On my version of Doman’s Teach your baby to read, he mentions the case of an American little girl, Winnifred, who was a genius able to speak many languages, read, play instruments etc. at a very young age.
Her mum published a book, Natural Education, around 1920.
I discovered in on free access on the internet.
If you are interested, do print it. It had logical sections like ‘Learning through play’, ‘Nature’, ‘Maths’ etc… so you can print what interests you.
Otherwise you can just look up for key words.
I did print the entire thing and i still have some ink left
A fascinating read! (in PDF format)
This is very interesting. I think that I’m reading the second one that you have listed from Google. I’m printing now. It’s like 300 pages! Thank goodness I’m at work.
There are parts about “black mamas.” The language is funny because it was so long ago. I really like a lot of the things that she says. It’s sad, though, to read about Winifred’s life after she became famous. The mother actually dies young too, I guess of nephritis (inflammation/infection of the kidneys).
I give a lot of credit to the mother. She had huge dreams for the world and for her child. It’s interesting how she championed Esperanto and taught her child even though the the common belief at the time was that too much education, especially at such a young age, would make a person go crazy.
I also love the digitalized Google version of the book that was taken from the Stanford library. The book itself has typos. Hee hee! Like it forgot the color yellow for the rainbow. Whoever read the book put a little arrow in where the yellow should have been. I laughed. People at work must think that I’m nuts, but what’s new?
I’m not done reading the entire book, because I had to work too. Work gets in my way sometimes. I will report back.
Thank you for sharing! I regret so much not doing all this reading when I was pregnant! There is just not enough time to read all the materials that would give us so much light about all this. I’m a slow reader so that doesn’t help I have a confession to make. I did see all Doman’s books in amazon, but the book covers looked soooo old that I completly lost interest. I thought there were just all studies done so many years ago. Do I regret it so much >:(
I did use the ‘search’ function a lot to gather ideas before I decided to print it. You can look up key words on what interests you and read the relevant chapters. A few suggestions for your baby’s age, but not many (balls to learn the colors, bells that baby rings with his legs, cot covered with stimulating pictures…)
Winnifred was also very strong physically, apparently able to stand and crawl at a very young age.
You are welcome. I was really intrigued by this little girl when I read what Doman said of her and was already contemplating trying to find the book through antique bookshops, so I was ecstatic when I found it online for free.
It’s just a pity there is not much information on what happened to Winnifred later in her life. I read that she was married a few times and that her mother died young, but that’s about it… If anyone has more information, please share!
Joha, I thought the same things too when I looked at the Doman covers on Amazon. It kind of turned me away from the whole idea two years ago when I was first researching information. I thought to myself, “this book was written along time ago obviously so why haven’t I heard anything about it? Where are all these bright children who grew up after learning this type of method?” I wish that they would redo some of the pictures and perhaps, if they haven’t already (I haven’t read a new edition), added a warning about SIDS.
I’d say it would be pretty hard to find. I don’t think there were any subsequent editions and I do not think a huge number of copies were published at the time. I might be wrong though.
There is just not enough time to read all the materials that would give us so much light about all this. I’m a slow reader so that doesn’t help