Reader Rabbit Playtime

With all my dislike for TV, I treat computer differently. Maybe it's because I spend at least 60% of my awake time on the computer, and I have an engineering degree. Still, we don't exceed 30 minutes a day, and it's always a joint activity. Mostly we are exploring Starfall, but eventually I felt to try something new and after some research on Amazon chose a Playtime for Baby and Toddler from Reader Rabbit series.

It was a good choice. I am not in favor of software that rewards young children for random banging on a keyboard, and while Baby part of this software has a lot of parts responding to random actions, Toddler part usually requires mouse use. Anna is nowhere near using a mouse, and not even interested, so I navigated for her. It has an engaging beginning, easy presentation of entry points into different playing modules, and modules appear pretty even in their degree of difficulty. Anna liked all of them at various points over about 6 month span. We played the game probably about twice a week. She really liked Alphabet Express section with letters and songs. My only complaint is about numbers section in a Bubble Castle. It always counts to 5, and the bubbles are flying quickly even for me. Still despite minor flows, it's still the best game I tried with her, and I recommend her as a starting point of entry in the world of computer games.

Preschool search

Until Anna was 27 months, she was always either with me or with my husband. It doesn't mean at all that she hasn't been in group settings. She and her papa were busy bees - playgroups, playdates, story hour in the library, Gym class, Gymboree music class. But we felt that by now she is ready to venture outside without one of us always standing guard over her. That's why we started looking at early preschools (the ones that accept children from the age of 2). I also started reading materials about preschool selection on the Web. One thing is very clear - there is nothing out there that fits every child and every parent. One link that I highly recommend is a collection materials on preschool selection and preschool search on GreatSchools.net.

School selection proved harder than we expected. One thing we were clear on - we didn't want a school that focuses on academics. Our daughter is a bright child. She caught on typical preschool staples - colors, shapes, letters by the time she was 2. We didn't feel that we need more "help" in getting her ready for school. We were rather interested in extending her early childhood, but giving her more opportunities to learn independence and life skills. We were all set on Montessori schools based on our readings and recommendation from a friend. But we also wanted a school close to where we live. Our visit to a local Montessori started with director of the school telling us that our girl is very advanced, and that we are doing her disservice by keeping her at home. She needs to be in school, and she needs to be there every day, otherwise she doesn't adjust. We were not impressed with this pushy approach and with the state of facilities, so we kept looking. We had a very high hopes for a preschool that was considered "the best" in our neighborhood, so we couldn't wait for their open house. It was a train wreck. Obviously, the organizers didn't expect anyone show up with young children. The children were screaming and running around, while the director and other teachers made no attempt to engage them and just kept talking how great their school was. I admit - the school had most toys of games, but it was also very big. We were so turned off with their impersonal approach that we left as soon as we could.

We found what we were looking for in an unlikely place - a Christian school. We are not religious, but our friends told us that many of so-called "Christian schools" don't really have any evangelical curriculum, they just happen to be based in church buildings. We have visited one in our neighborhood and liked what we saw. It's a very new school, so number of students is still very small. The director of this school taught many years in Montessori, so she uses some of its principles. She had a flexible schedule and didn't mind at all to start Anna on two mornings a week. Somehow all this made me comfortable to try it out, even though I still have some reservations, because it's so bare in comparison with other schools we visited. I will write in another post about adapting to the new way of life.

Learning Everywhere Book

This book has a subtitle: A parent's guide to early learning at home, in the community and on trips. My husband picked it up at the Barnes & Noble $1 sale, and it was a good find. It groups learning activities into sections, for example, kitchen, bedroom, post office, beach, etc., and it has modifications for younger children. I am always looking for more activities to teach abstract mathematical and space awareness concepts, and this book offers a lot of them. One example is sock matching while sorting laundry. Anna tries to find all the socks - small, medium and large, and then she matches them by color and size. Most of the activities don't require elaborate preparation, and a lot of them are simple games that we just forget in the middle of dinner preparation or house cleaning. It's truly about learning by doing, and in my opinion it's the best way to learn.

