Ok, apart from being a mom, I'm a teacher, too. So I'm very interested in keeping my sponge of a 2 year old son engaged in learning. I have been since he was old enough to... well... look at me.
When he was old enough to mimic, I taught him what few signs I knew (like 5 or so), hoping it would help him feel more confident in communicating and help me understand and differentiate between the grunts. My older sister had a copy of My Baby Can Read and she let me borrow them. Joshua loved them, and we watched them together for a few months.
For Christmas last year, my little sister gave me a copy of season 1 of Signing Time. After first watching those videos again, and again, and again, there was no turning back. My baby didn't really care for the My Baby Can Read videos, but preferred the Signing Time because of the visual, auditory and tactile format of them...and for the very catchy songs included in them.
As we watched these videos together, his vocabulary exploded to much more than his pediatrician said was normal. In fact as we went in for one of his check ups, she told us that his vocabulary was closer to that of a 3 1/2 - 4 year old. I wasn't sure that was true, but of course I was a proud mommy.
As we worked with him, not only with his signs, but with colors and alphabet and shapes, we realized we had a sponge for a son. He absorbed everything we threw at him and read to him. By his 2nd birthday, he knew by sight his ABC's and would identify them on demand.
And because I'm an online high school teacher, I new I'd need to have learning activities for him to work on this year as I took on some new responsibilities for my job. I started asking some teachers I respected and family and friends for resources they use or have heard are good. I got several, but struck gold on the first one we looked at. (I'll look at the others when he gets tired of this one.)
What, you may be asking, is this wonderful learning resource? It's an amazing website called Starfall.com. Truly amazing! It has literacy learning for kids pre-school to about 3rd grade or so. My husband taught Joshua to work a mouse so he could run the site on his own. It took him about 2 hours to learn and now he's a pro at working the computer and the first part of the site, which teaches not only the ABC's, but also the sounds each one makes.
After about 3 weeks of using the site, Joshua can now tell you the letter and the sound it makes. He'll see a letter like K somewhere on a sign and say, "K. Kuh!" It's rather fun to drive around and see what he notices now. Those darn letters are EVERYWHERE!
I'll post more learning resources as I find them. What are some resources you use with your children?
5 comments:
We bought My Baby Can Read on craigslist and Seth hasn't loved it either. But we're going to try again now that he's a little older (like 2 months:) ). I want to try Signing Time because Seth already knows "more," "all done," and "please." But mostly "more." :)
My sister-in-law introduced me to the Letter Factory DVD by LeapFrog. I really didn't have a testimonial of it until her son (not quite 2) could say the alphabet letters and sounds! Sorry, Kadie, if I'm stealing your thunder! :) Here is a link:
http://www.amazon.com/LeapFrog-Factory-Roy-Allen-Smith/dp/B001TKUXUC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1284170626&sr=8-1
I'm a big fan of Starfall.com. I used it when I taught my little guy with autism. It's an awesome resource. Brinkley's "read" every beginning story.
Here are some more resources I used when I was teaching:
abcteach.com (requires membership to get full access)
enchantedlearning.com (requires membership to get full access)
learningpage.com (requires sign-up, but it's free)
kidzclub.com
schoolexpress.com
http://www.lakeshorelearning.com/general_content/free_resources/resourceCrafts.jsp
Obviously, some of these are better than others. But I have found something useful on all of them.
I just had to say Thanks for putting up that website (Starfall), my 3 yr old is in love. He learned his alphabet by the time he was 2, and he knows how to spell some words now (I use tub crayons and write on the wall in the tub and he spells that way), but he loves this site. I've already passed it along to my sister. :)
Deborah, you didn't steal my thunder at all. :) But it's true. That DVD is amazing. He knew his alphabet sounds by 19 or 20 months.
Thanks for the tips on websites you guys!
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