Learning Programs On TV

Just read to your kids. Don't fall into the trap of first child syndrome where you push them to be the best and teach them as much as you can before school. Yes they will be a bit ahead if you have done it correctly but in reality within 6 months they have all caught up.

Teach them a love of books and reading rather than how to read. I forced my oldest to read and write before school. Taught her uppercase letters which was wrong and actually hindered her progress. My son I have done nothing with and he is advanced at school so I am taking the same approach with the third.

At the end of the day they hit there teenage years (yes I have a 14 year old) and anything they learnt previous flies out the window especially common sense lol.

I like that Kiwi2, "teach them a love of books rather than reading " thats very true.

And like any individual,some kids no matter how much you read to them, will love reading,some would rather be running outside, I have read to my 8 year old every night of her life, shes not a big reader at all, I love reading and it made me sad at first that she didn't love it as much, but shes her own person, she can read,she just doesn't get the enjoyment out of it that I do .

Kids are not kids for very long,and they are babies and toddlers for an even shorter amount of time, let them be babies, let them have their innocence and freedom while they can still have it

Hopes wrote: Bizzy wrote: i dont think that educationally there is any advantage to teaching your child to read at an early age. My original post got deleted when this thread went missing, and there was another poster who I also quoted that's gone too - but the gist of what I said is that I agree with the above. It's only based on personal experience, but I started school at six, and while Mum and Dad had read to me lots, they hadn't put any work into teaching me to read. I picked it all up pretty fast and became an avid reader - I still do read a lot. I don't think it does any harm to teach toddlers to read, and if you think it would be fun, I'd say go for it, but I don't think it gives them any long-term advantage.

My reply to this was deleted yesterday as well....
I have to say I disagree, as I believe there are definite educational advantages to introducing literacy skills early. Firstly, it takes advantage of the period of time when the child's brain has the most plasticity, therefore making it much easier to learn the information. Further, research does indicate that early reading skills do correlate to increased enjoyment in reading at an older age, which is presumably due to it not be as challenging. Higher levels of achievement several years after begininning school have also been correlated with early formal reading instruction, indicating the gains aren't necessarily only giving the child a short-term advantage.

I also think teachers have large class sizes so anything we, as parents, can do to help our children get a head start has got to be good!

From my own personal experience, I taught my daughter to read at 3, so she went to school reading at least several years above her age level (I did this as at the time I was doing my degree in speech language therapy and part of that was training in a literacy type programme, and I wanted to practise )... My daughter is now 14 and continues to work well above her age level in english - she is continually top of her year and has gained many awards in english. She has also always read and written stories for enjoyment - not homework. I know this is only one case, but I do believe that learning to read before school did contribute to her success...

I don't believe learning to read needs to be boring, structured kind of table top tasks. The early, prerequisite skills for literacy can be taught quite easily with fun activities. The prerequisite skills involve teaching sound awareness, which is often lacking in such reading systems. It's things like listening to words and working out if the start with the same sounds, finding other words that begin with the same sounds (not letters), talking about words that rhyme (or sound the same at the end), breaking words up into their sounds (e.g. shoe > sh-ooo) - it is these early skills that help with decoding and they are the skills that are necessary for children to be able to read phonetically rather than just using whole word. You can then introduce the letter/sound associations, for which we did (and do for DD2) with lots of scrapbook type activities which she loves - we start with just writing the letter/s for a sound and finding lots of pics that begin with that sound. We do lots of other fun activities that also target these skills and it's not like she is forced to sit and engage in activities she doesn't want to do... I am very much of the opinion that children learn through play and it is definitely possible to introduce these skills in a play based way. Anyway this is quite the novel now so I'll leave it there

It's really interesting bowie, how 2 children can be raised the same way, yet be so different! I guess it's the whole 'nature/nurture thing'. I agree, most usually catch up and it's important to remember that kids learn at their own pace.
As a teacher, all I can say is whatever you do make it FUN!!!
The worst thing you can do is force your child to sit and 'learn'. You are likely to do more harm than good and put them off reading.
In my opinion learning happens best in real, authentic learning experiences e.g helping with baking etc.
I think you need to take the lead from your child. I'm sure many would thrive using a structured learning programme, yet others would much rather be running around outside and are just not interested.
I used to get a bit annoyed with parents who demanded more and more homework for their kids, when really, their kids would benefit more from their parents spending time with them, talking with them, asking them questions and for their opinions, promoting problem solving and critical thinking and having their child share what they have been learning.
I think reading to you kids and talking with them (not AT them) are the two best things you can do for them

Hi there.
we ordered the system to have a looky - we could always send it back aye!
After being a nanny for the past 10+ years and helping many kids love books (which i do agree helps with loving to read) and were pretty confident that we'd be able to help our wee man start well in his education (he's 6mnths now) but we are also very pro anything that would help our kids education so why not!?!?

I had a good look at it and decided it wasn't actually worth the money. Yes the 'flash cards' and books were great but if we actually pulled finger we could create the stuff ourselves for alot cheaper! and with the amount of videos on YouTube now days!!
And it was quite intense!! the 'required' amount of time you needed to put into it was above what we thought realistic and actually thought it was over the top!

So we called to send it back and in the end they said their warehouse was extremely busy and didn't really want to process any returns and do we want it for half price! So we did. Purely for the tools not to follow the 'programme'. The flash cards are pretty cool! he he.

Its very 'recognition' heavy - don't know the correct name for it! Basically cause you are showing the kids the words so often they memorize what it looks like. So not alot of old school phonics in it. I believe you need a bit of both to create good readers.
I think any kid benefits from pro active parents when it comes to learning to read etc but sadly the 'fit this box' school system is not always equipped to accommodate students who don't fit the box! ie kids who read ahead of their age. BUT in saying that you can still be the person to help challenge your children in this!! there is nothing to say that it is purely your kids teachers job to be the only educationalist in your kids life. Whoops, climbing off my soap box now!!

Anywho. Ollie watches the DVD's here and there and we'll break out the flash cards sometime! And once he's at school and we can see who natural is mathematical mind is we might look at the brainatics one.......And lets hope we hit another busy time at the warehouse!!!