3-year-old reading the First Amendment

[Discussing video]

Discussing video

3-year-old reading the First Amendment & random books

Here's my little boy, 3 years 10 months old, reading a bit from the Constitution (beginning at 3:34), and various books. It surprised even me that he could read the First Amendment. This is his second time reading that. He also read it the day before we made this recording. Here he also reads short snippets from an adaptation of "The Secret Garden," some tiny books, and "Dinosaurs Before Breakfast." He did not memorize any of this (including the First Amendment), and he obviously grasps phonics very well. See other videos I've uploaded to see his progress so far.

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/w-T3xlLIQ4k&amp;rel=0&amp;fs=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/w-T3xlLIQ4k&amp;rel=0&amp;fs=1</a>

Author DadDude	Rating 4.43 (7 votes)
Date April 05, 2010, 02:16:50 AM	Views 8237
3-year-old, three-year-old, 3 year old, preschooler, early reading, reader, book, child, kid, boy, Constitution, First Amendment, Secret Garden, Dinosaurs Before Breakfast, Magic Tree House Keywords 3-year-old, three-year-old, 3 year old, preschooler, early reading, reader, book, child, kid, boy, Constitution, First Amendment, Secret Garden, Dinosaurs Before Breakfast, Magic Tree House

[sofic]

Amazing!  I always love to see videos of your little one.  Congratulation to both of you on all the hard work and great results.  I can't wait to read more of your essay and   I look forward to seeing your online multimedia encyclopedic site.  Thank you for sharing, as always you are an inspiration to us..

[L and J]

I realize that you devote much time educating your child. I know that's not my problem, but how much time you devoted to educate him? say, between making material, teach it, etc.. and also like to know if are you work in education area?

[DadDude]

It's my biggest hobby.  I work full-time, but I we usually do something educational at every meal, after his nap, and before bed.  When he was a baby and toddler I also read quite a bit more to him, like 1-2 hours per day, but this included mealtimes.  For a long time I was making materials on average an hour a day or so, and I still record his activities (transfer from voice recorder to a document) around 20 minutes per day.  I also occasionally write/strategize to myself and write to you all here on this forum (and TeachYourBabyToRead, the Yahoo group), but that doesn't take that much time, usually.  If you're wondering whether I am my boy's full-time teacher, the answer is definitely not.  I am academically trained but not in education.

[hypatia]

Wow...and I can't help but notice what a well-furnished library you have. and those do not look like 'typical' three year-old books. Your son looks adorable and I honestly can't believe he isn't 4 yet.

[zaku]

awww  he is brilliant. Very impressive

[DadDude]

Thanks everyone, really!

[bella]

da dude , those videos are great and your son is adorable .thank you very much for sharing.
hope you can have advice for me, i did post to the forum but didn't get any reply so i will copy and paste here :

i  have been showing my now 4 years old words and read a lot for her ,now she can read almost everything by sounding out but would never shout the word by sight even a word that she read phonetically 100 times , and of course she gets stuck with irregular words . it is for me very different from how her older sister learned to read ( whole words speed reading ) . she still enjoys me reading to her but she never pays attention to the reading words , yes every time i read a book it is her turn to read it to me but for her reading mean holding the book retelling the story from memory by looking at the pictures and wow she is so good at that so articulated .
you'll drive her crazy but presenting her with books like the ball is read , sam sat on pam ...
picutre books she can recite them but not read them .
what else i can do stick some sight words on the wall or flash them repeatedly till she sound them back to me . i am scared i will bore her to death with this drilling technique , but unlike babies which i believe we should never test at her age she should be able to read out a word if she can and she can talk when she wants believe me .
please advice me on what worked for you . dad dude i use your cards and she loves them but even after a week of her reading them and she sounds them out so fast , she still won't read the word the fast way immediately .
viv

[ariel]

Amazing!  Great work!  I love how you have developed a love for learning in him at only 3 years of age.  And it is great how he reads so well.  How did you develop his vocabulary?  I read your entire post, I guess it probably developed slowly from reading all those books and explaining to him words he did not understand.  But this is just great.   

