The clapping child appears, but I noticed that there is no longer an animated person playing the instruments ... that screen is blank, except for the word of the instrument in small at the bottom and the sound of the instrument playing.  Has this been removed in the last couple years, or is this a glitch? Thanks!

I think your suggestions are solid.

I think it's interesting that you posted this.  BK has a great reading program that one can use while the children are infants.  One can also use readingbear.com while children are babies and it, too, does wonders, and is free.  In addition to this, one can just write things on paper and play with one's infant, and they'll be able to get them to read.  I don't mind so much that your post is more like an ad to sell a product, I just find it interesting the claim that children can read phonetically at 2 when I know that mine (and many others) were decoding whole words and phonics before that age. 

I noticed the references to mathstart on this thread, and just wanted to add a link from their website, which even includes a list of other author's books.  Here's the link: http://www.mathstart.net/books/math_bibliography.php.  When you click on a mathstart book, it provides great little ideas for activities that you can do with your child to reinforce what they're learning. 

A few quick tips that you may not realize if you're just getting started:
1. you can search these books on amazon and take a peek inside to see what they're about
2. you can have your library do an interlibrary loan (or even request for them to purchase the books) if they don't already have them available
3. don't underestimate youtube ... brilliant source for catchy math videos

Enjoy!

Steven,  I'm so thrilled to read about the progress that you guys are having with the program!  Please keep us updated! 

Question: for the second post, were those actually two children or the same child?  it seemed like two, but i'm not quite certain.

Also, why the discouragement of speaking the word?  On the one hand, i imagine that not speaking it can help increase speed reading, but on the other hand, i imagine that adding the additional association of how the word is spoken can help facilitate faster encoding of the printed word. 

I'm also wondering about the word presentation.  How soon are they being swapped out for new words? Is it weekly?  Or after the child has mastered them?  Or one at a time?  Is the parent provided a large stack?  How many words does the child who has been in the program for a year now know?  Is the child who knows 40 words limited by having only 40 cards or is that where her progress happens to be at this time, though she may have access to additional cards?

I'm quite fascinated, inspired, and grateful that your program exists, as i'm sure are the families who you also help.

Wishing you all the very best!

Is there any update to this?

Is there an update on this???

@ luv2laugh - thanks so much for your interest!

@ robbyjo - nothing formal, yet.  i'm looking to get something together by next friday.  a dissertation is not the goal of this study.  the goal is to come up with significant data that babies can be taught to read ... and publish it! ;-)  and of course, inspire it to be duplicated with success and then change the prevailing belief to one in support of teaching children to read while infants.  whether it shows up at some point in a dissertation (or a book) is another matter, but not one that i'm entertaining until this first step is taken. 

@pjb - i'm not sure that i understand well your post. sorry.  feel free to message me. :-)

I would be excited!  Your baby is making connections between what he's seeing and what he already has in his knowledge bank!!  I remember when my son saw 'eyes' and said 'yes' and I was confused until I realized that the word YES is inside the word eyes!  So, I paired the written word with how it sounds spoken and pointed out my eyes and his, and after a session or two, it was resolved.  It's an exciting time.  He's building his vocabulary. 

You know how you can see a billboard with something blocking a part of it, but still make out what it says because your brain starts filling in the blanks?  Well, it's for the same reason that you can see a section of a giraffe neck and know that it's a giraffe - you're brain is making connections between what it sees and looking for meaning!  The brain is going to jump to what it knows before settling on the fact that this is novel and should be categorized as something different.  You are his teacher, so if you tell him something is new, then he'll take note, add it to his expanding vocabulary, and keep learning!  Try not to stress this (he'll pick up on those vibes, too, and think he's doing something wrong when he's really taking the next step forward), and keep doing what you're already doing - introducing him to the fact that this is something different.  If it makes you feel any better, even when kids who are five and older and are learning to read through phonics, they still go through a guessing phase.  Congrats - you're baby's reading!

