I think the objective of the studies quoted could only prove that between stimulation and none - stimulation produces a far more superior effect on cognition.  However, the role of genetics in intelligence is far more difficult to prove, ie will parents of IQ above 140 produce kids of IQ above 140 as well vs parents of IQ below 140... and how much is the discrepancy? And is there a limit to nurture where the amount of nurturing is unable to make an incremental increase to what nature has already pre-determined? (most of the later studies are based on twins - where genetics is already controlled for)

I also found that the design of the studies had a common flaw called the "Hawthorne Effect" - by simply placing more attention on the experimental group, that group will naturally produce better results.

Looking forward to receiving more cutting-edge research on genetics and the spectrum of intelligence.

I've read two of his books - Blink and Outliers.

I agreed with some of the chapters but not all, especially with that of the Maths abilities in Asians.  Being an Asian myself, I found it a little incredible at times, I mean, Singapore was never a rice-growing nation to start with... we are not even agricultural... our roots are actually in trade (which may mean that we understood the value of numbers from our forefathers).  On the concepts of the miscommunication and positive effects of 10,000 hours of practice to confer benefits to one, I fully agree with him.

My main takeaway from reading his book: as parents, we have to persevere with our practices - so that our kids are primmed to make use of opportunities that appear in their lives.  What we might not be able to, though, is that we may not recognise an opportunity when it presents itself.  Anyone here has an idea on this?
 

Dear Pamela,

thanks for the explanation! It's really useful... because I realised my daughter has difficulty with visual scanning, especially with the lower visual space... so photographic memory cannot be 100% effective if visual observation is not working at 100% capacity.  Is that right?

Sorry for so many questions!

Dear Tatianna,

thanks so much for your assurances...

Like Longtalldrink, when I got pregnant, I had wanted to homeschool my kids instead of sending them to formal primary schools.  Now's my chance to try this out and see if I like it enough to do it full-time!!!

Kharma to you!

Dear Luckymommy 1307,

Shichida has the dots sets for sale at their Tensai shop - it's much cheaper than the GD ones.  You can also choose to make your own flashcards - I think Little Maths is quite useful in this aspect.

Since your child is under age of 3, you can do the shorter-version of thr 65 day programme, ie no need to ask child to image (visualise) dots to numbers. ie, just do day 1 to 58 and rest for 1 month before starting the cycle again.

I think Agnescharm has uploaded the 65 day programme.

All the best!

Thanks Joan - I have less problems with motivating my girl as we are blessed to have a teacher who is very good with young children - the teacher herself has kids and grandchildren who are exceptionally gifted in music (one of them was my friend from school) - and she herself does not force the kids to be able to play the pieces well - in fact, the kids were only allowed to touch a real violin after practicing 4 months of pre-playing skills (eg bow hold, chin-holding the violin) on the pretend violin Nikita described.  Once a month, the teacher will show the kids musical notation and notes as an introduction to music-reading. So I guess having such a teacher made me feel kinda relaxed when my daughter has yet to be able to play a piece properly. (we just started learning the first line of 'Twinkle Twinkle' last Saturday!)

Tatianna: Suzuki method is quite useful for young children as their hearing is much more effective however, I understand that there is also the Kodaly method (which is more European based)? Good violin teachers will tailor their teaching methods according to the level and interest of the child - hence, don't fret too much about what method works best - the important thing is to find a good teacher who will inspire and motivate your child. 

My other tricks to get my child motivated is based on the principle of establishing a habit - for such young children, it's taken me nearly 1 year to get my girl to practice her violin without much cohercing/'motivating'.
1. We practice at nearly the same time everyday - routine!
2. When she does really well, she gets stickers as reward (the teacher gives us a weekly calendar on which we can place stickers/stamps on the days the child practices her violin).
3. Ad hoc rewards...
4. Asking her how she feels when she plays well - and get her motivated internally... (this is by far, the most effective way in the long-term)
5. We practice at my parents' place, in presence of grandparents, the motivation to 'perform' is greater.
6. The teacher has arranged for the kids to perform at a concert - my daughter has attended one last year (without performing), so she's really excited at the prospect of being able to play the violin on stage.
7. Videotape the practice and have immediate playback - only when my daughter chooses to play below her current abilities.

That said, it's not always smooth-sailing for us - my girl can play really sloppily and 'hijack' the practice session. That tests my patience +++++!!!!

Another tip: as my girl had trouble recognising numbers beyond 20, I've started to practice bow hold skills and to count to 100 with a number chart in front of her. Worked like a charm - she can recognise any number from 1-100 within 2 weeks.  My 2.5 year old son who joins in whatever we try to do can do that 50% of the time.

Last thing: as a parent, we also need to enjoy our violin lessons with our child - otherwise, it's difficult to convey the 'joy' of learning music to our kids.

I have learnt both piano and viola (relative of violin but much harder to play well) when young.

As the piano is my first instrument - I had lazy ears for the longest time but able to sight-read and interpret music, until I picked up the viola.  String instruments are difficult to play because they require accuracy when pressing on the fingerboard, the slightest misplacement can create horrendous noise!  You may say I had the best of both worlds, and in my opinion, to train the ear would be more important than learning to read notes.

My 4.5 year old daughter has been taking formal violin lessons for 1 year now.  She has yet to start playing twinkle twinkle (the most basic of all violin songs) as I am working on establishing good techniques such as bow handling, control, fingerboard, counting and a myriad of many other good habits - I truly believe that the violin is the most difficult instrument to master!  My 2.5 year old son has been fighting to get his 'airtime' on the violin and although he has only observed me teaching my daughter (the formal lessons are conducted under another teacher), he has managed to do some amazing things on the violin. 

