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EARLY LEARNING / Teaching Your Child Math / Re: Teaching mental math
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on: September 17, 2013, 03:03:59 AM
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I have been teaching the abacus to DS5 and he does math mentally in his mind already, so it is hard to know if he is visulaizing the beads in his mind to answer the question. I realize that the smaller problems are best for him to learn to visualize but my instincts say he isn't visualizing the beads because of his math fact knowledge. I guide him verbally through the visualization. I had suspected that he would get stuck on the harder problems because it would be harder to visualize the numbers and use his math fact knowledge and he did. Any tips on getting over this barrier? I guess fingers moving an imaginary abacus???? Will math fact knowledge be just a temporary hurdle? I kind of see the benefit of teaching the abacus first now, but I really wanted number sense first.
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EARLY LEARNING / Early Learning - General Discussions / Re: Safe you tube browsing?
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on: September 12, 2013, 07:22:00 PM
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Correction you have to put on the parental controls and enable a passcode to access the navigation. You dont want him to have access to the navigation so enabling parental controls is important. However the kids area only has educational videos and you can make this the only area they have access to with the parental controls. You can also put in place a time limit. The kids area is nicely organized too.
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EARLY LEARNING / Teaching Your Child to Read / FREE "The Tale of Peter Rabbit" eBook Doman Style
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on: September 04, 2013, 02:10:56 PM
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I really have been enjoying having a way to make my own books, but who doesn't love a classic? I have decided to take the wonderful Beatrix Potter "Peter Rabbit" series, and reformat them early learning style with words on one page and pictures on another. My kids love her books. We don't have a nice copy at home, so I have started to create these. Please click the link below to get a FREE ebook of "The Tale of Peter Rabbit" and please give my blog love by giving it a "like" or sharing it on your favorite social media. Whether people are into early learning or not, most all would love high quality ebooks for FREE. Thanks for the love! http://pushplaylearning.com/my-ebook-store/ |
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EARLY LEARNING / Teaching Your Child to Read / Speed Reading Tales
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on: August 30, 2013, 02:50:42 PM
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Awhile back we were discussing on Facebook speed reading, and the different methods. One method starts by taking a story or text of some sort and flashing one word of the text at a time. Eventually to increase your speed you add a second word so that two words flash at a time. You continue this increase to three, four and eventually sentences, paragraphs and so on. Now this method is used on adults and there are lots of different software used for free to use this method. I used the method for myself, and I was able to increase my reading speed. It was suggested to take familiar stories to your children and turn them into speed reading tales. I have done that with a couple of stories from Beatrix Potter. They are in the public domain, so it is easy to share. I also had a thought that this could be a more preferable way for a child/baby to be flashed words in order to learn to read. I know that some people have had difficulty in capturing their children's attention when flashing words on the screen. I would love to know the thoughts of more people. I would also love to know if your children found the videos enjoyable. Did they like it after the first showing? Did their interest wane after a few showing? That kind of thing. The videos do not have audio and are meant to be read by a parent and then eventually to be read silently. I am not sure how long to read them aloud. It really is at this point just an interesting experiment to me. Eventually, I want to do stories with two words flashing, but I am not at all sure when to do this. Here are my first two videos. I have plans to do more, but I am looking for short stories in the public domain with pictures. I think the pictures are nice and help to keep the attention and delight of the child, but that is my personal opinion. I really want to hear the opinion of others.
<![CDATA[<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/8M5o7a4K25M&rel=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/8M5o7a4K25M&rel=1</a>]]>http://youtu.be/sS7n9lmK4PA |
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Parents' Lounge / Coffee Corner - General Chat / For New EL Moms, a must read!
