19 month old- What to teach her next and how?

[samyuktha]

Hi Everyone,

Happy New Year 2014!

First of all, a very heartfelt thank you to everyone in this group- I couldn't have come this far without your support and advice. I've been reading most of the posts since my daughter was born and am truly awed at the breadth and depth of early education. It has been both humbling and inspiring. This is the first time I'm posting.

My question is what is a 19 month old capable of learning and how to teach her that? I welcome suggestions of resources but am more interested in curriculum and methods of introducing/teaching them to her.

DD Heera is now  in her 19th month. We've been doing Little Reader since she was 4 months till she was about 14 months old. Then she poured water on my laptop (I promise I took my eyes off her for just ten seconds!) and that was the end of it! She loved LR, Sparkabilities and would often ask to watch them. Though she didn't "learn to read" from LR, I believe it really helped to get her interested in learning and improved her vocabulary. At 13 months, she would point out everyday objects, animals, shapes, colors correctly. At 14 months, she learned to recognize the alphabet- both uppercase and lowercase and would "read" the letters everywhere she saw them. She started out talking at 15 months and by the end of the month, she had a vocabulary range of 30-60 words. Now I've lost track of her vocabulary, she knows and says her letters (name and phonetics), numbers from 1-20 (forwards and backwards), concepts such as in/out, up/down, left/right, all opposites, food items, all body parts etc. She has great hand eye coordination- plays puzzles and matching games on iPad (2-3 years old level), threads big beads onto a shoelace and can wind up her windup toys on her own. Her gross motor skills are about average though- walks, runs and climbs up but not down yet.

She just soaks up information- I have to say something just twice and she picks it up- and I am at a loss what to teach her next. My thought process goes something like this "She is too young for this. I'm just going to overwhelm her" to "Let me just focus on input now and worry about output later. There's no harm in telling her" and two days later "Oh my god, she gets it!!!" I alternate between "I'm just pushing her to do too much too soon and it's all gonna backfire" to "She learns so fast. Am I holding her back and not letting her realize her potential?"

DD has no patience to sit still and though she was CRAZY about books till about two months ago, now she is not super interested in them. No clue on what turned her off but I'm blaming the iPad. She gets about an hour of iPad a day after 7:00 pm. She used to love to read the whole day but now she reads about just an hour a day. Rest of it is spent in blocks, crayons, balls, the park and her "tricycle".

I would also like to round out her education a little. I suspect I am totally tone deaf but I would love her to enjoy/learn music- classical music (she loves nursery rhymes anyways), throw in a little bit of science. What science can one teach a 19 month old? Also, how do I teach her to read?

Thanks so much!

[samyuktha]

Any ideas, folks?

[robbyjo]

Hi Samyuktha,

Firstly, congratulations on such a great baby! Please also understand that each baby grows differently. At one point, she might be bored in one thing and got interested in another thing. So, I think it's a great time for you to listen to her next interest. Expose her to all possible positive activities that promote learning.

I think that you can stimulate her physical growth by playing in the park, for example. Try also dance for little tots or baby gym. Doing a lot of exercise would improve focus and increase blood flow to the brain (which is usually a good thing for kids). Plus, she might reach a phase that she needs her gross motoric skill to grow too.

Another thing to try is to grow her social and emotional skills. Arrange a lot of play dates. See her flourish socially and help her handle emotional reactions too.

Although she's "bored" in "academic stuff", you may still try to read her a couple of books by the end of the day. Make it super fun. Try fun "activity books" like Tickle Monster. Another trick that you may try is: Hand puppets. Talk to her through her favorite hand puppet and then have the puppet read a book to her.

I wouldn't worry about science for now, but try introducing her to a concept of counting. Mainly, how to connect real quantities to numbers. When my kid was about 15 month old, she could recite numbers up to 13 correctly, but she could hardly connect those numbers to real quantities, like 3 apples. She now can, thankfully. So, try to teach that first using Marshmallow Math. When that real-abstract connection is made, you can proceed with teaching logic, which primarily operates in abstract realm. Once the logic is strong, you can get into science. Without logic, teaching science almost feels like having the kid regurgitating facts, which is not really useful at all.

For the music front, nursery rhymes are okay, I would say. Get her hooked to music first. Wide exposure is the key at this moment and gauge her interest.

[CVMomma]

First of all, it sounds like you are doing very well!!
And sorry about the loss of your computer!    I know how quickly these little ones can move.

Have you read the book Marshmallow Math? That has great math ideas! Also there are some really good math apps for the iPad, since she seems to enjoy learning that way. Maybe it would work well to follow her lead and let her learn from the iPad. There are also several interesting threads on this forum about teaching your toddler math. The search button at the top of this page has been a great help to me!

As far as reading goes, there are lots of "books" to read on the iPad too.  You can even download a free version of Kindle and find great kindle books for her that are also free! Maybe you could entice her to sit for more books if they are read from the iPad.  Even if she has not demonstrated to you that she can read, that doesn't mean she can't. And even if she can't read, she is still light years ahead of average kids her age! Wow! She recognizes all of her letters and their sounds! You should be a proud momma! Keep it up!

[samyuktha]

Robbyjo and CVMomma, what great ideas! Thank you for the suggestions- I will be ordering Marshmallow Math this month! Heera can connect the quantities to numbers till 5 but gets confused/distracted after that, but I so get what you mean, Robbyjo. And since I too am not interested in her learning by rote, it makes sense to hold off the science.

Currently, her only favourite is the rhyme- the finger family. It's been going on for the past three weeks and
while I'm fed up of the song, I am amazed at the creativity Heera shows in adapting it to whatever she does. While playing blocks, she puts a block on each finger and says the family character it represents. Ditto for bath toys and the latest is her pacifier!!!

She attends playschool about three mornings a week for a couple of hours and attends a playgroup once a week. Her playschool, I must admit is more for my benefit than hers- we dont have many family/friends around for her to socialise with and this is also my way of taking time out for myself and also do chores. We did attend baby gym but she had trouble following instructions and just wanted to run around. So we decided to take a break for a few months and try again later.

How do I introduce her to music? Do I play different music on the iPad and talk to her about it? Do I do
it by genre or by instrument? Or should I start with Solfege? We unfortunately do not have a music background (though we love listening to different kinds of music) and so are clueless where to start.

Thank you so much for your encouragement!

[Sangeeta Sharma]

Thanks for the ideas. Its helpful to understand many things in future.

[veronikasjinkarenko]

wauw I am impressed with both you and your kid!!

When Daniel was that age, I got him a big atlas poster. He was very quick in recognizing the large countries like Russia, USA, Canada... Also very fun!

[seastar]

When I first started here I got some great advice on this http://forum.brillkids.com/general-discussion-b5/where-to-start-with-22-month-old-all-hints-tips-and-advice-gratefully-received/msg79977/#msg79977 and other threads. It sounds like you are so far ahead already. Have you tried Your CHild Can Read and Your CHild Can Discover? They are really great.

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