Fathers and Young Children

Research conducted on fathers' involvement in their children' life showed how important it is in children' development. It affects everything - IQ scores, upward mobility, behavior in adolescence, and, of-course, self-esteem. Anna is extremely lucky in this regard. We both come from strong families, where fathers were involved more than average at that time. Before she was born, her dad has left his software engineering job to become a full time dad. This decision has paid off multiple times in his involvement and the joy we all experience watching our daughter grow and develop. I don't believe our daughter would have become a person she is in a different setting. My husband manages to walk the thin line between being strict and being loving with grace and confidence that I cannot always master. It also matters a lot that he has different way of teaching her. I am more academic, he is more hands-on. They build things with Legos, play guitar, cook together and speak his native German. I hope that this close father-daughter link will blossom even more over years to come.

Teach Your Child

I picked up this book in the library about a week ago and wish that I had found it in the first year. It offers a clear, concise advise about normal course of development and simple things you can do to help. The author makes a point early in the book that the activities and milestones descriptions in this book are not meant to make your baby brighter or to accelerate development. "Rather, they subserve the hope that you will not form unrealistic goals for your child, that you will not push, force or pressure your child to reach arbitrary standards but will work alongside him or her in a purely supportive way. As children learn more in the first years of life than at any other time, parents have enormous responsibilities to be caring, patient teachers to preschool children."

Setting realistic goals for toddlers

I've been doing some soul-searching lately, especially after trying to introduce Bob books to Anna. Are we pushing her too hard? She is a bright child, and she is very interested in language and word play, but do we inadvertently lead her away from simple pretend play and creative activities? I read that it's important to set realistic goals for toddlers, so they can delight in achieving them. I am trying to think back to things that we are doing together and "reset" to a more balanced approach. Fortunately, our daughter is pretty good in letting us know when she disagrees with our goals. I cannot do it, you do it - her normal response to our requests to try and put her pants by herself or to count to 10. And she beams with pleasure when she manages to cut a piece of paper with her scissors. I have full trust in her - she will learn how to do all basic things (including going potty) when she is ready and not a minute earlier.

Baby Play - Activities for the First Year

Babies learn through play, and parents are natural teachers. A Gymboree baby play book offers a lot of ideas for infant activities, with easy text and bright photos. I bought this book by a recommendation from a friend before Anna was born and tried some of the activities of the book, especially those that didn't require any store-purchased props. Here is an example of an activity for 6-month old babies that we enjoyed doing:

"Old scarves - the silky kind - can delight and entertain your child up through her preschool years. When she's still a baby, one of the best games you can play is to poke a brightly colored scarf through one end of a cardboard tube (from a used paper towel or toilet paper) and let him pull it out the other side. Embellish the game by adding your own enticements such as - Where is the scarf? Where did it go? Oh, there it is! Peekaboo! "

By the way, while looking for the graphics on Amazon, I noticed that there is a newer edition now. Here is a link to it, in case anyone is interested - Gymboree Play and Learn: 1001 Fun Activities For Your Baby and Child (Gymboree Play & Music)

Introduction to Bob Books

A lot of people have recommended Bob books to me as a wonderful phonics-based program designed to teach young children to read. So I caved in and bought Anna the first set. She knows letters, is interested in sounding out the first letter in the word, and enjoys rhyming. Maybe she is ready to try a formal reading program? Obviously not :) I think that she finds pictures and words in the book very boring - I know I do! Nevertheless I made a big fuss of the books and explained to Anna that those are special books. I am not reading them to you, you will read them to me. And we cannot turn the page until we figure out what it says on this page. The reason why I don't want to read them to her is because the text is so simple that she will simply remember everything and will "read" the book back to me at the next reading. She can memorize significantly more complex books almost word-by-word, so surely she can do it with a book that has a single word Sam on the page. In any case, my current conclusion - she is not ready. She doesn't understand yet how letters make sounds, and sounds combine back together to make words. I am not going to push her. I am just going to try every two weeks on the first book of the set to see if the concepts click. We have all the time in the world, after all she is only 28 months.