I also let my kids have a go at the piano since they were babies, all in the name of musical exposure - which reminds me, maybe I need to find a slot on my daughter's schedule to put her in some formal piano-lessons.

The most important thing in learning a musical instrument, as DadDude and some other parents have alluded to, is a home environment where music-making is appreciated.  The methodology is important but interest and internal motivation is the key to success.  I play in an amateur orchestra and usually my kids tag along to my practices - which the other musicians will sometimes entertain by playing kid songs on their respective instruments - I think that's a wonderful introduction to classicial music.

SO, whichever instrument you choose for your child - make sure they enjoy it and create a supportive environment for them to continue enjoy music-making.

Hope this will help parents interested in the Shichida 65 day Maths programme:

I've just started my children on Shichida's 65 day maths programme.... the concept of flashing maths cards is similiar to that of GD maths with the exception that for equation cards: eg. "1+1=2", only the 2-dot card is flashed and each card is held separately, unlike the conventional method when we hold a stack of cards in our hands and flash them at high speed. 

The formulae in the 65 day programme is also fixed - I asked at the Parents' Seminar if we can make up our own equations and was told not (as there is a reason for sequencing the equations in a specific way).

At the 60th day - the child is asked to replace the dots with the number - which can only be done with children above the age of 2 years. 

I was told to expect results only after 4 sets of 65 day programme...

anyway, I'm also playing Shichida addition and multiplication CDs to my kids - amazing but they can shout me the answer without counting their fingers!

Hopefully, with the combination of both the 65 day and maths CDs methodologies - can develop speed calculation in my daughter and hopefully, my son (who is younger and shows some interest in what we are doing with my girl).

All the best!

ha ha... thanks Trinity - karma to you to get you started...

oh - for attention to details, you may want to do activities that encourage visual scanning, visual discrimination - key thing is for the child to learn the skill of picking up information when shown at high speed....

Pamela/rbkids: maybe you can tell us if visual discrimination is a left or right brain skill - sometimes, I get confused by which is left and which is right...

From what I gather, ESP games is to develop some sort of 'energy wave' reading ability from the kids, in terms of academic application.  Kids who are good at wave reading are reputed to be able to 'read' the contents by just touching the cover of the books.  Sounds incredible but I met a parent who said his daughter who was reputed to be good at this shared when asked how she could say what was in front of her (she was blindfolded) - she would say that she could see the images in her mind.. Shichida also used telepathy between parent-and-child, but some parents choose not to train this aspect, in case the kid can 'peep' into their minds....

Then, of course, the other application is to have intuition...  the key theory behind all these is that all objects emit energy waves and the right brain has the innate ability to pick up these waves and translate into meaningful images/ideas....

That said, to train the ESP takes a long time to succeed... heard it takes 1 to 1.5years to develop... the older the kid, the more difficult.... well... I've just started my journey... so maybe I can provide some feedback on whether the technique works a year later????!??

As other Shichida parents will also say, Shichida is more than just flash cards. A lot of it is aimed at developing photographic memory (words, pictures, concepts?) and even mathematical accuracy.  For my girl, she has flash cards, maths and story-writing exercises, they also do spot-the-difference games (but from memory), visual-spatial puzzles, linking memory (the experts can link more than 1000 items together; I'm happy if my girl can do up to 100 at the first try, dunno when that can happen..).  We also do some fine-motor skill activity, like picking small beads with tweezers... hmmm , not easy!!! Oh, there's also ESP games, freaky... haa haa.... and introduction to other languages, notably Japanese...

Sorry that I don't have any recommended books, the best thing is to ask around and try the various methods out. At the age of 4, kids can already use their logic to reason out things, that's why I felt the Shichida method is more productive with my girl. At home, I use both right brain and logic-based activities. Need to booast my collection of right brain activities... argh!!!

My girl is 4yrs and 5months old, she just started on Shichida this Jan at 4yrs 3months. I'm hoping for her to develop some form of photographic memory. When I attended the Shichida parents conference, understood from the principal that our kids will need to practice the exercises and use the skills in their daily lives until these 'abilities' are used in their everyday living and studying that further practice is no longer necessary. I interpret this as till my kid is able to carry over the right brain skills from an 'artificial' learning environment into her classroom (without mommy giving learning hints/games) naturally and automatically; regardless of age - guess I have to be committed for at least another 2-3 years. =)

My other expectations include my child being an individual learner (strong self-confidence in one's abilities, optimising learning opportunities and being able to make sense of this world).

Noticed my girl is much more curious and she's beginning to pay more attention to details,  instead of glossing over things.

I've just placed an order for the LUK learning system, which places more emphasis on a child's visual-spatial and processing abilities.  More for toddlers and pre-schoolers. Appreciate if there's anyone who has used this method.

Some background on the LUK system here: http://www.beyond123.com/luk/luk.html

Thanks in advance!

I've joined this forum because I am preparing to home-school my kids when we move from Singapore to Australia for 1 year whilst my husband is pursuing his maters degree. Based on your experiences, how many weeks/month in advance should you plan the curriculum? We're moving sometime in August but I'm all jittery and nervous about home-schooling my 5 and 3 year olds alone. IN Singapore, I'm advised by the mommies to teach my kids myself and arm myself with lots of assessment books for my 5 year old to work on so that upon return to the Singapore system, she will not be too lost and behind her peers, especially as she will start her primary education in a few months upon return to Singapore. I feel really stressed by all these advice as I feel we should take the opportunity to expose my kids to different learning environment and styles whilst in Australia and not play 'catch-up'. Sigh...

Hi.  Just to inform interested mommies that the Glenn Doman sets have been sold. Thanks all for the interest. May have some Shichida sets for sale a few months later, when I'm done with my kids and just before we fly off to Australia.

=)