Raise Genius Kids

This author lives in Flemington, NJ with her husband and 5 month old daughter and is an expert contributing author for a luxury unique baby gifts boutique offering variety of baby shower favors, dropship baby gift baskets, handprint footprint kits and more. This author and Babygiftstation is also dedicated to providing valuable and informative articles on childcare, baby safety tips, pregnancy health, parenting, potty training and more.

Adapted learning method

Teaching Even Younger Babies How to Read: The New Experience.

In the experience I have developed with my three children, I created an Adapted learning method based on Glenn Doman’s described first four steps:

- The visual differentiation (how to prepare the material);

- The proper vocabulary (cards which reflected the daily reality of the baby);

- The vocabulary of the family environment (which reflected the objects which the baby came in contact with at home, for his daily interactions), and

- The vocabulary to build sentence’s structures (articles, prepositions, and adjectives).

Sentences were not introduced as the Doman method suggests for the 5th step. The other steps, including the 5th, were suppressed in our experience, due to our circumstances, since the babies’ own preferences suggested that these steps would be skipped, indicating what the brain needed or not to experience. When the babies completed reading the whole vocabulary, also knew the alphabet and already read elementary school books, traffic signals, and billboards in the streets.

However, the reading assimilation process was global, since steps 5, 6, and 7 of Doman’s method were introduced simultaneously to steps 1, 2, 3, and 4. To explain it better, while I played with the babies the game of the cards, the whole family showed them reading as an object and how reading presented itself circumstantially in a community context (in the TV, the media, and the traffic signs).

The brain itself created mechanisms to find similarities and dissimilarities between some letters and others and some words and others.

As the process of stimulation in a family environment followed its course, the assimilation by the babies of the words which reflected their accommodation of contents ended up resulting in connections of objects and the objects’ representations, in such an impressive velocity that when the babies were two years of age, they already could read and demonstrated a passion for the game of
reading. The babies also demonstrated that they were ready for writing. By the same pleasurable process, which they felt while playing with an object until they tired of it, the babies played with words. However, the difference became that words were part of a very vast grouping, which led the babies to combine them, discover them, and the game kept extending itself until the babies demonstrated that they could integrate it.

We realize that this game of learning will never come to an end, since it started as early as with a baby, the human being will tend to try to manage it for his whole existence.

This leads us then to say that teaching the child to read only at 6 years of age is to take away from him/her the opportunity of discovering the learning game of reading at the stage at which it could be best experienced – at the earliest age, when the brain elaborates its first mental schemes, and in which the mental activities still were not restricted in their development within the natural and
potential perspectives.

It is very easy to establish the systematic of the method of how to teach a baby how to read and to wait for each phase of development to occur exactly as we expect. It is known that only the intention of the parents to teach their children how to read early on, can already result in facts that would better distinguish their children of those who did not try it. Even the most disorganized attempt will yield observable results, which are the most positive and encouraging results, it is worth highlighting! The procedure adopted needs to be very disastrous or complicated not to yield results. From the simplicity of this initiative, it is already possible to obtain better results than if one would start to teach the child only at 6 years of age. At six, it is already too late! The curiosity and motivational potentialities of the brain would already by then be deactivated. The later you start, the harder it is the task to teach
to teach the child how to read.

Glenn Doman, in his book “How to Teach your Baby to Read”, affirms that the child prior to 5 years of age is able to absorb a tremendous amount of information and can accept information at an incredible rate. He says that the more information a child receives before completing 5 years of age, the most he/she retains; and that the child has tremendous quantities of energy for such. Besides that, the child at this age group has a great desire to learn. He/she can learn how to read and wants
to learn how to read.

In my experience, I realized that the most important factor while initiating the process is to be certain that the parent(s) will have the proper attitude and adequate approach, or better, that the enthusiasm should be kept; and that the parent should not pressure or retard the steps in presenting information to the baby. The other factor is to be attentive to the size, format, and order of presentation of the material to be read by the baby.

Also of importance is the observation of when to start each reading session and when to end it. To start the session, the most adequate time is every moment in which the baby is in a good mood. Do not take him/her to read while cranky, crying, or dissatisfied. The activity of playing must be happy and playful both for the baby and the parent.

The time to end the activity of playing – which is the main motivation of the method, must be before the baby loses interest, so that in this way we can guarantee that the baby will want to repeat the activity and live the moment of happiness of being with the parent. During this moment, the baby enjoys the parent’s company and plays with new knowledge and information. It is necessary to know exactly what the baby is thinking, or better, to know his/her reaction in order to stop each session prior to his/her desire to do so. The reader must imagine that this is impossible to be done.

