen as if he recognizes them as words.
He has learned all of his body parts. This is a nice little bonus. If I ask him "Where are your toes?" he will grab them, and will do the same for all the body parts introduced in the video and other ones that he knows.
He has learned several action verbs, such as "stomp" and "kick" and will act the verbs out during the video, or sometimes if I ask when the video is not on.
He has learned the tune to Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and can sing it (not the words, just the tune), can approximate the motions to Itsy Bitsy Spider, can do the motions to If You're Happy, and grabs his head during Head Shoulders Knees and Toes.
He's learned much more, but I think you can get the idea here. It is more of a language development system, that teaches about all language skills and not just reading.
Keep in mind that I still watch the videos and interact with him, I don't leave him to watch on his own even though Dr. Titzer says it is not required.
I think it has been a more than adequate introduction to print. Now, when TJ sees words, he sometimes points to them with his index finger and pretends to read. He did this the other day with the box of Huggies that I had sitting on the coffee table. He also points to the words on the screen as if he recognizes them as words.
He has learned all of his body parts. This is a nice little bonus. If I ask him "Where are your toes?" he will grab them, and will do the same for all the body parts introduced in the video and other ones that he knows.
He has learned several action verbs, such as "stomp" and "kick" and will act the verbs out during the video, or sometimes if I ask when the video is not on.
He has learned the tune to Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and can sing it (not the words, just the tune), can approximate the motions to Itsy Bitsy Spider, can do the motions to If You're Happy, and grabs his head during Head Shoulders Knees and Toes.
He's learned much more, but I think you can get the idea here. It is more of a language development system, that teaches about all language skills and not just reading.
Monday, August 3, 2009
Progress Update
We are still trucking along with the Your Baby Can Read!. It's become a pretty integral part of our daily routine. I put the video on each morning we get up, and TJ watches portions of it, but also runs around to get re-acquainted with his toys, get some breakfast, and explore. Each evening I put the video on after he's taken his bath, darken the room, and he watches the video snuggled on my lap. I think he gets the most out of the evening viewing, he participates and watches the entire video without really looking away very often.
It's difficult to tell if he's learned to read any new words. He is not crazy about the flash cards. I place two or three flash cards in front of him and ask him to identify a word. Often, he picks the right card, but some times he just gathers the cards and hands them back to me, picks the wrong one, or takes the cards to another room. After this routine started, I did not use the flashcards anymore. I am pretty confident he is learning, but is not ready to be "tested" with the flashcards. So I will let him just take in the information for another couple of weeks before trying again.
We are still watching Volume 1. For a while, we had a minor problem with this video that turned into a MAJOR problem. There is a song "If you are happy" on the video that is played twice. TJ has known this song for a long time because I always sang that song to him during his diaper changes to keep him calm and he had something to do with his hands. Well, I always made up something for the second stanza, such as "If you're happy and you know it wiggle you toes," or "If you're happy and you know it shake your head." During the video, they sing "If you're happy and you know it stomp your feet" and I think this stressed TJ out quite a bit. He would always have a tantrum in the middle of the song, either I guess because he didn't like the way they were singing the song or he didn't know how to stomp his feet. It got so bad, I went and moved on to Volume 2. Volume 2 was a bit longer, quicker paced, and had many more words. If felt it was a bit too soon to move on, so I went back to the Starter DVD, then moved on the Volume 1 again. Maybe he just needed a break, because we have not had a problem with the song anymore!
He can say several words from the DVDs and many of these words he learned from the DVD. Bib, bubble, baby, cat, eating, no, yes (yeah), knees, and a few other things. It is quite fun to hear him talking more!
It's difficult to tell if he's learned to read any new words. He is not crazy about the flash cards. I place two or three flash cards in front of him and ask him to identify a word. Often, he picks the right card, but some times he just gathers the cards and hands them back to me, picks the wrong one, or takes the cards to another room. After this routine started, I did not use the flashcards anymore. I am pretty confident he is learning, but is not ready to be "tested" with the flashcards. So I will let him just take in the information for another couple of weeks before trying again.
We are still watching Volume 1. For a while, we had a minor problem with this video that turned into a MAJOR problem. There is a song "If you are happy" on the video that is played twice. TJ has known this song for a long time because I always sang that song to him during his diaper changes to keep him calm and he had something to do with his hands. Well, I always made up something for the second stanza, such as "If you're happy and you know it wiggle you toes," or "If you're happy and you know it shake your head." During the video, they sing "If you're happy and you know it stomp your feet" and I think this stressed TJ out quite a bit. He would always have a tantrum in the middle of the song, either I guess because he didn't like the way they were singing the song or he didn't know how to stomp his feet. It got so bad, I went and moved on to Volume 2. Volume 2 was a bit longer, quicker paced, and had many more words. If felt it was a bit too soon to move on, so I went back to the Starter DVD, then moved on the Volume 1 again. Maybe he just needed a break, because we have not had a problem with the song anymore!
He can say several words from the DVDs and many of these words he learned from the DVD. Bib, bubble, baby, cat, eating, no, yes (yeah), knees, and a few other things. It is quite fun to hear him talking more!
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