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List Price: $ 14.99
Price: $ 11.96
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Babies’ Brains – What Parents Should Know
This post has been moved to the Right Brain Child. You can read it here:
How to Teach Your Baby Math: Little Math versus Doman Math
There is a very interesting video on TED about how babies learn to speak new words. It is given by Deb Roy who directs the Cognitive Machines group at the MIT Media Lab, where he studies how children learn language, and designs machines that learn to communicate in human-like ways. In this talk, he tells us how he wired up video cameras into every room of his home so they could record the natural daily interactions in his son’s life and from the data understand the process of how a child learns language. This is part of a project called The Human Speechome Project.
Unfortunately, they Deb Roy doesn’t really say as much about a child’s language acquisition as I had hoped for. His motivation for understanding how humans learn stems from his work on designing machines that area able to communicate in human-like ways. What was pretty cool, though, was the part where they condensed half a year into 40 seconds to show how his son went from “gaga” to “water”. It occurs at about 4 minutes and 20 seconds into the talk, if you want to listen to it.
Only the first part of the talk is relevant to how a child learns to speak. In the second part, he goes on to talk about the relevance of this information to mass media. If you want to read more about Roy’s research on a child’s linguistic development, he has some publications listed at the The Human Speechome Project.
When Gareth was 3 months old, I started him on Doman’s Math Program. He has gone through cards from 0-100, and learned addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Although Doman advises against “testing” children because it can put them off learning, you can indirectly test your baby by giving him problems to solve in a fun way.
In his Math program, Doman introduces the problem solving segment fairly early. I, on the other hand, didn’t give him any problems to solve until about three days ago. On day one, I asked him to give me the answer to three random equations (stuff like 23+13, 48-22, etc.). After each question, I would show him two consecutive dot cards and ask him to point to the correct answer. He got them all right. On day two, I gave him three more Math problems. He got them all right, again. On day three, I gave him yet another three more Math problems and he answered them all correctly.
That’s nine Math problems – all answered correctly. The probability of it being a fluke is very low – it’s 1 in 512 chances, or 0.2%. Can babies really learn Math? Yes, they can. I know I’ve been writing about early childhood education and Doman teaching programs for a while but I have to confess that part of me had doubts about whether I could teach Gareth to recognise the dot cards. I am a little relieved to see that my efforts have not been in vain.
I have no video evidence nor do I intend to make any because I feel the presence of a camera adds pressure for Gareth to perform. I made the mistake of applying that pressure on Gavin and only succeeded in putting him off a lot of things so now I’m careful not to make the same mistakes with Gareth. You will just have to take my word for it that he can do Math. The only reason I am recording this is so that other parents who wondered as I did whether Doman’s Math program is worth while or just a big waste of time, might be inspired to keep going with it.
There is a parent on youtube who did record her child’s progress, which you can see below.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBP3sMo4gtQ
The ability to perceive quantities is said to be present up until about 3 years of age. The Doman staff I purchased the Math Kit from recommend the Math program only for children age 3 years and below. Despite that, I tried doing the program with Gavin anyway since he was already 3 years old by the time I got my hands on the kit. Sadly, Gavin is still unable to perceive quantities and must physically count things.
I do think there is some individual variation, so even if your child has already turned 3, you may still want to give the program a go because I have read about one mother who successfully taught her child to recognise quantities from age 3 onwards. Unfortunately, it didn’t work with Gavin. So it looks like we’re going to have to figure out another Math program that will work for him. There are currently two programs we’re looking at – SEE’s method (thanks to FZ for sharing it with me) and the Japanese Abacus Anzan method. I’ll be writing more about both methods soon so stay tuned.
Both my sons love water. They have ever since they were newborns taking their first baths. Is the love for water instinctive in babies since they’ve been swimming around in the uterus for the last nine months? I would have thought so if it weren’t for my god daughter who hated taking baths so much that her parents had to put her in fully clothed and slowly take off her clothes while she was sitting in the bath tub. Then again, is it a dislike for water, or just taking a bath?
With Gavin, we were rather cautious about taking him swimming in public pool and didn’t make a trip out there until he was one year. By then, he had developed all sorts of fears – as all one-year-olds do – and only wanted to play in the shallow end of the pool. He didn’t like any part of the pool where his feet couldn’t touch the ground, and he didn’t like getting his face wet.
If you’ve read Glenn Doman’s book “How to Teach Your Baby to be Physically Superb“, he says that babies are born to swim. In fact, they have a swimming instinct that is maintained for the first six months of life – they naturally hold their breath under water and they instinctively move their arms and legs in the water. If you capitalise on this instinct, you can teach a baby to swim. (N.B. Before you run out and throw the baby into the deep end of the pool, make sure you learn more about this and how to teach your baby to swim safely – you can start with Douglas Doman’s book “How to Teach Your Baby to Swim“).
When Gareth was born, I didn’t wait until he was a year old before I took him swimming. He went swimming for the first time when he was four months old and he loved it. Since then, we’ve been trying to make regular weekly trips to the pool. Now that Gareth is out-growing his swim suit, we need to look for another. How timely it is that Mummy’s Reviews is having a swim diaper giveaway. The swim diaper up for grabs is a fancy little number by Tiny Pants. Head over there and check it out now…
