2013
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Parents' Lounge / General Parenting / Re: What Skills Do You Want Your Children to Have?
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on: July 13, 2010, 02:11:22 PM
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Do basic maintenance on household things, change a tire, plant and keep a garden, intermediate to advanced computer skills, public speaking/debate experience (not professional level, just being able to present themselves clearly and logically), and some kind of basic music ability to read music would be nice to have. I also want them to be street smart travelers and being bilingual is a plus.
Creative problem solving skills too, but I don't know how to teach that except through life experience.
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2014
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EARLY LEARNING / Early Learning - General Discussions / Mealtimes- Just Eating or Learning too?
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on: July 13, 2010, 01:18:40 PM
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Just curious what other people do. For us, in the morning we sit on the bed and read books the very first thing upon waking. Then I make breakfast, roll back the rug, bring the high chairs into the living room, and feed the kids while they watch their LM/LR and then YBCR during mealtime. We have the laptop hooked up to the TV so the visibility is good from the height of their high chairs.
Since it's just myself and the two kids, I don't worry so much about family bonding at breakfast. At dinner, we always sit down for a meal as a family with no tv, flashcards, etc when my husband is home.
Occasionally I will flash during lunch or let them watch a dvd if they want, but that is pretty rare. I don't want them to associate *every* meal with a dvd or flashcards, I do want to build good habits outside of early learning. It's nice to have them as a captive audience in their high chairs though!
Do you combine mealtimes with learning opportunities? What has worked best for you?
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2015
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EARLY LEARNING / Early Learning - General Discussions / Helpful Teacher Supplies/Equipment & Methods
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on: July 13, 2010, 02:34:04 AM
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What do you use and keep on hand to make your job as your child's "teacher" a little easier? So far I have found it's helpful to keep cardstock on hand for printing random flashcards and such. I am thinking about buying a laminator. If you have one, do you think it's worth the money? Do you use it often? I can tell already I am going to be using up a lot of INK in my printer so I need to buy more *before* I run out. I wanted to purchase more of the bifold flap sheet protectors that come with the Deluxe Little Reader but they are not currently selling them separately. These half size page protectors and mini binders are the closest thing I could find. http://www.keepfiling.com/5-1-2-x-8-1-2-Sheet-Protectors-p/15500.htm I would love it if I had enough of the LR flap ones to store all of my sets of flashcards in without constantly rotating them in and out. I buy posters from the teacher supply store that cover whatever topic we're learning about. I also bought some oversized paper "money" to teach my kids about counting coins and dollars. Arts & Crafts stuff- crayons, markers, scissors, glue, foam sheets, finger paint & paper, etc etc. I also let DD play with beans under close supervision (so none go up the nose or my baby doesn't get ahold of and choke on one). She scoops them in an d out of muffin pans with different sized spoons, measuring cups, etc. She loves that game, I think it's great for early math learning about quantity and volume. What supplies and methods do you use and recommend?
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2016
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EARLY LEARNING / Teaching Your Child to Read / Re: Knows about 100 sight words, when to expect sounding out words? Early phonics?
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on: July 12, 2010, 11:31:00 PM
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From what I can tell, each segment is set up to teach the same sounds. Set 1 is fat, rat, sat, cat, etc. First get the phonics sounds down pat with flashcards or whatever and then *encourage* sounding out the simple, phonetically similar sets of words from DadDude's list.
Titzer says that some kids will naturally figure out phonics. After looking at the first set or two of flecsh-cards, I think it would be much easier to figure out phonics when learning such similar words in sets. Even if kids *initially* learned them as sight words, I think the repetitive similar sounding words would provide the necessary foundation for phonics.
I am not a pro and I am gearing up to do this myself, but that's my initial understanding. They eventually *will* have to make the leap themselves, but these cards should help bridge the gap.
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2018
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EARLY LEARNING / Teaching Your Child to Read / Re: Knows about 100 sight words, when to expect sounding out words? Early phonics?
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on: July 12, 2010, 01:58:01 AM
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Okay, I just read through the "how to" guide and set 1. Looks good. I need to pick up some card stock this week to print some other flashcards (TW phonics cards), so when I do I'll print yours too. I guess we'll start with the letter sounds first and then go from there.
