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EARLY LEARNING / Teaching Your Child to Read / Re: My 1 year old is obsessed with books - should I be concerned?
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on: May 10, 2011, 04:47:49 AM
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When my youngest was little we jokingly called him 'The boy who LOVED books'..... after a little skit in a little video that he loved to watch. At a year old he would sit in his car seat as I drove and 'read' Dr Suess's "Mr Brown can Moo, Can You?" or "The Cat in the Hat". Of course, he was reciting from memory, but loved books so much that he would memorize them. Fast forward 10 years and he is a straight A student in the Gifted and Talented programs in school as well as a member of the Duke University TIP program. He is also a gifted athlete (thanks to Coach Dad) and musician (thanks to the Soft Mozart program). So no, I wouldn't be concerned...but I would encourage your child to be well rounded. Expose him to art, music and sports and encourage him to participate in all of them. My granddaughter (child of my oldest son who is almost 30) will be spending most of the summer with me, so that's what I plan to be doing with her. (And yes, we read several books every night to her too.) By the way, the 11 year old still loves books...he loves stories about heroic boys so has read all of the Harry Potter books, the Percy Jackson series (as well as the newer Kane Chronicles and The Lost Hero series), and the Eragon series. He also loves comedy and eagerly reads each of the "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" books as they come out. He also reads the National Geographic Kids and Sports Illustrated Kids magazines. Reading will open your child to the world...rejoice that he loves it!
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EARLY LEARNING / Teaching Your Child Music / Re: Do you view music as a less important subject to teach your child?
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on: May 10, 2011, 04:18:13 AM
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I feel that Music is really important to the development of the brain. I came from a family that was always musical (singing), and excelled at math and science. My youngest son started piano at his daycare when he was 4. Although he really liked it, I didn't feel that he was 'clicking' with his piano teacher, so started looking for another. In doing a web search, I came upon Soft Mozart. We bought the home version of the program and he made such tremendous progress that we ended up upgrading later to the version that had more songs. I think the program is brilliant. He has been in the Gifted and Talented programs since Kindergarten and consistently scores either very high or perfect marks on testing and in school. Of course, I'm sure it partly because he's a smart kid, but I also believe that the early exposure to music has helped with his school.... studies have consistently pointed to correlations between high math and science scores and music education. I think it's because when one learns to read music, it develops visual spatial skills that are important in math and science as well. Over the last 4 years we have been spotty about piano lessons, mainly because he is also a member of select football and basketball teams, so plays sports year round. But when I asked him to sit down and try to play something for me recently, he played Fur Elise and the Harry Potter themes quite easily with very few errors. I was floored! Since he is going to be starting middle school at a challenging private school in the autumn and take up the saxophone, I plan to have him focus on piano this summer to refresh his sight reading skills. Soft Mozart really helped him with that. I'm not a piano teacher, but so glad to have this program that even I can use! ( One of these days, I swear I'm going to find the time to sit down and learn to play myself...I've dabble with it and it really is easy and fun to use.....I just need more hours in the day!) :-)
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