Don't do it.  This is a great opportunity to get those creative juices flowing and come up with fun ways to expose him to words.  I've seen so many posted throughout this forum.  Some recent ones that come to mind: place sticky notes with food words on the fridge and allow him to point to them for you to pull that item out of the fridge.  As he plays with his favorite toys, have word cards next to you (car, truck, bear, ball, train, etc) and you can just flash one as you mention it in normal conversation ("oh, look at that fun [flash and say item name at normal speed with finger underneath]").  have a stack of animal word cards and as he points to one, you say what it is, make those animal noises/gestures, and see if he cares to imitate.  an easy source is to print the cards from the bk files with pictures already on the reverse.  as i said, there are sooooo many ways to introduce words into the natural play environment.  think about that first ... playing ... or just being (as an example - flash bath words like water, wet, bath, parts of the body, toothbrush, soap and so on, just for a few seconds during bath time) and try to follow his lead, this will motivate him and you can increase word exposure as his interest increases from feeling more like an active participant in the process. hth!

  that's how i felt today when i was informed that typical spoken words on a child's 2nd birthday is between 100-200 words.  SAY WHAT??? does this sound right to you?  i phoned a few EL friends today and confirmed that their children's milestones were much more in line with my kids, but, still ... 100-200 words TOTAL by 24 months?  How common is this in this community?  despite my source being a very well respected expert in infant development, i still had to look this up, and low and behold, here's what i found, all validating those numbers, or even less!! 

*** 19 - 24 months: fewer than 50 words (http://www.babycenter.com/0_developmental-milestone-talking_6573.bc)
*** 24 - 36 months: " Development experts say most 2-year-olds have a vocabulary of at least 50 words, and that by age 3 they'll have about 200." (http://www.babycenter.com/0_developmental-milestones-understanding-words-behavior-and-co_6575.bc)
*** 18 months - 10 words!! (http://www.webmd.com/parenting/guide/baby-talk-your-babys-first-words)
*** 15-22 months - 20 - 30 words (http://www.parenting.com/article/baby-speech-milestones?page=0,2)


of course, how surprised should i really be when as recently as last year science was ready to report that yes, you can actually talk to your baby before they're one!  why does so much of our society wait around for a scientist to prove something first? here's the link to that, if you're interested in the study that validates that "your baby can understand!" (http://www.livescience.com/18469-infants-understand-words.html).

i'll also add that i'm aware of plenty of people who were very late talkers who developed into amazing and well-educated individuals, so i'm not saying it's everything.  i'm mostly trying to get a feel for what is the norm in this community, too.

so, inquiring mind(s) want to know ... was this your experience?   when did you guys hear the first word?  the first, i dunno, 10-20 words?  the first 50?  when did you stop counting?  was this about the time you experienced a word explosion, and when did you get a sense that the rate of their word acquisition surprised you (several new words a day)?

thanks all!

Hi All! I've missed this board so much and hope soon to be on it considerably more 

For those who aren't familiar with me, I was fairly active about two years ago and beyond (has it really been that long???), but prompted by frustration at the lack of scientific evidence to support early learning, especially with something so fundamental as reading, I decided to return to academia.  Needless to say, I've had 'no life' between trying to teach my own kids and trying to get myself ready to conduct experiments.  But the good news is that FINALLY, I've received a green light to start the process.  Keep in mind I'm in the early stages (the planning stage), and that it may be 2 more years before anything promising is published in a respectable scientific journal (let's hope sooner!), but I personally think that planning is one of the most important steps.

I could use your input.  Frankly, there is a fairly thick cloud of evidence supporting the stance that babies canNOT read, that they can 'merely' memorize, but not truly abstract meaning, yadee, yadee.  The point is that thanks to past studies (primarily aimed at attacking YBCR, I feel) the scientific community is presently doused with nay-sayers, so I want to make sure that whatever experiments are put through now are mind-blowingly successful and can be easily/successfully duplicated, so that we can finally put to rest this myth that kiddos must wait until they are at LEAST three to begin introduction to reading ("Say, WHAT? We know it ain't so!  ). 

I am grateful to be aligned with an expert in this field (infancy/developmental psychology) who I have been able to convince (after months of dialogue) that infant reading is at least possible, and so he is curious and willing to help with/sign off on the first studies.  Assuming those go well, there should be many more (mua haha).  Typically there would be a think tank bouncing around ideas about how to conduct the experiment before participants are even called upon.  Also, there would be several phone calls made to other scientists who have had prior success to make sure that the experiment proposed is unique.  My issue is that I don't really have anyone in the scientific community with past success, let alone anyone with personal experience beyond a lab.  There's not even a handful of people who I can reach out to, so I'm pretty close to starting from scratch and without anyone with as much passion and personal experience as you all.  So I'm reaching out to YOU (yes, you!), and hoping for your help.

