Since that thread was started, we put an article on Native Reading on the BrillBaby site:

http://www.brillbaby.com/teach-baby/native-reading-method.php

Skylark, I also skip sessions from time to time. I usually do two sessions a day (very occasionally three), but sometimes I only do one - and sometimes none (especially at weekends). I think it is fine. I am the same with Little Reader, and always have been.

As I said in an earlier post, Shichida's rigidity - not allowing you to skip a single session without having to start the program all over again - is what put me off his method the most.

Thanks for the info, Lucky Mommy! I wonder why the Shichida people keep it up on their website!

Just found this Straits Times report on how the owners of the Shichida center in Singapore are suing their ex-employees:

http://www.shichidamethod.com/ST_report_090505.html

The Shichida site also has links to two other articles in Chinese.

Hi Joha

Don't you think if she doesn't keep listening to the other languages she is going to forget what she had learnt?

Yes and no. I believe in the importance of the early exposure when the brain is learning to pick out certain sounds (and ignore others). Of course, it would be better to continue - but once Naimah started talking, I decided four languages was enough. In our case they are English, Cantonese, Tagalog (Filipino) and Mandarin. Nim has been hearing Cantonese and Tagalog on a regular basis since birth (but she speaks far, far more English than anything else). She is going to her first Mandarin playgroup today, and will be learning Cantonese and Mandarin properly starting from September.

So yes, in an ideal world I wouldn't have stopped the Spanish and Russian - but I don't want to overload Nim. I also wanted to choose the languages that are most relevant to her everyday life (we live in China; our live-in helper is a native Tagalog speaker).

I wanted to get the Tweedlewink for the right brain technique, but some of the reviews on the quality of the DVD's have not been very good.

I agree, I'm afraid - main reason I didn't keep it up.

My daughter is 5 and a half moths old and I'm not sue if she is too old to start using it.

Actually I mainly used the crawling track after the age of 6 months! We did tummy time before that (which Nim mostly hated ). I put the crawling track on an incline from around 6 months, because she was showing no signs of crawling. As it was, she started cross-pattern crawling as late as 11 months! (Though she army crawled for a few months before that.)

I was worried Nim would do next to no cross-pattern crawling because she was cruising from soon after her first birthday. But she actually ended up doing quite a lot of crawling. She walked holding on to someone's finger for a few months before she began walking unaided at 16 months. During those months if she wanted to get somewhere and no person or furniture was nearby, she would crawl there (and then pull up to standing). It was late in the game, but I finally got to see the perfect cross-pattern crawl I had longed for!

[Hang on, wasn't this supposed to be about reading?? Oops...]

Hi Lori

I know that in the first edition of Doman's book, he actually recommended to start teaching your baby to read from age 18 months (!). I don't suppose you have a book that old though. I don't know about the 40th anniversary edition specifically.

Can anyone else help?

Joha, did you know that anjie has uploaded the Doman curriculum? So you can download that to use with Little Reader if you prefer.

I haven't tried the Shichida method, but some of our forum members rated Doman math higher than Shichida, so I decided to stick with what I know.

"Know" also because I've read the book - whereas with Shichida, the information is top secret!

From what I can tell, Shichida math moves faster and as a result the schedule is more rigid: you CANNOT miss a day; otherwise, you have to start all over from the beginning.

I couldn't handle that, because there are always going to be days when I can't teach (particularly at the weekend). Doman doesn't say you have to start over -just that you should do your best.

After all, there would be days when your child might not be in the mood for teaching, and that wouldn't mean you would have to start over.

So what does Shichida recommend if your child isn't in the mood one day? Particularly if you have invested a lot of time in the program and don't want to start all over?? Hmm, I wonder...

Hi Joha

when you were teaching parts of the body, did you use a file in LR at that was it?

I used the BrillKids category plus 4 body parts categories by forum members (2 of the 4 were created by our moderator nhockaday). I made one playlist out of all the categories. I edited the categories so that I wouldn't get any repeated words.

for your sessions, are you following Doman's methof (retiring words) or do you do categories?

I don't retire words; I just play different categories on different days.

Are you teaching her another language? If you do, how do you divide the sessions?

I gave Naimah early exposure to foreign languages - Russian (on Tweedlewink), and Spanish and Mandarin (on Little Reader). Russian and Spanish are language I studied to a high level. Mandarin because she will definitely be learning it in the future.

I wanted to "get her ear in" - to let her brain be used to the phonemes of those languages. But now that Nim is older, we just do English (I stopped Tweedlewink to cut down on TV watching). Because the other languages don't appear in her everyday life, it doesn't seem relevant to continue them for now.

If I knew Mandarin, I would probably have kept up that one - but I know Nim will be hearing it three times a week from September anyway (when she starts nursery school).

Maddy

Hi Baby Mathsters!

I think a lot of people (myself included) have been wondering what exactly the difference is between the Doman and Shichida methods.

Thanks Agnes for sharing the Shichida lesson schedule with us - without you, it would have remained a mystery to many of us!

I have made a document comparing the Doman and Shichida schedules, as far as quantity and equation lessons go (see attached).

It shows the weeks/days and how many quantities/equations per day. For Shichida, the no. of equations per day varies, so you will see something like "(x7-10)." This means you do between 7 and 10 equations per day.

If anyone spots anything incorrect in this document, do let me know!

