15-month-old reading English and Chinese and identifying classical composers

I just want to share some videos of our 15 month old baby having fun with reading and with music. I am so grateful to BK and forum members here who have inspired us to start teaching our baby so early. Before I stumbled onto this forum, I never thought that a baby could learn so much and so fast. Thanks for helping us maximize our daughter’s potential! :smiley:

that is soo great. she is adorable. good job for doing her doing soo well. do you do LR and LM also? or just doman cards…3 per day.

She is superb!!! Congrats!!!

Thanks ariel and mirra! I started YBCR with her at around 3 months old and after 6 months, she already knew most of the words in the videos and flashcards. Now, I do LR English and Chinese with her 2 sessions/day, Doman math using the dot cards (quantity and equations) 3x a day, classical music and perfect pitch/note reading 2x a day, Tweedlewink right before bedtime, and French and Spanish mostly during the weekends. My husband and I both work fulltime so we only have about 30 minutes with her in the morning and a couple of hours at night. She is in daycare during the day. I don’t have time to do EK cards so I use the Doman picture dictionaries for the days when we have extra time. I like it that you can show the bits in English, French, Spanish, and other languages. :slight_smile:

Aangeles, congratulations for your daughter and for the excellent work you are accomplishiing even with that little time since both of you work out of the house. Luckily my office is on the 2nd floor of my house so i can be with my grandson all Tuesdays an Thursdays afternoon when he comes from nursery school. He will be 3 years on January.

We have been listening to the same classical music from Beethoven wigs (he likes the Can Can) and Themes to Remember. I show him the composers image of Themes to remember but there are very small.
Question.-

  1. Where did you get those pictures. They look great.
  2. Do you speak french and/or Spanish? How are you teaching him. I recently get BBC Program Muzzy that comes with 5 languanges but have not received it yet since it is mailed to Miami and I am in Peru and right now I have no one traveling. I am planning watchiing first spanish (native language) and english and after 1 o 2 month will continue with french.
    Thank you for sharing your videos

I am very happy to see that there are more babies can read and understand in more than one languages and across the area of learning. Congrats, Aangeles! You can see that your little princess has the understanding of what she sees (reading, but not able to reproduce the sound yet) and she understands how she can use her body language to express herself (pointing, touching, nodding etc). Once she is ready to talk, she would be able to read it out loud to you. Excellent job. My Spanish nanny is starting next week so hopefully my little Stella would be able to talk in Spanish soon. She is very good at using up to 8 words together in a sentence in Chinese now, with clear pronunciation. Let’s all encourage each other and maximize our little ones learning potential. I am happy if she can use these three major languages in the world from now on.

Hi Aangeles,
Can you please guide me how you teach Ella about music appreciation? This is the field that I haven’t touch at all as I have no idea where to start!

Thanks!

Thanks for all your encouragement. I am certainly no expert in teaching a baby music as I have only been doing it for the last month or so…ha ha. I did read a lot about it and I just modified/adapted the methods to suit my baby. I am currently doing a couple of things to teach music to my baby:

  1. Perfect Pitch/Note Reading - I used Doman method to teach her this. I played 3 notes on the keyboard and named them (e.g. do, re, mi) 3x a day and after 3 days, I retired one note and added one new one. I have finished that and now I am teaching her to read notes also using Doman method.

  2. Classical Music - I started by playing one short piece of music from one composer, show her the card, and say the composer’s name and title of the piece before and after playing the music. I do this 2 times a day for about 3 days (usually while changing her diaper or changing into pajamas at bedtime) and just added more and more pieces from different composers as we went along. I get my pieces from Beethoven’s Wig and Themes to Remember which I loaded on iTunes. So it is easy for me to play the piece from my iTunes library after I do a session of Little Reader since I already have my computer turned on already. Then I just added more and more pieces from different composers as we go along.

She picked up the music and naming the composers much much faster than I had expected. Sometimes she would even “request” a particular composer by picking out his picture and giving it to me. Right now her favorite is Vivaldi. :smiley:

Hi,
Thanks for your tips, I hope I can find these cd in Singapore :slight_smile:
Will try today!

Hi aangeles,
Very impressive and inspirational videos. Thank you for sharing, it definitely helps keep my motivation to keep teaching tobias in a similar fashion. By the way, where did you get the chinese flashcards?

Your daughter is so adorable. Would you please let me know where you purchased the Chinese flash cards?

Best wish,

Nina

Thank you, everybody, for your kind words. I received several PMs asking me where I got my flashcards and photos so I am just going to post my reply here. The English flashcards are from YBCR, the Chinese flashcards are from Baby Learns Chinese boxed set, and the composers’ photos I made myself. I just searched for the composer’s portrait online, printed it out on photo paper, printed out 10 POIs about that composer on another sheet of paper, and laminated them together.