Here's a question- I assume you developed these pre-little reader...if I (or someone else) wanted to, they seem like they would translate pretty easily into LR files? Maybe I'll look into doing that. It would be great for us. I am supposed to be practicing my Spanish after the kids go to bed, but I think I'll try and make the time.
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2019
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EARLY LEARNING / Teaching Your Child to Read / Re: Knows about 100 sight words, when to expect sounding out words? Early phonics?
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on: July 12, 2010, 01:38:30 AM
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DadDude- You made my list and didn't even know it. When I first started researching all of this early education stuff a month or two ago, I was overwhelmed and trying to make sense of it all. So while I'd wade through everything, I'd cut and paste snippets of ideas,words, websites, and links into a word document on my desktop. That way, I could go back later and look up the topics at leisure, instead of straying off course again and again in my quest for information. Wouldn't you know, Flesch Cards is on my list to revisit. I suppose now would be a good time to do that, thanks for the reminder.
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2021
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EARLY LEARNING / Early Learning - General Discussions / Multiple Children- How to balance the pace for both kids?
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on: July 12, 2010, 12:40:45 AM
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After finally adjusting to the birth of a second child and then discovering this world of early education, I know find myself wondering how best to set the pace to suit both kids. DD is 19.5 months and DS is 6.5 months.
Previously, I have not been 100% faithful with YBCR and DD would watch it steadily for a while, then we'd stray from it and start again, etc. I that I would just start from the beginning again this week so my son could benefit as well, but it turns out my daughter knows up until disc 3 just about completely. (If I had know from the beginning this program actually worked I would have started it at 6 months faithfully!). By going through the program again from the beginning, I'm afraid I'd bore her to tears spending another 3 months doing it again AND I would be holding her back in a sense. But my son deserves to benefit from the program as well.
He naps a bit more than she does, so there aren't really any times when he's awake and she's not.
Do I just work at DD's pace with YBCR and once she masters disc 3 and then disc 4, adding in a few of the earlier discs sometimes for variety? Then, once my daughter masters it, start over fully from the beginning for my son? Or after she masters everything, just randomly play all the discs as refreshers for her and hope my son picks up what he needs to? Even if I wait until after she masters it all, she will be around when I play the discs for DS. At that point, maybe I can use it as a time to pull out playdough or a craft for her while he works through the program from the beginning.
DD started watching Baby Signing time every single day while I took a shower from the time she was 3.5 months old. Now, I find myself not playing it as much because 1) we have lots of other educational dvd choices now and 2) it's only "entertainment" for DD at this point, but my son hasn't mastered it yet.
I am trying to find the balance to give my son the same benefits but also not hold my daughter back. We are only really having this issue with Baby Signing Time/Signing Time, and YBCR. The other programs are new to us and thankfully they can work through them at the same pace. However, my DD is much more "into" the flashcards when I do them versus my son, he is far more interested in getting physically mobile (starting to cross pattern crawl this week). So of course I don't push him, but she is getting more formal lessons than he is right now and widening the gap as expected.
Has anyone else "been there, done that" in a situation like this?
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2022
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EARLY LEARNING / Teaching Your Child to Read / Knows about 100 sight words, when to expect sounding out words? Early phonics?
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on: July 12, 2010, 12:23:50 AM
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My 19.5 month old DD knows about 100 sight words. She learned about 50 from the preschool prep series and most of the others from YBCR/Baby Signing time. She has since picked up some from LR in the last month too. Preschool Prep is supposed to be coming out with a phonics DVD this year, but no exact time frame has been given yet.
Currently, we watch a few phonics videos saved from youtube. YBCR's Robert Titzer says that kids will being to infer the rules of phonics without specific phonics instruction, but I am not against teaching phonics at all. I'd like to teach both concurrently. DD knows her alphabet solid and will sing the phonics songs sometimes, but phonetic reading hasn't "clicked" yet. I haven't tried very many couplets with her yet (we're on disc 3 or so of YBCR, I haven't been 100% faithful with it). I'm not in a huge rush, but how long should I expect her to take to make the leap from sight words to phonics?
Like I said, we are using a few phonics videos with songs and we are also signing phonics in the bathtub when we play with letters. Are there any programs out there for phonics for toddlers that are actually worthwhile? I saw that Hooked on Phonics offers one but I don't know how the quality is.
I assume LR will get to phonics somewhere down the road? They do show a bit of phonics on the TW DVD's that we watch nightly before bed.
Thoughts? Feedback?
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