I see the problem that Bella is having, it is difficult to transition to picture to non-picture books.   Did your son have a difficult time transitioning?   did you do anything to help with that.   I also see that my daugther is only interested in the pictures and not the words.  I like power point books more cuz I can move the text before the pictures. 


Thanks....

[DadDude]

i  have been showing my now 4 years old words and read a lot for her ,now she can read almost everything by sounding out but would never shout the word by sight even a word that she read phonetically 100 times , and of course she gets stuck with irregular words . it is for me very different from how her older sister learned to read ( whole words speed reading ) . she still enjoys me reading to her but she never pays attention to the reading words , yes every time i read a book it is her turn to read it to me but for her reading mean holding the book retelling the story from memory by looking at the pictures and wow she is so good at that so articulated .
you'll drive her crazy but presenting her with books like the ball is read , sam sat on pam ...
picutre books she can recite them but not read them .
what else i can do stick some sight words on the wall or flash them repeatedly till she sound them back to me . i am scared i will bore her to death with this drilling technique , but unlike babies which i believe we should never test at her age she should be able to read out a word if she can and she can talk when she wants believe me .
please advice me on what worked for you . dad dude i use your cards and she loves them but even after a week of her reading them and she sounds them out so fast , she still won't read the word the fast way immediately .

Hi Viv, I wish I knew what to tell you.  I am not an expert and I only know what worked with my son, and giving you the right advice might actually require seeing you and your daughter together.  I would just suggest that you go systematically through my flash cards (over the course of many months), if you haven't.  But if you have started doing that, and you've gone through more than, say, 3-4 sets, and that doesn't seem to help, I am stuck.  Well, in that case, I wonder if she can read quickly, but basically thinks that the game is to sound everything out, because that's what you showed her to do.  If you have seen evidence that she can do this...or even if not...then try this.  You sound out the word, slowly first and then faster, then you say, "What's that?"  Don't let her sound it out, do it yourself and just let her do the last step.  I have no idea if this will help, maybe it's what you've already been doing, but if not, try it.  That's what I did with my son, for what it's worth, and he had to be asked to sound out words, and didn't seem to like doing it (that was Papa's job).  You might try going back through the cards doing it that way, basically doing the sounding-out yourself, not letting her, but asking her what the end result is.  Good luck!

[DadDude]

Amazing!  Great work!  I love how you have developed a love for learning in him at only 3 years of age.  And it is great how he reads so well.  How did you develop his vocabulary?  I read your entire post, I guess it probably developed slowly from reading all those books and explaining to him words he did not understand.  But this is just great.   

I see the problem that Bella is having, it is difficult to transition to picture to non-picture books.   Did your son have a difficult time transitioning?   did you do anything to help with that.   I also see that my daugther is only interested in the pictures and not the words.  I like power point books more cuz I can move the text before the pictures. 

My son doesn't like to read books without any pictures.  I'm convinced that this is one reason he likes The Magic Tree House books, and loved the edition of Pinocchio we got (absolutely chock-full of pictures) despite the fact that it is quite advanced especially in terms of vocabulary.  Little kids are still learning the concepts and I think the pictures help them put the story together by illustrating the concepts.  They figure out the meanings of words, and remind themselves of meanings, by looking at the pictures--well, that's my theory anyway.  But absolutely the reason they like bits and powerpoint books is that there are lots of pictures, and the high frequency of pictures-to-words means they learn the meanings of words, which they love to do, I think.

As to how I developed his vocab, you're right that reading books and explaining whatever words I thought he didn't know, quickly and on the fly (like with a simple synonym or an under-five-word gloss, if possible), has definitely helped.  I'm sure that's 90% of it.  He has also learned quite a few words from the Oxford Picture Dictionary (which he happens to love--not sure if other tykes would as well), and maybe his absolute favorite set of presentations were my Charlotte's Web vocabulary presentations, he never got tired of those.  More generally, I'm sure he's learned a lot of vocab from presentations.  By the way I also explicitly introduced 1,000+ words on my "Fleschcards."  Of course many of those words he already knew, but many of them he didn't know.  So I always stopped and explained them.

I think it's very important to be quick in how you explain the meanings of words.  You don't want to bore them, and you don't want to use words in the explanation that they don't understand.

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