ksh@cbosgd.UUCP (11/09/83)
Recently, my husband and I came across a couple of books that were of great interest. The books are written by Glenn Doman, Director of the Institute for the Achievement of Human Potential and are titled "How to Teach your Baby to Read" and "Teach your Baby Math". Basically, the Institute had originally done work to improve reading and math skills in brain damaged children, and then began to wonder, 'what if we apply these methods to children who are not brain damaged'? Their results are these books. You may start your child on these methods as young as 8 months (if you are very patient), and you should certainly have started them by 2 years. Their claim is that math is MUCH harder to learn after the second year. It's basically a flash card system, using words and later sentences to teach your child to read. The flash card system for math involves cards 11" x 11" with dots (3/4" diameter) numbering one through 100. Their claim is that your child can distinguish between the card with 50 dots on it and the one with 70 dots on it. Later, the child will be able to tell the difference in cards with only one dot differences. We are starting our one year old on this system, on his first birthday (11/11). Has anyone heard of any systems similar to this, or perhaps any results of this one? At any rate, we will keep you posted on Matthew's progress, and we'll let you know if it really works. Karen Summers-Horton P.S. An interesting note - the incentive here is to make learning FUN. Therefore, when your child has been bad or disruptive, do not let him have his lesson. Make learning a privilege, and most of all, show your enthusiasm and approval at his success.
mark@umcp-cs.UUCP (11/14/83)
Children are learning all the time. If they are not learning math and reading from flash cards, then they are learning something about their environment, their family, and themselves (assuming reasonably interesting surroundings and caring attentive parents). I do not think that parents who choose to have their children read and do math very early are doing any harm, but I don't know of any evidence that this early achievement has any impact on later success, positive or negative. We have chosen with our children to let them choose themselves each thing that they want to learn about. Einstein didn't even talk until he was 4.-- spoken: mark weiser UUCP: {seismo,allegra,brl-bmd}!umcp-cs!mark CSNet: mark@umcp-cs ARPA: mark.umcp-cs@CSNet-Relay