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EARLY LEARNING / Homeschooling / Re: Update about H.
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on: May 01, 2013, 03:17:30 AM
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Thanks for the mention and the kind words, early learning17. I rarely read here, I'm afraid. Just no time. Starting a new business is really, really time-consuming, and among the things that have had to give has been indulging in discussion and theorizing about education.
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EARLY LEARNING / Teaching Your Child to Read / Re: Reading Bear is complete!
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on: February 16, 2013, 02:42:37 AM
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Do you all ask your kids to sound out the words? I never asked H. or E. to sound out the words. I do that for them. Then they put the words together. Soon enough they would skip the sounding out (by me) and read them. E. is 2 years 4 months and is able to read all the Starfall stories fairly fluently (occasionally we'll have to sound out a word) and can read similar paper books. H. was almost exactly on the same level at this age.
If you haven't tried it before, then try it this way: start your child reading flash cards or a book. If there is any hesitation, start sounding out the word yourself, slowly. Then, if the child doesn't come up with the word, sound it out faster. If still no luck, then just tell them the word. Then move on to the next one.
I've read stories like this here before. I really suspect that some parents actually teach their children to sound out, and then their children think that that's what they're supposed to do, i.e., it's part of their assignment. But (obviously) sounding out is just a crutch, and one they should be able to do mentally. So do it for them and get them past it as soon as possible.
Let me know if this works any better...or if you've already tried it without success. Hope this helps.
Jemi...sorry, I haven't revisited the Android flash browser situation in a while. You just need to locate a browser app that enables you to see Flash, and Reading Bear should work (more or less) in it.
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EARLY LEARNING / Teaching Your Child to Read / Re: Why can't my son read?
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on: November 25, 2012, 06:17:49 PM
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MamaOfWill, it sounds to me like your son can read, he just doesn't want to read out loud. I wouldn't be too worried about this. Just carry on. H. was the same way (although maybe not quite so extreme in his resistance). I had to "trick" him into reading the occasional word, by stopping before reading a word I knew he knew very well, and then he would supply the missing word. There were also special contexts in which he was entirely willing to read, such as when we did flashcards (but he went through periods in which he refused to do them for a week or a month) or when we did the Starfall stories. The trick there was that I never read those stories to him; he had to read them to me, or we wouldn't look at them at all. Since he wanted to look at them, I had less trouble motivating him to read out loud.
I agree with those who say that for kids under 2 or 3 or so, it's best not to test, if there's any resistance. Of course, if you're using Reading Bear or other systems in a way that requires a response from the child, you don't have any choice...
E., age 25 months, is now rather different. While he is willing to do Starfall, he is less ready to do it than H. was. He is also less frequently interested in Reading Bear or LR (which I offer him regularly). On the other hand, he is almost always game to read a few pages out of books, including words that he hasn't been exposed to the phonics rules for. H. was never willing to do that.
Back to H.--when he was 3 & 4 he almost never wanted to read to me, and that was long after I knew that he could read very well. I think the only time that he reliably wanted to read to me was at bedtime.
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EARLY LEARNING / Teaching Your Child to Read / Re: Success with Reading Bear!
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on: November 22, 2012, 03:09:11 AM
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We were using it (the very first ones) when E. was 12 months, but there was no way to know if he was actually learning the phonics rules. I gather that some parents (some reading this, I'll bet) used it around that age and had their kids reading phonetically much sooner than E. did. I didn't use a systematic approach (so much of this per day every other day, so much of that, etc.) and I think that those who were, well, more committed than I (and my wife) were could have had more noticeable success sooner. Anyway, in our case, E. started saying the words consistently...I forget, but somewhere around 20 months. So we restarted going through at that time, with "short a," and since then he's been making faster and faster progress, although with breaks. Re breaks, we took about a 2-month break, in which we looked at it relatively rarely (3-4 times a week and rarely for long), then we got into it again a month ago and made another bunch of progress, then in the last week or two he's been turning it down again and I don't insist. As I explained in my essay (linked below), H. was precisely similar with the flash cards. He would have periods of enthusiastic progress, then lose interest for a week or a month.