Regarding French and Spanish, unfortunately neither my husband nor I speak these languages. For now, we are just exposing her to these other languages by letting her listen to French/Spanish music CDs in the car and watching French or Spanish videos during the weekends. I also show her the Glenn Doman picture dictionaries which you can show in 5 languages, including French and Spanish. Here are some of my foreign language resources:

French - Little Pim vols 1-3, Baby’s First Words in French CD, Lyric Language French DVD and CD, Songs in French for Children, Un Deux Trois: First French Rhymes (Book & CD),
Spanish - Little Pim vols 1-3, Baby’s First Words in Spanish CD, Globe Toddlers in Mexico DVD, Jose Luiz Orozco’s music CDs, Whistlefritz’s Spanish for Beginners DVDs.

Hope this helps. :smiley:

Hi aangeles,
Thanks for the information! I went and ordered from their web site both the DVD’s and flashcards. I also use wink to learn chinese. Do you use this also?

I seem to also remember that you were teaching Tagalog also. What materials are you using and how is the progress?

Thanks.

By the way, tobias also likes the Little Pim vols in French and Spanish. I’ll have to look at some of the other resources you recommended. There sure are a lot to choose from…which is actually a good thing! Thanks again.

Wonderful videos! Well done and thanks for sharing! :slight_smile:

Are you also teaching french and spanish reading? or just exposing them to the language? I’m trying to figure out if it’s a good idea to teach my son to read in both english and spanish from the get go or if I should get him comfortable in english first and then start the spanish reading. Any advice? My hubby and I both speak English and he has 2 hours a day with a spanish play group for exposure, he loves little pim spanish and other spanish videos/music. He is picking up the language nicely but I wonder if I should also start teaching him to read in spanish now rather than later.

Oh, we also love the Jose Luiz Orozco’s music CDs, we check a different one out each time we go to the library. I love his voice.

Tobias8,

Sorry for the delayed reply. I am not currently using Wink to Learn Chinese because it is in simplified Chinese. I am waiting for the traditional Chinese version to come out (which they assured me will be at the end of this year).

Regarding Tagalog, I am happy to say that my daughter’s comprehension has increased by leaps and bounds since my husband started being more consistent and conscientious in speaking Tagalog to her. At this time, I think her understanding of English, Chinese, and Tagalog are about equal. Unfortunately, I don’t have any Tagalog books/DVDs to supplement her learning. Will have to wait until we make a trip back to the Phils. to get her these.

Hi LDS mom,

I am currently only teaching reading English and Mandarin Chinese. I am regularly exposing her to French and Spanish though, through music CDs, Little Pim, and GD bits. I tried showing her Muzzy French and Spanish but she was not interested it. I think it is because Muzzy is in cartoons and she prefers videos of real children, animals, and other things. I did discover a great Spanish language DVD called Spanish for Beginners by Whistlefritz. The videos are entirely in Spanish so the child learns through immersion and not translation. My daughter loves it! :slight_smile:

Wow, hats off to you and your DD, It is very commendable that you are able to do so many things with your DD despite working full time. Good work, very inspiring , BTW I loved your home made BIT cards. Wold you be willing to share your POis for composers with the forum? And i love Beethovens wig, I never really played it so much for my DD but I used to sing along with it while cooking, very funny lyrics.

[quote author=aangeles link=topic=7133.msg43300#msg43300 date=1258124158]

Tobias8,

Sorry for the delayed reply. I am not currently using Wink to Learn Chinese because it is in simplified Chinese. I am waiting for the traditional Chinese version to come out (which they assured me will be at the end of this year).

Regarding Tagalog, I am happy to say that my daughter’s comprehension has increased by leaps and bounds since my husband started being more consistent and conscientious in speaking Tagalog to her. At this time, I think her understanding of English, Chinese, and Tagalog are about equal. Unfortunately, I don’t have any Tagalog books/DVDs to supplement her learning. Will have to wait until we make a trip back to the Phils. to get her these.

aangeles,

Thanks for the reply. One more question re: tagalog; are you using any flashcards, homemade or not, to check her understanding? How can you tell her understanding is approximately equal with English, Chinese, and Tagalog?

You definitely are quite an inspiration.

Tobias8

aangeles,

Just an update. After you gave the site at which you obtained your chinese flashcards, I ordered a set. I had been teaching my tobias8 with Wink to Learn Chinese and was curious as to whether he could recognize the chinese characters on the flashcards. To my surprise, he was able to select the correct card with my questioning. Thank you again so much for sharing your experience and resources!

tobias8