To start or not to start? Reading, 5 months old.

[Lady Xeona]

My kid was using sign language at the age of 7 months. 
I would recommend to every one to teach your baby sign language!!!!!!! - they do know what is going on... and if you want them to communicate with you then give them a way to do it.  (signing time for baby is the best!)
Babies can technically read and do math at the age of 6 months.  It is easier to know the word and its meaning first before learning to read it- I know that because we are learning 5 languages!  If you are teaching a baby or anyone a word it has to have a meaning or it is a waste of time and why would your brain store such useless information?  As long as the baby knows what the hand symbol or written symbol means they will learn it.
My kid did not learn to read until she was 2 years old- that I know of- she just walked up to me and started reading out loud.  I never made any attempts to teach her how to read. 

http://www.youtube.com/user/ladyxeona#p/c/20EB2F7DB79EA206/25/82XbPCoCBsM

[karmie]

As you can see, I am very nervous about teaching kids to read *without* teaching them phonics. 

Don't be nervous about it. It works well! Babies do figure out sequence and phonics if you start them on flashcards the dolman method.  That's especially so for English. 

My baby started on YBCR at 1 month. And then on flashcard DVD for English(winktolearn) at 7 months.  We could tell that he recognised words by the time he was 10 months, and after he was 1 year old, we could tell that he could figure out words phonetically.

This is not the same as for Chinese, which is character-based, and unless you are teaching HanyuPinyin(HYPY), there is no phonetics to talk about. And I'm avoiding  HYPY as far as possible for now. I even take the trouble to use correction tape to blank them out of books after either memorising the pronunciation or writing a very tiny note at a separate corner of the book for myself.  And yes, I do notice that for Chinese, for those words that my son does not come across as often, he may forget.  And this is despite the fact that he can read the Chinese characters in different forms, in different media, on signs outside that he's never seen before, etc.

But for English - he'd figure out how to read it out. Only that, he may or may not know the meaning, if it's a new word.

So, don't worry - start your baby as young as you can! Those brains are like sponge!

[Chris1]

Hi Lady Xeona,

Quote,” I never made any attempts to teach her how to read“

Presumably your daughter had either access to a DVD about the alphabet and/or was read to frequently.
Did your daughter encourage you to point at words whilst you read to her or did you move your finger to each word as it was being read?
Reading a set of favourite books which contain high frequency words is effectively the same as showing flashcards. No-one learns in a vacuum.

I am looking forward to your response.
Chris.

 

[2010BEBES]

My kid was using sign language at the age of 7 months. 
I would recommend to every one to teach your baby sign language...
Babies can technically read and do math at the age of 6 months. 
 It is easier to know the word and its meaning first before learning to read it- I know that because we are learning 5 languages! 

Congrats for your kid, wow 5 languages at the same time?
Which languages are you learning and i wander if anyone (who) speaks in those language to her or what do you use.
I read other moms teach one language each day. do ou do something like that, take turns in weeks or mix them in the same day
Thank for sharing.

[TmS]

I know this thread has been dead for a while but I found it intriguing to hear all the different arguments.

Should we teach the left brain or the right brain, whole word or phonetics etc?

I'd like to relate a learning experience/ teaching experience of my own. I teach acrobatics (I am the author of the an acrobatics syllabus for dancers).

When I learned to do a cartwheel as a young child (about 3) I was asked to stand with my feet together, was pushed slightly forward and since I stepped forward with my right foot it was decided that I was a right handed cartwheel and that is what I was taught.

In gymnastics they don't always teach both sides but in dancing it's a must so after I was good at this I was taught left. Now there was maybe six months between the teaching of sides so I was no more than four when I learned my left. To this day, despite the fact that an audience member would know no difference, I am not as comfortable cartwheeling to my left. Despite doing them almost every day for over 25 years.

I train all students left and right from day one, a lot of students who start late will still have a "better side" usually the side they write. But I have found that if I start training both sides, simultaneously, young enough (and that is the key) that most kids will say "I don't have a good side, they're the same. It makes no difference to me".

I think that by assuming that the best way of learning to read is either phonics or whole word is missing the fact that most of us probably do a combination of both and even if we don't we should be able to because only training one part of something must detract from the whole.

I also wonder how you can learn to write if you don't learn phonics? At some point you have to be aware of the breakdown of the letters, you certainly can't write a whole word you must write or type it one letter at a time. Also some words can't be broken down phonetically (at least not in English) so there are times when we have to rely on memory to recognise a word.

We used the YBCR method so our son was taught to read whole words with a little touch on phonics. We also played alphabet songs and had letters around the place etc. He started to read words we hadn't shown him out of the blue one day at which point I figured he had cracked the code. I believe he did this young because he was given the information and his brain was able to sort through it and make deductions. Just like with maths and grammar.

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