But it is not so. After a few sessions, it is possible to perceive exactly when it is time to distance the baby from the card. If you have more than one baby, you will see that each one has his/her own rhythm, as I have found out with mine.

Eliane Leao, PhD

Adapted learning method (c) 2006

As parents, we want to do everything we can to keep our kids safe. It’s not just about safe toys. It’s about creating and maintaining a safe, nurturing, stimulating environment for our children from birth through the college years.

One way we can do this is by making our kids aware of child safety issues in ways that are appropriate for each stage of their development. Obviously, safety issues will be different for toddlers than it is for teenagers.

Even pre-schoolers can learn some simple safety precautions. Teach your children about what to do if someone they don’t know acts inappropriately.

For instance, they can learn that it’s okay to yell, kick and hit if someone tries to make them go with them or get into a car. You can teach them to go to a female cashier or store worker if they get lost in a store, instead of trying to find you.

The most important lesson that preschoolers need to learn is that it’s okay to say no to anyone about anything that makes them feel uncomfortable. They need to know that their body is theirs, not the property of someone else.

Preschoolers may not understand that saying “no” to strangers is okay, because we spend so much time, as parents, in trying to get them to cooperate and follow rules.

Of course, we want them to follow the rules and get along at home and in the community, but we don’t want them to just blindly do what any adult tells them to do. This is the balancing act that we find ourselves doing when we teach preschoolers how to help us keep them safe.

Genius Fast Calculation by Kids.

Often, parents think of nurseries and schools when they consider learning opportunities for their youngsters. In reality, though, children encounter situations every day that are rich with chances to learn, if only their parents and other carers know to capitalise on these occasions.

Learning at Home
For children, every experience is new, so things that adults barely notice can be interesting and exciting to kids. Even at home, opportunities for learning abound. Parents can help young children by actively engaging them in everyday chores. Something as simple as picking up toys and other belongings can provide lessons in colour identification, sorting skills, and pattern formation. For example, asking kids to locate all of the green items, to put small things in one basket and large items in another area, to organise their toys according to certain specifications (”Please find all of the toys that make music.”) or to identify patterns (”If we line up a blue car, then a red one and then another blue one, what colour would we put next in line?”) helps kids to understand concepts that they will later apply in other areas.

Learning on the Go
Outings are rich with opportunities for discovery, from learning about plants and animals on nature hikes to basics on budgeting and nutrition while making choices at the supermarket. Talking about which items are the healthiest and which are good values is thought provoking and gives children chances to stretch their thinking and reasoning abilities. Kids are always learning by taking in all that they see and hear around them - often without parents realising just how much their children are paying attention. Parents are often made aware of the fact that children are listening to conversations around them by hearing their kids repeat the things that they’ve heard said (not always a good thing…), so parents would be wise to surround their children with positive and thoughtful exchanges.

Improving Language Skills
One of the greatest ways to increase children’s language skills is to engage them in conversations. That sounds obvious, but many parents and other carers have a tendency to talk “to” kids rather than with them. Asking children question that require more than simple “yes” or “no” answers gives them opportunities to expand their communication skills, vital for both academic and social success. Parents often complain that their children give them short answers to their questions and seem hesitant to share the details of their daily activities, but the key to getting children to open up is in the phrasing of the questions. If you ask a child “How was school?” you may get an answer of, “Fine.” If, on the other hand, the child is asked about the funniest, scariest, or happiest thing that happened that day, the response is far more likely to be an engaging tale, rich with details.

A good grasp of language can help children to excel in a number of areas, from understanding the written word to enabling them to clearly communicate with others. Playing word games with children during regular activities can help them to not only expand their vocabularies, but increase their confidence and competence in oral communication. Whether at home or while riding in the car, parents can play word games with their children. Rhyming words (even if the responses aren’t all “real” words) is fun for kids, as are other word games, so parents should encourage a love of language by looking for opportunities to play with words. Parents can take turns with their children choosing a starting word and then looking for rhymes or clumping words into categories (”Lets think of all of the animals that we can.”). As kids mature and their abilities increase, the games can be more difficult (”Lets think of an animal that starts with each letter of the alphabet. ‘A’ is for antelope. What is an animal that starts with the letter ‘B’?”).

kidsdevelopment.co.uk