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on: August 28, 2013, 07:37:24 PM
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While the title of this blog post "Time to Stop Bashing Super Moms" doesn't pertain to anyone on this forum (because everyone is so nice here  ), I feel my story might be helpful to new EL parents especially moms. It is my story of one of the stumbling blocks I had to overcome when I found this awesome forum of super parents. It was written on my blog at http://pushplaylearning.com and it was also featured as a guest post at http://teachingbabytoread.com/2013/08/27/stop-bashing-super-moms.aspx. Please remember this is my journey, and I have come a long way. I am sharing this to encourage anyone who might have had these same feelings and emotions when they first found out about early learning. Today, I am so thankful for where I am at because I wouldn't be here without all these inspiring parents that make up the Brillkids forum, so THANK YOU! Alright here goes..... I was bouncing around some blogs and I stumbled on this post, and while it had good information on the "counting on" technique, I was disappointed at the "super mom" bash that went with it. The bash was just saying that the next time a "super mom" comes along and exclaims her 2 year old can count to 20, you can confidently ask the child to show you 3 things as if that would establish the child's inadequacies to truly count.
In the post, it was implied that super moms are just always in a competition, and this is a sentiment that I find often in communities of mothers and even fathers. But I would like to point out that the competition is in the mind of the one perceiving a competition.
You see not too long ago I learned how much I needed super moms. I had one of those absent, less than adequate mothers, so for the longest time I had been stumbling through motherhood. I found an amazing forum of what I perceived as being filled with super moms and dads. Their babies were reading in more than one language. Their toddlers were completing one and two digit equations. Their preschoolers were reading chapter books with ease.
You can imagine the emotional roller coaster I found myself on. I was totally in awe of these children and what the parents had accomplished. Why hadn't anyone told me this was possible? Then the downturn of emotions hit me and hit me hard. To acknowledge their success would be to accept my own failures, to accept that I failed my children. This was a crushing blow to my ego for I always felt I was an awesome mom despite everything, and my bruised ego held me back for the longest time from diving deep into the world of early learning. My heart had seen the truth though and it never let me go.
But I would be lying to you if all the success stories of these super moms didn't start seeming like a competition. This competition made me feel inadequate and a born failure. I had started early learning with all three of my children all under 4 years of age and I wasn't seeing a lot of amazing results, and everyday on the forum was a new success story from another super mom. Some days I just couldn't pull off an early learning activity because my spirit was so downtrodden. It would have been easy to just roll my eyes and find these tales obnoxious.
Fast forwarded to over a year and a half later and even though I don't feel like a super mom, I am sure that if I told anyone my children's accomplishments I would get some eye rolling. But how did I finally overcome that roller coaster of awe and heart break and get to where I am today?
First, I accepted responsibility that I could open my children's minds to learning great thing despite their age. Second, I accepted that our journey would be our own, and that super parents are just role models. My children and I have our own journey, and because we are unique like every individual it is going to be a different journey.
The third and most important thing I learned to do is celebrate. I celebrate my success, but most of all I celebrate the success of the super moms and dads. If they didn't share their stories in the first place, I wouldn't be here today. I choose everyday to not let it be a competition but to instead embrace the wonderful successes of others and to use it as motivation to keep moving forward.
When a mom shares that their 2 year old can count to 20 already, make a conscious choice not to make it a competition but instead celebrate it. If you decide that it would be wonderful for your little one to count to 20 (even if its just words), then take on that challenge cheerfully. We need super moms and dads to help us become the people we really want to be in life, and there are so many out there hesitant to share their success because of all the eye rolling.
Let's not judge the super moms and dads even if their success or joy seems empty to you. Our judgment ultimately falls on the child, and to have a better future for our children, we need to uplift all children. Let's not cut them down because we think we are in a competition with their super mom.
Because I did choose to accept responsibility, accept my journey for everything it is and celebrate myself and others, I have been able to learn so much about being a better mom and offering a better future to my children. I know that if had spent my time judging others, myself and wallowing in jealousy and envy, I wouldn't have seen my children blossom into joyful, early learners.
Remember celebrate your success and the success of others. We will all be better for it. |
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I hope to read it soon though. I figured someone else would be interested in her stuff. She writes articles on technology and education especially for young children, too. Probably a great person to follow on twitter or something. 