(NB There are times when Doman is not that specific about how long to spend on something. I've set aside 3 weeks whenever he said "a few weeks.")

I have some questions about the Shichida method - wonder if anyone can help clarify the following...?

1. How many lessons are there per day with Shichida?

2. Do you show the same equations more than once per day?

3. You show addition/multiplication for 10 days, but subtraction/division for only 5. Is this because it's easier to grasp subtraction after addition, and division after multiplication (they being the opposites of each other)?

4. Why do you have a different number of equations on different days?

5. Mixed + and – equations are not followed by mixed x and / equations. Is this because three-step multiplication and division are considered more difficult than three-step addition and subtraction? (This is not something I could imagine Doman ever admitting to. He would probably say that if a calculator can do multiplication as quickly as it can addition, then so should our superior human brain!)

Soon there could be no more Shichida Math Mysteries left! Here's hoping anyway...

Yes, agreed - the most important thing is to choose words that interest your child! However, Anjie wanted the list of words in the book, so that's what that is.

In answer to your questions, Joha...

Based on what I was reading you aren't really flashing the cards but just showing them to your baby and pointing at whatever object or part you are talking about. Is this how you are doing it? How many words do you show to your baby in a day?

I think Doman wants you to do both - some flashing, and some slower learning, while you teach meanings. Of course, you won't be able to find something to point to for some words, in which case you'll just be flashing (unless you find a picture, but then you may as well be using Little Reader!).

For me personally, I have only used LR and YBCR. Right now, just LR (because Naimah finished learning the YBCR words a while ago). We do 20-50 words a day (20-30 per session).

Hi Anjie

I've made a document with the word lists I could find in How To Teach Your Baby To Read - please see attached.

It's not 200 words, but 112 (or 115, if you count mommy, daddy and the child's name).

Maybe it said 200 because there are also examples of couplets, phrases and sentences in the book. They are just examples though - the  is to use the vocabulary you already have to build couplets, phrases and sentences. Sometimes you will need to add words like "is" and "the."

These words are all taken from the chapter How to Teach Your Baby to Read (chapter title = book title).

Hope that helps!

Maddy

Mmm, good question Tina!

This is just like the warning that rapidly shifting images on television are bad for children - also having a negative impact on attention span. It's something mentioned on page two of our article Television - Good or Bad?
http://www.brillbaby.com/early-learning/watching-television/bad-content-unsupervised.php

YBCR and Signing Time don't actually have any rapidly shifting images. And with Little Reader, you would probably spend the majority of your time going at a slower paced, using the multisensory method.

I do both types of teaching with Little Reader; I also use Little Math, which involves flashing. But the amount of time I spend flashing lessons to Naimah is under 10 minutes per day. I just can't believe that would affect her attention span.

I think the difference is when your child is mesmerized by something on TV like a movie trailer she shouldn't be watching, you will see her face freeze and she'll go into almost a trance. It's so terrible, I will sometimes turn off the TV during adverts! (I've been letting Nim watch American Idol with me. She will dance along while they are singing, although she gets pretty bored during the talking. )

But if Nim is watching the "wawais" (butterflies) on Little Math, she will look like she is concentrating and focused, not like she is mesmerized. She has also started asking to see them several times a day.

I think the Montessori argument would hold water though if you took flash lessons to an extreme, doing several hours of them a day. Hopefully no one would do that.

I also know (via another forum) someone from the IAHP. I've just emailed to ask if she can answer DadDude's questions or help find someone from the Institutes who can...

At the very end, Kim Peek's father says, "About the only thing he can't do - he can't reason out mathematical problems" (!).

So I guess the director of Rain Man cherry picked the tootpick subitizing ability from another savant!

Chris, are you sure that no savants can subitize? It seems odd for the director to completely invent this ability.

Daniel Tammet says that he sees "little sparks" that eventually become numbers. His brain works out the answer and presents it to him. Naturally, there's no way to tell whether subitizing is involved.

My daughter Naimah's first five signs were:

1. Milk
2. Light
3. Dog (there are a lot of them where we live)
4. More
5. A made-up sign for "star" (which we would do while singing Twinkle, Twinkle)

As we can tell, most babies sign "milk" first!

Nim started signing just before 10 months. I remember I was really impatient, as I'd been signing to her since 3 months of age. I was a bit worried too, because I'd heard of babies signing at 6-8 months. But then I watched Rachel Coleman (Signing Time presenter) talking about how babies will normally sign back at around 10 months, so I could relax a little!

10 months is an average, I think - even 12 months is normal, so be patient if you're waiting for that first sign (I know it's hard!).

If you start signing with a toddler though, they can start signing back almost immediately. They might also take a couple of months though (depending on the temperament of the child), so give it time.

Of course, no matter when your child signs back for the first time, there are huge benefits to them understanding the signs. Nim was definitely understanding "milk" almost from the get-go, and it would calm her down in those very early days.

All of you signing parents, you might like to read this post on my blog, which mentions an interesting study into the benefits for children who use gestures as toddlers: Why signing babies are smarter.

Yes, thanks Kimba15 - karma to you.

And that answers my question about university - thanks guys.

Child-led learning immediately makes me think of Montessori. Do the Montessori philosophy and methods overlap much with those of unschoolers?

Yes, I will have to read John Holt's book - thanks.