I really think you've answered your own question - it's working for you that means it's fine.
Putting up stuff on the wall is great. The Montessori Method believes in letting children lead the way in learning. When you have stuff up on the wall, your daughter has control over when she wants to learn to read. I did my own alphabet charts and posted them up on the wall when my son was little - that was before I knew anything about right brain training or these early childhood development programs for teaching Math, reading, etc. My son would run to the charts every morning and we would go through them when he wanted to and stop when he got bored of them. Sometimes that means we don't go through all of it, but that's ok.
There is a tendency for us to want to make sure we go through things x number of times, x number of days, etc. That's because of our left brain - it needs rules, order, structure. The right brain of a child learns differently so we shouldn't try to structure them. What you want is to give your daughter opportunity to learn. Don't worry about whether she's learning or not because she is. Doman and TweedleWink strongly advise not to test your child. Testing a child to see what she knows is detrimental to learning.
I used to do that to my son and I believe it is the cause of why he stopped enjoying flashcards. I was testing him to see if he could recognise the words. These days I just let him reveal to me what he wants when he wants. For instance, he recognised the word "duck" on a restaurant menu and told me he wanted to eat duck. Sometimes when I flash cards for my younger son, my older son will read the words out. This is how I know he is learning, but I've stopped testing him to check what he's learned.
What's important at the end of the day is that you are relaxed, your daughter is relaxed and your learning sessions are fun. If you're both enjoying them, you know she's learning. Follow your daughter's lead - if she's enjoying it, go for it! If she doesn't want to do them, stop. Everything your expose to your daughter is great - if she likes the leap frog videos then by all means let her watch them. If you want to do flashcards more often but are afraid of overdoing them, then change your words or introduce new concepts. Introduce new words more frequently - add variety to the session. You can also do "bits of intelligence" - for instance, if you want to teach her about the solar system, show her pictures of the planets, the names of the planets and give her a few facts about each of the planets. Make a solar system model with her. Take her to the planetarium and let her see all the exhibits.
If you're teaching her words about fruits - show her the flashcard and take out the real fruit and let her play with it. Take her to the market to see all the fruits around. Let her smell them, touch them, taste them. Make a fruit salad or let her decorate your fruit flan if you like to cook.
These are just examples. You can come up with your own ideas. But adding these physical dimensions to your lessons can make learning how to read more fun for your daughter.
I think I've probably gone off what you were asking for
but I hope that helps.
Digg
