My child 3.5 yrs old..recognises capital alphabets very well but not small ones. So can I start up directly with your program or shoul I first teach him recognition of small alphabets..???   
But let me tell you one thing...your website is just beyond excellent. And you are doing really great work. YOU are boon for homeschoolers...!!  Thanks a ton..!!

Definitely teach recognition of the lowercase letters first. In addition, make sure your child knows the sounds of the consonants as well. The Reading Bear approach is to take things in small, easy, child-friendly steps, and not move on until the previous step has been mastered. If your child can't recognize letters or letter sounds, then I think you'll find Reading Bear a struggle. I'm not saying it would do no good, or that a child couldn't learn the lowercase letters by induction from the many examples in Reading Bear itself, I'm just saying that there are better tools available for learning the more basic steps to reading.

All--thanks for your support! It is always much appreciated!

[http://www.ReadingBear.org/]

All, I can now announce with great pleasure that Reading Bear is complete! All 50 presentations are published, and while we still have a few tweaks to make before we start getting really loud about it, it's all there!

Here it is: http://www.ReadingBear.org/

Thank you all very much for your comments, bug reports, feature requests, and (for about 8-10 of you) volunteer work on the site.

For the next month-ish I guess I'll be promoting it, mostly. After that, I'm not sure we're immediately going to develop any more software for it, mostly because we've spent a lot of money on it. I believe I'm going to be free--and assigned--to start churning out more presentations like these ones. I'm also going to make videos of old ones. The idea is that once a very large body of work is prepared, we'll see what we can do about putting it into the Reading Bear format. Frankly, I look forward to spending most of my time simply writing. Who knows--I might be able to develop on the order of thousands of those things, if I'm working on them full-time.

Thank you for the feedback!

I mean, what was the standard deviation for the difference between firstborns vs. second borns...that's something you'd have to look at the study to know, I believe. In other words, if firstborns and second borns are 3 IQ points apart on average, since there is presumably significant variation in how far apart siblings are, how far from the average is the variation, on average? If the standard deviation were large, the effect becomes even less striking (I think).

I'm the youngest of four...the only one of us to graduate from college, although my siblings are no dummies.

The 3 IQ points might be statistically significant, but it's still a tiny amount. What's the standard deviation, I wonder?

My wife speaks one language to them, I speak another.

We use Rosetta Stone for Latin. 10-15 minutes a day does wonders. Mine was able to start it before his fifth birthday.

Thinking of using SuperMemo, which we love, to get a "Pimsleur" sort of approach toward vocabulary learning. Wife is after me to get H. started on another language. I say ancient Greek but she she wants a modern language.

Only the parents speaking the language consistently will have a hope of inculcating fluency at this point, I think. H. is not fluent in her language, but he's now reading kids' books independently in it as well as English.

16 months is just the age when many kids are having lots of fun discovering the new joys of moving around. Both of my boys lost interest in reading and other educational activities around that age, no doubt because they were so busy simply moving around. But in a few more months they were back to reading and watching educational presentations, etc., more than ever. My younger son is 22 months and he went through a phase like that, but now he loves to read and look at educational stuff more than ever.

Thank you! Now you're just embarrassing me.

Very cute baby! I'm very sure you'll make a great dad!

Welcome back, queriquita!

Yes, interesting article.

On Mandabplus3 & PokerDad's observation/question, notice this sentence: "The research literature on intellectual giftedness suggests that one of the most powerful indicators of exceptional giftedness is early reading." I believe this means that if your child reads early, then he is more likely to be gifted. That would be exciting for the parents whose children are reading early--except that you must bear in mind that it is possible to teach children of perfectly average intelligence to read early. If your child reads early because he is gifted, grand. But if it is because you have taught him to read early, that's grand too, but it doesn't mean (by itself) that he's gifted; the fact that you taught him to read early is an adequate explanation of why he reads early.

In general, I still lack evidence that it is possible to cause a child to be gifted, or to raise his IQ by huge amounts. I am sure it is possible to raise it somewhat.

For the record, I don't think H. is especially gifted. He's somewhat bright, though, like his parents. For me, the goal of early education is getting a great start on an excellent education. Moderately enhancing his natural intelligence, which I suppose is all we can aspire to, is an excellent side-effect, but not at all the point.

Professional voiceover in British English would cost on the order of $30K. Then budget a few more tens of thousands for editing the timeline data (matching up the voiceover with text as only Reading Bear does so well). Got that kind of cash?

The only way that's going to happen is if we become wildly popular and someone with even more money than our benefactor decides to support us.

Thanks to all past, present, and future pluggers.

Well, you can't download directly via YouTube, but I guess you mean you're using a service like you can find via https://www.google.com/search?q=rip+youtube I don't mind if you use those and download the videos, no.

As I said, we're working on that. They're all in the pipeline. We can't make new ones until all the remaining issues with them are fixed. You can expect them all to be finished and uploaded by early September.

Now, remember...I expect you all to go out there and plug hard for Reading Bear when it's finished!!! 

We're working on that. Not sure when we'll have an app. In the meantime, you can look at these on the iPad: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL06498D03D3D8901F&feature=view_all

Many more on the way.

@seastar - thanks so much for the feedback. This sort of thing makes me think I haven't entirely wasted my time!

Hi NBailey, just noticed this. I have been busy...working on Reading Bear. 

I test-drove almost everything with baby E., so, since he was 8 months or so? But we didn't get very regular, like every day, until about three months ago (19 months). Since then he's been asking for it by name, often two more more times a day. Before he was 18 months or so, he would look at it with some interest but often tune out or get down halfway through a presentation. I am too lazy (and busy) to start a regular regimen and follow my kid around to see when he'll be enthusiastic, he has seen it more or less when he's requested it. What has made a big difference is (1) E. knows the alphabet (I still don't know how much--certainly most of it) and (2) he is now able to talk and repeat back words very well.

Other kids have learned faster than H. & E. But E. is pretty much in line, maybe a bit ahead, of where H. was.

I'll give a more detailed report about E. pretty soon. Probably not before August 21, which is the due date for finishing Reading Bear!

Congratulations!