Language Milestones - 25-30 months

Anna is 28 months today, so I decided to look for language milestones and see what she is "supposed" to be doing at this age. Here is an interesting article from BabyCenter:

25 to 30 months
Now that he has a bigger vocabulary, your toddler will begin to experiment with modulation. For a while he may yell when he means to speak normally and whisper softly when answering a question, but he'll find the appropriate volume soon enough. He's also starting to get the hang of pronouns, such as "I," "me," and "you." Between ages 2 and 3, his working vocabulary will grow to up to 300 words — and he'll understand up to 900 words. He'll string nouns and verbs together to form complete but simple sentences, such as "I go now."

He'll even get the hang of speaking about events that happened in the past. He may not quite understand the concept of irregular forms, though, so you'll hear expressions like "I runned" or "I swimmed" and plurals like "mouses." Sure, it's cute, but it also shows that he's picking up on the basic rules of grammar (that you add a "d" sound to a word if it happened yesterday, for example, and an "s" sound to make things plural).

At this age, your child will start answering simple questions, such as "Do you want a snack?" and "Where are your shoes?" If you notice that he consistently echoes your questions rather than trying to answer them, bring it up with your child's doctor. Such behavior can be an early sign of a developmental problem such as autism.

Anna is definitely very much on track with her language development or better. Her vocabulary is way more than 300 words, she is understood by strangers most of the time, she follows directions, tells short stories, asks why? questions and what does it mean? questions. What did we do right? I think the most important thing was that we read to her from a very early age. Even when she was just born, my husband and I used to sit in her room holding her and reading aloud to each other from What to Expect in the First Year book. The article on language development from WebMD names reading the most important learning activity for young children. And - turn off that TV already!

Development Milestones (0-5 years)

When Anna was an infant, I was obsessed about milestones. I was worried endlessly, when her peers were crawling and even walking while she was content to sit and play with her toys. I was beside myself when she had no interest in walking at 1 year. In a retrospect I wish I enjoyed her more and worried less. She made her first steps at 14.5 months, and was walking just as well as any other young toddler by 18 months. It taught me to take any kind of milestone charts with a grain of salt, especially after my late caterpillar blossomed into an active talkative butterfly. However, I do agree with many experts - it is helpful to be concerned if your child has not met a particular milestone. Early intervention can do wonders for children with delay if it's undertaken early. Therefore here are the links to a few milestone charts taken from the book on the left. I read this book while pregnant and thought that it's well written and covers a lot of ground in a relatively small volume.

• First Year


• 2 Years


• 3 Years


• 4 Years


• 5 Years

Teaching sign language to babies and toddlers

An interesting tidbit of information has crossed my Google Alert widget.

Researchers found children who begin using gestures at 14 months have a wider range of vocabulary at 54 months than those who do not gesticulate at a young age. A lot of educated moms I know strongly believe in Sign Language for babies. We were recommended many books and programs, and I bought and/or rented a few. I liked Baby Signs approach from the book on the left, and we tried it with Anna, when she was about 6 months or so. Unfortunately, she wasn't really interested in signing despite our earnest attempts to remember and sign "eat", "more" and "bath". She was an early talker, who would rather talk than sign. She did eventually sign two signs - "more" and "please", but they fell off rather quickly as her language progressed, and we didn't pursue sign language outside of those basic signs.

Teaching numbers

Even when Anna was a baby, we had some number board books for her. My Little Counting Book was her favorite. She started counting when she was about 15 months, but... it was clearly memorization of a set of words, not a true counting. Moreover, she memorized it incorrectly. Her counting goes, 1,2,3,4,5,8,9,10! Every time we remind her about missing numbers, she gets somewhat upset. Needless to say, counting is not her favorite activity. Now, at the age of 27 months, she can count by herself to about 5, when she is in a mood. When I point (and correct her missing numbers), she can count 10 objects. When she points herself, she starts counting the same object twice very quickly. It's interesting to see that numbers and amounts seem to be a lot more abstract concept to her than letters. In any case, we continue to talk about numbers, count when opportunity presents itself and waiting for her awareness of numbers and amounts to firm up.