I rather wish that someone else who has taught his/her child to read at a very early age would tell the story in detail, as I have done. We need more data. Nobody should draw any conclusions on the basis of my two sons, who share a lot of genes and have gone through similar programs with the same main teacher.
I guess my point is that it can't hurt and might help to start on RB that young. At least, it will make it easier to get through the beginning stages later on. But don't get your hopes up too high about rapid early progress. Even for parents in this forum, while it definitely happens, it seems relatively rare.
Happy Thanksgiving (to everyone celebrating it)!
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EARLY LEARNING / Early Learning - General Discussions / Volunteer artists needed for Reading Bear!
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on: November 21, 2012, 10:44:23 PM
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All, so I gather you like Reading Bear here. As you know, it's 100% free despite being of a quality that you might have to pay a bunch for. Well, here is your chance to give back a little: if you're an artist, we need you to volunteer to illustrate some e-readers! As you might have guessed, funding for the project has become scarce. See attached text. If you're interested, please email me at [email protected]!
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EARLY LEARNING / Teaching Your Child Encyclopedic Knowledge / Re: DadDude's youtube videos
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on: November 20, 2012, 04:31:13 PM
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You are making DadDude blush. You can also thank my anonymous Memphis benefactor, who also funded Reading Bear and WatchKnowLearn. This gig may be coming to an end, however, and I might be seeking to start up my own, very first dot com (I've started many dot orgs but no dot coms). I have hardly any time to make new stuff for E. as I did for H. One last thing I might be able to do in this gig is write a series of e-readers to go with the 50 Reading Bear presentations. But it doesn't depend on me.
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BEYOND EARLY LEARNING (for older years) / General Discussions - After Early Learning / Re: Memorization method
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on: November 05, 2012, 02:20:15 AM
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Thanks, PokerDad and cokers4life. I agree with PokerDad's answer, study time is most closely related to new content. That said, even if you stop inputting new content, while you'll fairly quickly drop down from any ultra-high review levels, your daily review commitment goes down only very slowly. At least, that's what we discovered last summer when we went for 4-6 weeks without adding any (or very few) new questions, but were still reviewing religiously.
We do not review all of the questions assigned to a given date. We always, every day, "postpone" 40-50 items. But it's OK! It still works out quite well! SuperMemo has a nifty (but time-consuming) feature called "prioritization" to assist with this. Basically, it makes sure that the higher-priority stuff remains at the highest memory levels, while the lower-priority stuff can be more hit-or-miss. Works quite well, except for the clunkiness of the interface for inputting the priority data. Right now I've got a backlog of hundreds of items I need to estimate priorities for...
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BEYOND EARLY LEARNING (for older years) / General Discussions - After Early Learning / Re: Memorization method
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on: November 04, 2012, 02:41:02 AM
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Hi PokerDad, Wish I had more time to chat here, but lately I just can't seem to find the time. Learning faster than he was before? I wouldn't say so, not in any noticeable way. If anything, we have to read more slowly because time to record and review questions is time taken away from reading. Still, even if we aren't reading as much, I think it's totally worth it, because he remembers so much more than he was able to before. I think his ability to produce a quick answer has increased a little, perhaps; perhaps his capacity for memory has improved since we started doing this memory work. In a certain way I guess it does help, a little, to have learned certain facts more reliably. In both history and science we go over the same topics sometimes several times, in different sources. We get it in one source, start memorizing the basics, and then when we go through it the second time, we can start focusing on more of the details or filling in the gaps. But this is a feature of how we study that others might not use. Where they might do a bunch of exercises or a project, we'll read another book...not to say we never do projects. Mostly, though, beyond math, Latin, and piano, studying means either reading, writing, or reviewing with SuperMemo. Anyway, you might find this video interesting:
http://www.youtube.com/v/rDc8govFFEo&rel=1
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EARLY LEARNING / Homeschooling / Re: Which homeschooling Method are you thinking of or are currently using?
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on: October 05, 2012, 06:31:09 PM
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I might weigh in at some point here but I just wanted to say thanks to Sonya for her wisdom. We definitely don't have it figured out in our household, but at this point, I'm not stressing out about my ignorance. As long as H. is making good progress, which he is, and I do research and thinking now and then, I figure I've done my due diligence, so to speak. Charlotte Mason, yes, I'll have to read her sooner rather than later.
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