Damien (22 months) has been watching some simple math videos I made for him (available for free viewing on YouTube here) for some time now. Maybe two months? I'm not really sure. But has LOVED the videos and asks for them many times a day.
Then a couple of days ago I made some printable cards that go hand in hand with the content of the videos.
At his first introduction to these cards, he showed no interest in playing with them the "right" way, which was unusual of him. But even later that day he played along a little bit, and today he played along even more!
He happily picked the first three correct answers within seconds, and also correctly answered the last two answers, however those took him a bit longer as he was more interested in counting in random orders, talking about their size, saying the three was "bad", and all kinds of other random stuff he could come up with.
Clearly, he was done.
Regardless, I was very happy to see him learning with these cards. I love teaching little ones!
Damien is currently 1 year, 10 months old (22 months)
2013/04/11 at 7:12 pm
ReplyDeleteI watched the video and seemed to “bug” out my eyes because it goes fairly quickly. Kids can focus and retain when it’s going so quick?
2013/04/11 at 8:23 pm
DeleteWith the Doman method (as described in his books), images are flashed very rapidly, less than a second each, because that way instead of children FOCUSING on and STUDYING each image, they simply ABSORB the information. I have found that rapid flashing has worked very well for both of my children with many different subjects – learning world flags, reading words, quantity dots, and so on. It also should be noted that a different part of the brain is used – a sort of photographic memory – when images are shown rapidly, rather than when images/words are shown slowly, the brain tends to analyze them and try to categorize them and work hard to remember different features of them. With rapid flashing, the brain is forced to do nothing but instantly store the entire picture. It makes memorization very effortless and in my experience keeps the little ones’ attentions very well. As I have said, both of my children learned many things very quickly and painlessly with this methodology.
2013/04/11 at 8:30 pm
DeleteThank you for the explanation, makes sense. I get your emails and try to read most. I’d love to start trying these with my son. He’s advanced for his age and learns fast. I just don’t know how to go about doing it. Do you just randomly do activities throughout the day? Certain times/places? Point me in the right direction. ��
2013/04/11 at 9:11 pm
DeleteI have gone through periods where I have tried to have a very regular, somewhat strict routine with our learning activities, and some periods where we just do activities whenever I think about it. Right now we just do it when he asks (he asks a lot) and occasionally I will initiate things, I usually try to attach learning activities to other parts of our daily routine, for example doing some cards right before nap time, or reading after breakfast. It only takes a few seconds to a few minutes. I have gotten a lot more lenient in my scheduling with Damien because he actually asks for things so often I don’t have much of a need to remember to initiate things. If you are looking for more guidance, you can try checking out any books by Glenn Doman at your local library (they almost always carry a few titles) or check out the forum on brillkids.com, they have a ton of useful information and a great community of early-learning minded parents. Good luck and thanks for your inquiry!