When to introduce Leap Frog Letter Factory in teaching to read

[luckylucy]

My baby is almost 15 months old and we've been doing lots of real flash cards a few times a day for the past few months and watching YBCR.  From my understanding the The Leap Frog Letter Factory seem to teach letters and phonics quite well.   In teaching my daughter to read, when should I introduce this dvd?  Right now she shows no evidence that she is learning to read the words.  Although, I suppose by 18 months, when she can communicate a lot better, we should be able to tell what she is learning. 

Should I wait to introduce the Letter Factory until she is about 2 years old or until she knows about 200 words by site?  What do you think the parameters are?

Thanks!

[Nikita]

My bub s 18 months now and I have started Leap Frog but it doesnt capture her interest as much as some others so perhaps she is a little too young as they have storyline and dont think that really is of interest yet.

[nhockaday]

I let my son watch them every once in a while. I'm not too excited that they are a cartoon.

[Tanikit]

My daughter is  20 months old and in the past month I have started teaching her phonics (initially just the letter sounds though) I am taking it very slowly and still doing whole words a lot. I will probably increase the phonics as she gets closer to two. She has a sight reading vocabulary somewhere around 300 words I believe, but I haven't really kept track. In the last two months it has become a lot easier to find out what she knows, so hang in there and perhaps continue the whole words for now.

[MonkeynoseMomma]

We have watched the Leap Frog Letter Factory video. Emma likes the letters making sounds and the little ditty they sing, but gets bored with the story.
 I think just having refrigerator magnets and playing with them works as well.
Since viewing Leap Frog we also sing " The a says AAAA, the a says AAAA. Every letter makes a sound, the a Says AAAA" like they do on the video. She dances along
  My 19 mo. old can't get her tongue around all the sounds yet. But she can name a word that starts with the same sound.

[dylanscores]

New member here. Just thought I would share my experience with the letter factory DVD. When my son was 14 months old, and knew most of the alphabet we started watching the letter factory DVD. By 18 months he knew all of the letters and all of the sounds and started sounding out words. He was full on reading at 2 ½ years old. I did not use any flash cards, or any reading program at all, in fact I had no intention of trying to teach him to read yet. 
I do not think he would have read so early if we did not have the letter factory DVD.

For those interested in what we did do. We read books to him since birth, and always use the pointer finger so he could follow along and understand what the words I am saying look like.
 I started sign language at 9 months, we sang the ABC’s a few times daily, “usually during diaper change to stop his wiggling”  At 14 months the letter factory DVD, and the fridge letters to go with it,  at 17 months I would write words like mom, dad, cat, on the magna doodle and sound them out for him. He loved the foam tub letters and would put a bunch of the letters lined up and sound them out.  He stayed at this stage for quite a while. Then around 2 ½ he would read most of his usual bed time books to me. Initially, I thought that he just was memorizing them; however, a couple months later I bought a few new books and my jaw hit the floor when he picked them up and read them too!
He is now 4 years old reading at a 2nd grade level.
Every thing we did was fun and engaging and we only did them when he was interested.

[luckylucy]

Thanks for the responses everyone. 

Dylanscores, it's so nice to read your story and to know that there are many ways a child can learn to read by different types of exposure to words and letters. 

[jdhanota]

I introduced the leapfrog teaching numbers to my son at around 24 old and it was at that stage where he learned all his numbers and sounds, but he started losing interest in YBCR videos...for me it was a tradeoff.

[RS Mum]

I started introducing Letter Factory to my girl at 14 mths and she had learnt all the phonics within 3 weeks.
She is rather early in speech development and can repeat most words when introduced.

Now at 15.5 mth, she still loves the Letter Factory and prefers it over YBCR. We had moved on to Word factory & Word factory 2 & Storybook Factory.

She will ask for Tad, Tad, Tad - the little frog character everyday.
Everywhere we go, eg shopping ctr or places, she will start pointing to the signages & try to say out
the sound of the letters.

Surprisingly, Meet the Sight Words is able to capture her attention and she will repeat the words.

I only do flash cards in the toilet session every morning. She can only sit still at the toilet bowl or rather
the flash cards keep her butt down.

I guess it's really dep on the readiness of your kid and the way he/ she is comfortable =>.
Have fun!

[sofic]

I definitely think that you should show the dvd to him.  It works!  My boy is 22 months and started the ybcr at 14m and since he was no where near talking stage, I showed him signs to go with some of the words in order for me to gauge whether or not he was learning.  Well it didn't take long for me to see that in fact he was learning and I really feel that the ybcr system really helped him to enjoy and take an interest in letters.   Therefore once we started the letter factory( at about 17m), letters were not something foreign to him, it was almost as if something clicked and he was able to make the association very quickly that letters were both fun with tad and now he had a connection to the symbols he saw in the ybcr dvd and cards.  I don't know how to describe it but at 18 months some of his first sounds were the letter sounds, while I was working on the computer I could hear him randomly pick up magnet letters and sound them out.   He also started to sound out some of the flashcard words.  My boy is a bit speech delayed ( so I feel -even though I ve been told it is too early to be concerned) he's not very spontaneous with his communication, however the letters and dvds keep me from being overly concerned since I see him sounding out beginning sounds and putting a couple of words together here and there.   He also watched the sight words and even though he can't sound them all out exactly ( he can sound out about 20 of them enough so that I can understand and another 15 that he semi sounds out enough for me to tell he knows them) I can tell that he is employing the sounding out concept to these as well.  I really feel that the Leap Frog Letter Factory was a very useful tool in pulling it all together.  While my son loved the Letter Factory and watched for about 3 weeks, he has since retired it since he already learned what he needed to from it and knows his sounds like a 4 yr old.  I occasionally sneak it in once every two weeks just to reinforce the concepts.
On a side note, there are a lot of parents that would criticize us for the "pressure" we are putting on our children- but I say they're not being very open minded.  My son absolutely loves learning.  He is not entertained by TV cartoons or even some good old disney movies.  THese only catch his attention minimally and honestly I don't even have anything on dvd that is not educational for him in some way or another.  He loves his educational dvds, the catchy tunes ( leap frog), the neat graphics (sight words) , the children (ybcr).  I feel Youtube is also another great resource tool for  pre-school learning.  My boy is very normal, he loves to run around and interact.  Socially, he has no inhibitions, he has a great imagination and is very loving.  He's hitting his very normal rebellious stage of terrible twos but nothing about him would lead anyone to think that I am not letting him be normal.  It bothers me when parents criticize those of us who willingly and happily sacrifice our time and energy to teach our children. I think many of us simply spend a lot of time thinking up the next thing we could do to teach our children something new in a fun and loving way and there is nothing wrong with that-it's not like we have our  toddlers locked up all day cramming for the MCAT's....well hopefully someday..!!!

[RS Mum]

Learning is endless... and fun!

I had learnt a lot myself as a parent or a learning buddy with my girl when researching for educational materials!
Many things which i had missed out during my school days or due to lack of exposure then. Feel like i am upgrading myself too!

Take cues from your child... if he/ she is not ready, it's ok. Try when older!

I got feedback that 2-3 yr old kids can pick up the phonetic alphabets in just 1 week with Leapfrog Letter Factory or through regular 15min practices with parents at bedtime.

Need not worry, kids will learn in one way or another.

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