I'm a fan of sharing, but I'm not a fan of lurkers (sorry).  I would really like open dialogue about this, so while I have trust in this public forum community, I feel more at ease if I have a better understanding of who is 'in' on the conversation; I hope you understand.  For this reason I have put together a FB group.  I may change the URL (maybe not), but for now, it is https://www.facebook.com/groups/BabiesCan/.  If you are up for bouncing ideas on how to put together a successful experiment, please join the group.  My goal is to have this hashed out relatively soon so that I can start calling on the first participants at the beginning of the year.  If I'm successful with this first round, I'm sure that several follow-up experiments will be conducted (in many locations) as curiosity builds about how this 'infant reading phenomena' works.  From there it's a matter of time before focus is turned to math, music, agility, memory/right-brain learning, and more.  I'm looking forward to my children not feeling like fish swimming against the stream when it comes to teaching their (way, way in the future) kids. 

Many thanks to everyone who has contributed to this forum to make it such an inspiration!

What a great thread!  I think all of the suggestions are so helpful. 

As for the nursing while teaching ... granted one can read with and without the sound of the word (whether in one's head or voiced out loud), but I wonder if by occupying the child with nursing, this somehow removed the active pairing that is made when the child voices the written word.  In other words, what I notice with little ones, whether they can enunciate well or not, is often an attempt to repeat the words when presented to them (or sign, act out, or point to the word ... but actively engage to create a meaningful association between the written form and its meaning).  I think that the child being free to add meaning to the written word in this way helps tremendously in making some necessary connections that lead to reading aloud.  So, I wonder if without this practice, perhaps a 'delay' (from what was initially expected) may have been set into play.  Even when children aren't repeating the words for us to hear, I wouldn't be surprised if they are subvocalizing, too, or at the very least creating a mental association between what is being seen and what it represents. 

Of course ... all this 'said' ... the possibility does exist that perhaps your child isn't 'reading' as you expect him/her to do (with voice) because they already internalize the meaning of the words and do not feel the need to add audio.  Is it possible that they do not subvocalize, yet read?  After all, subvocalizing is a habit, not a requirement for reading, right.  Have you tested for this?  If you do a matching game between the printed word and its image, are they better than chance to get it right?  If they don't subvocalize, maybe it doesn't make sense to vocalize (aloud) the words that they read.  This would be pretty interesting if it were the case, and a bit contrary to my first paragraph, but I'd be curious to know if there are children who fall into this category.  For those who don't read, I still think it may be that they need more time pairing the audio/signed/image form of the (meaning of the) word to its written form, if that process were somehow 'interrupted'/'suspended' by nursing (or anything else, for that matter).  *shrug*.

Either way, I know it may be difficult not to stress, but remember what an amazing job you're already doing with your kids and that they WILL get there! ;-)

@Korrale4kq:
Did I read your post correctly?  Did you teach both boys to read fluently by 3, however, within two years (kindergarten age), they had 'lost' it all (my interpretation: it went dormant), and so they 'started' all over again in school, but then zoomed ahead of the others? ... or were they 'equal' to the others?  and if they 'lost' their reading skills, do you think this was because they had such little exposure to the written language??

great thread, btw.  thanks to all who've contributed.

I taught both boys to read by 3. The jock type did better with whole words. It was easier for him to quickly lean the words and haphazardly plough through reading.  The academic type did better with phonics instruction, as it required more metal patience and suited the child that Liked to see how things work. They had both learnt all their phonics sounds by 18 months. But it took until they were three to read. I stopped being their nanny when they were a little over three and they went into a traditional daycare. Nearly all their reding ability had been lot completely.
They started Kindergarten last year. The academic-type phonics reader flew up the reading levels within a few weeks. The jock-type whole word reader lagged behind for a few weeks. But by the third month of school both boys were as adept at reading and neck and neck at the same level. And graduated K at the same reading level. Academic(phonics) reader has better decoding skills of unfamiliar words. Jock(whole word) has better comprehension. They both were exposed to a balanced approach in Kindergarten and the differences in reading are minimal.
Academic type is a much more patient, slower reader that will read in his free time, and tackle challenging texts.
Jock-type I just wants to get the resding over and done with for the most part. He is a faster reader and retains the information better. He is also a bit of a ham. He likes to hold the book up and read to you as a teacher would read to the class.

Now... Even though the twins are identical, as their DNA claims, they re very very different in personality. And this is reflected in how the leant to read, and how they read. In fact it applies to all their school work.

Found it!  Couldn't have done so without your help.  Thanks   

http://youtu.be/CxmS1nQVsno