Freakonomics - a great parenting book

Which of these statements is true?

1. The more highly educated the parents, the higher the kid’s standardized test scores.


2. The more wealthy the parents, the highest the kid scores.


3. The child of a woman who was 30 or older when the child was born tends to have higher scores.


4. Children with low birth weight tend to have lower scores.


5. Children score higher if their families speak English at home.


6. An adopted child tends to score lower.


7. PTA parents see their kids score higher.


8. High scoring kids tend to have lots of books at home.


9. An intact family with two parents has no impact on test scores.


10. A stay at home mom from birth to kindergarten has no impact on scores.


11. Attending Head Start has no impact on scores.


12. Frequent museum trips have no impact on scores.


13. Watching lots of television has no impact on scores.


14. Spanking or not spanking has no impact on scores.


15. Reading to a child every day has no impact on scores.

According to the popular new book, Freakonomicsby economist Steven Levitt and writer Stephen Dubner, all of these statements are true. These are conclusions they drew from reviewing a giant collection of data called the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study undertaken by the U.S. Department of Education.

Freakonomics doesn’t sound like a parenting book, but it is. Two chapters are focused on parenting and one on teachers. Parents should read it. Oh, and it's good to know that our daughter should have high scores according to all of the above :)

What worked for us: first Look-and-Find books

When Anna was about 9 months old, my mother has sent her her first Look-and-Find book. At first I was not impressed - we didn't necessarily want to "Disneysize" our daughter so early. However, I grew to like this book and over the last year we expanded our Look-and-Find collection. I am still very much against the newest crop in these series, because a lot of purely cartoon-based Look-and-Find books just fill the page with characters and ask to find a character in different poses. Boring for adults and difficult for toddlers! But here is what I like about these series:

• Quality - the books are sturdy, well constructed, have clear and colorful illustrations


• Price - they are usually in the Bargain section of the bookstores


• Good way to introduce colors - asking your child to find something on the page that has a particular color


• Building vocabulary - teaching new words to your child (in this particular book there were treasure chests, fishing rods, sleepover under a starry sky)


• Introducing propositions and body parts why helping your child to find objects on the page - Sandwich is in Tiger's hand. Funny hat is on Eeyore's head.


• Introducing primitive story telling. I made a point always telling Anna that this book has no words, so we are making up a story from pictures. Now, at the age of 27 months, she can also participate actively in a story-making process and answer, What happens if... questions.

How to baby talk properly

I have never been good at baby talk. I am talking to my child in a language that is not my native language, and I have never been around children much before I became a mother. Using "cute words" simply doesn't appeal to me - maybe because, after all, I have an engineering degree and I like clear definitions for everything. I remember reading somewhere, If you want your child to become a rocket scientist, talk to her as if she is one. From what I read, using mangled "baby words" and incorrect sentences actually delays language development. For me talking to my child always was about using simple, but descriptive sentences - Look this is a dog. This dog is black and white. Dogs like people. This dog likes you. Maybe this approach is one of the reasons why my daughter speaks in complex full sentences at 27 months. Yesterday she was sitting in her car saying to herself, I am trying to think, what else Christopher Robin likes to eat.

If you are interested, here is an interesting link to the specialist's opinion on how to baby talk properly - To Baby Talk or Not to Baby Talk. The site contains many other topics around infant and toddler development including Language Milestones.

Brightly Beaming Preschool Cirriculum

Another resource that came highly recommended to me is Letter of the Week Curriculum. It's too bad that the site is incomplete, but it has some great information for those interested in a formal homeschooling program starting practically from birth, including reading suggestions for parents, detailed lesson plans, etc. I have to admit that even though I have visited this site for ideas, I could never really get into the flow of "really teaching" my daughter using any sort of a curriculum or a plan. I believe more in the following her natural inclinations by reading very many books on very many subjects and answering her questions as we go. I did like the idea of a scrapbook for learning letters, because in my mind it combines nicely "academics" of memorizing something with artistic element of creating a page. I think we will revisit a scrapbook idea, when we are ready for writing, which I don't see happening for a couple more years.

Turn off that TV already!

I am well aware that TV watching for young children (under 2 years) is a very controversial topic. It was easy for us to follow AAP guidelines of "no TV under 2". We don't watch live TV, we record a few programs and view them after our toddler is in bed. I managed to avoid Baby Einstein temptations and promises to make my baby smarter by plunking her in front of TV for any amount of time a day. However, I wanted to share a few opinions on the topic. To wit, I really tried to find some "pro" opinions on as well, and could only scrap together one. Hmm...

CONS:

Medicalnewstoday.com: "Television viewing before the age of three may have adverse effects on subsequent cognitive development".

ScienceDaily.com: "A new study has found that leaving your TV set on disrupts young children while they are playing, even if the channel is tuned to adult shows."

Dimitri A. Christakis, a pediatrician and researcher at Children's Hospital in Seattle, is coauthor of "The Elephant in the Living Room: Make Television Work for Your Kids": "Evidence from studies my colleagues and I have done suggests that early viewing (under age 3) may be harmful to children's cognitive development. We found that children who watch TV before age 3 score worse on tests of letter and number recognition upon entering school than those who do not. And for each hour of television a child watches on average per day before age 3, the chances that child will have attention problems at age 7 increase by 10 percent."

American Academy of Pediatrics: "Pediatricians should urge parents to avoid television viewing for children under the age of 2 years. Although certain television programs may be promoted to this age group, research on early brain development shows that babies and toddlers have a critical need for direct interactions with parents and other significant care givers (eg, child care providers) for healthy brain growth and the development of appropriate social, emotional, and cognitive skills. Therefore, exposing such young children to television programs should be discouraged."

PROS:

Center for Media Literacy: The researchers found that younger children, especially those aged 2 and 3, who watched a few hours a week of educational programs had higher scoring on academic tests 3 years later than children who did not watch the programs (but watched general entertainment shows instead)

So why is it that you still have a TV on? Let's have a poll and find out!

[polldaddy poll=1359268]

Activities to Promote Sound Awareness

Phonetic awareness is the ability to hear and manipulate phonemes - the smallest unit of speech that distinguishes one word from another. A child initially hears spoken language as ideas, or units of meaning. Awareness of separate words, syllables and speech sounds is developing usually at the age of 3-4 and can be helped by playing rhyming games.

Here are a few activities recommended in Straight Talk About Reading to promote sound awareness:

1. Hearing rhyming words (the simple definition is that words rhyme when all the sounds are the same except the beginning sounds) - say a pair of words, e.g. cat-hat, go-top, and ask your child if they rhyme or not.

2. Sort pictures by initial consonnant sound - have cards with pictures of familiar objects and cards with letters that correspond with initial sounds of the picture cards. Put two letter cards out as column labels. Hand out the picture card one at a time to your child, ask her to name the word and place it into an appropriate column or return it to you if initial sound is not one of the two you selected. You can increase to more columns as your child progresses.

3. Word sharing song. It is sung to the tune of "Jimmy Crack Corn and I don't care" (BTW, I have no idea what it is, so I invented my own melody).
The song goes like this:

Do you have a /d/ word to share with me?
Do you have a /d/ word to share with me?
Do you have a /d/ word to share with me?
It must start with the /d/ sound.

The response (from you or your child):
Dog (or whatever) is a word that starts with /d/.
Dog is a word that starts with /d/.
Dog is a word that starts with /d/.
Dog starts with the /d/ sound.

Teaching alphabet using the Web - Starfall

I have already set Starfall as one of my favorite links, but I cannot rave about it enough. I think that its creators did a great job teaching phonics in an easy and engaging way. We were not allowing Anna to watch TV, when she was an infant (a subject for another post), but I started sitting her on my lap and showing her letters in ABC portion of Starfall, since she was about 6 months old. Learning letters is not as easy as it appears. Apparently, research shows that letters are not remembered as a holistic shape, but rather by the spatial relationships of the curved and straight line. I noticed that in the beginning she was constantly mixing m and w as well as lowercase p and b. One letter that is still somewhat of a challenge for her is g- probably because it's so close to number 9. I can see how confusing English letters can be for someone who is just starting to recognize those squiggles on the page. However, I do credit the time spent on Starfall and reading all those alphabet books to her early alphabet knowledge. At the age of 2 she was recognizing all the letters in any font and distinguishing between capital and lowercase.

Good early ABC and word books.

When Anna was about 6 months, my mother has brought her a set of DK Lift-the-Flap board books. They quickly became her favorites, and we liked this series too. They are sturdy, and the illustrations are realistic and make good sense to young children. My First Words and My First ABC are especially well done. Generally we noticed that Anna was a lot more interested during her first year in word books with photo pictures rather than in the books with drawn objects. We had a few books from "Bright Baby" series by Roger Priddy, and they were rather well accepted as well.

Teaching Alphabet - First 6 Months

[caption id="attachment_14" align="aligncenter" width="455" caption="ABC Pillow"][/caption]

We introduced alphabet to our daughter very early. In fact, we bought a fabric with ABC characters when we planned her nursery, and my husband sewed pillow cases and curtains out of it. I remember holding Anna on my lap and pointing her letters on her pillow. It's hard to tell if being surrounded by ABC so early made any difference, but we definitely enjoyed having this theme in her room (combined with a lot of Winnie-the-Pooh).

Early reading: what has to happen first?

I was reading fluently when I was 3 years old, so I don't remember how I learned to read. Moreover, I was reading in my native Russian, and it's quite different from English. Russian is a lot more phonetic - letters and sounds generally match together quite well. That's why I decided to read up on how reading is taught in schools by picking up a book in the library called Straight Talk About Reading. This book is rather old, and I think that the pendulum between phonetic approach and whole language approach swung again towards phonics. The book makes a passionate case for phonics and goes into detail about how to promote reading at home starting and infancy and continuing through early school years. Since I have a toddler, I concentrated on prerequisites for reading. According to the authors, the following three things have to happen before the reading can start:

• Awareness about print and how a book is read


• Knowledge of the names of the letters


• Awareness of the speech sounds in words (phonetic awareness)

I will expand on each of these points and how we go about accomplishing them in the other posts in "Learning to read" series

Ten Fun Facts About Me

1. I waas born and raised in the former Soviet Union. My native language is Russian. Therefore I despise articles in English language as something that is entirely unnecessary.
2. I moved to US at a ripe old age of 25 after graduating with M.S in System Engineering from Radioengineering University in my native city of Minsk.
3. I started my work life in the States as a software engineer for a small start-up in New York City. Now I am a product manager in a software division for a giant technology company in the Silicon Valley.
4. My work took me places. I visited almost every state of the United States and about 15 European countries.
5. My three top travel memories – New Year 2000 in Paris, Egyptian Pyramids and Santorini.
6. Having my daughter was an unexpected event, and the best thing that ever happened to me.
7. My husband is a friend, a lover and a best father ever.
8. My favorite movie is Forrest Gump, and my favorite book is A Stranger in a Strange Land.
9. I don’t watch TV. Instead I spend all the time freed from TV watching on the Internet. I can’t imagine how we ever lived without it.
10. I am tone deaf and can’t play any musical instrument.

Yes, yet another blog.

I have a confession to make. I am an Internet addict. It all started when I was pregnant with my daughter, and it never stopped. At least I manage to keep my addiction to one topic - child development and early learning. I want to have a place where I will keep track of all the things that I have discovered and learned while reading books and articles on the subject. Of course, I also try to use some of the materials while raising my daughter who was born in October 2006, and I will share my successes and failures.

I am not a native English speaker/writer. My native language is Russian, but I've been living in the United States for 15 years now. My husband is from Germany. He speaks German with our daughter, and I speak English to her. If someone has any good idea on how to introduce Russian (or any other third language, for that matter), please feel free to comment.