hi,
so i am not sure whether this is a problem or not, but my daughter doesn’t seem to be interested in flash cards, at all. i have been showing them and also some flash cards with nice images on an ipad, but there she is only interested in pushing all the buttons. so, should i continue, one week is up, and retire some words and add new ones, or should i assume that she hasn’t seen them enough and continue with the same set? how about keeping her interest? she is 19 months old and loves when we read, she pays attention really well then, but words don’t seem to grab her. any suggestions?
thanks, slowly losing faith…
liza
my daughter never liked flashcards either - which is why i used mostly ybcr and LR to teach her to read. are you showing her flashcards in english or russian? if it’s english, maybe you can download the trial version of LR to see if she’ll like it better. you can also disable the keyboard keys with LR.
otherwise, if you decide to stick with the flashcards, i’ll probably start retiring words and introducing new ones so as not to risk boring her. i would encourage you to go ahead and stick to the schedule regardless of whether she shows you signs of recognizing the words or not. it took us months and months (actually, 6-7 months) before we started seeing early results.
keep up the good work! i’m sure your baby will surprise you someday… when you’re least expecting it! 
Thanks so much aangeles. This is exactly the type of post I was hoping to receive! I feel encouraged already. Especially the part about the months and months. It makes me feel silly that after a week I was already having doubts. And yes, I am showing cards in Russian which is why I am not using LR. I am planning on using it for English, but I wanted to get a head start with Russian first. From your own experience, if had only used the LR twice a day, do you think that would have worked? Did you teach phonics too? Thanks so much, people like you make forums worthwhile.
ACtually, there are already many Russian categories you can download:
http://forum.brillkids.com/downloads/?cat=107
We’re also in the middle of creating the Russian curriculum.
Lastly, I certainly believe using LR twice a day is enough to make a lot of progress. In fact, even once a day. But of course, like many things, every child learns at a different pace, so exactly how much progress would be hard to say.
thanks for your post,
i knew of the russian files and they are great! still, i have started off with my own list of words, based on what my daughter already knows. that said, it doesn’t seem that she is interested in anything but getting the ipad from me. we do battle like this every time. she loves to play with the machine, but no so much look at words. i am hoping it will pass. kids have a hard time staying focused in general, so i am not losing hope.
thanks for the suggestions,
liza
There is also a great site with ready-made presentations in Russian you can use as a supplement to your programme:
thanks for the website, i already had it bookmarked, but haven’t actually gotten down to using it. have you yourself used it? are you teaching your daughter russian? i am, for now, sticking to doing the flashcards myself but any help would be great. i have also looked at sites teaching russian to adults, but those seem too interested in translating everything from english, since they assume that one is an english speaker to begin with.
something made for babies is much much better.
thanks,
liza
Hello Liza! Love you name, by the way, it is my daughter’s too. She is four and I only started her on these methods a few months ago. At this stage, I felt a mix of right-brain/left-brain, whole-word/phonics approach was more appropriate (especially for Russian) than pure Doman. Yes, I do speak Russian to her, which is my first language, as well as English, which is the language of her environment, and I am slowly introducing her to reading in both languages.
The site above has a few Doman-style presentations. You do need to be careful with those though, as the ones I have seen tend to have both the word and the image on the same slide, which is not strictly Doman. You could try altering them and recording your own voice (your baby may like it better!). Have a look at this site too for further ideas and information on early education: http://www.danilova.ru/; and at this for flashcards: http://www.wunderkind.kiev.ua/?module=dvd, although I have not purchased anything from this resource myself.
hi lmsmum,
thanks for the suggestions. i have looked at the pelenki series, but it seems that one can make that style material oneself. it’s not interactive at all. my father has just purchased the kubiki zaizeva, he is in russia and who knows when they’ll get here. have you heard of them? i am sure if you’ve read the danilova site, you are familiar with this method as well. i haven’t had any success to report yet. of course, i have only been showing flashcards of my own making for a week and a half, i guess i am inpatient. my daughter doesn’t really care for them either. i might have to get the little reader and try that out. any experience with this program?
thanks,
liza
p.s. yes, i like my name too but not necessarily the way it’s pronounced in english. had i known, i would have made it leeza.
cheers
I did research Zaitsev’s blocks and read a lot of raving reviews, as well as some warnings. I would give them a try if they were not so difficult and expensive to procure in the UK. I am trying to find more information on so-called “Zaitsev’s English blocks†right now.
I have not done the programme with LM, as I had my reservations regarding her age. If I ever have another baby I will definitely go for it and start early. I guess, a week and a half is a very short term to see any changes, you may need to persevere for a few months to notice progress. Don’t despair that you daughter doesn’t seem to be interested. They say babies at this age learn at 360 degrees and a lot is taken in with peripheral learning.
As for your and my daughter’s name, interestingly, it is hardly ever mispronounced here in the UK, although, I have to admit, I was apprehensive about it turning into [laiza] initially.
You are probably right. Patience i s really a virtue as far as our kids are concerned. Sara, my daughter is much too interested in taking the mouse or some other contraption away instead of focusing on the words. Hopefully, Zaizev’s cubes will help fix that since they seem like more fun. What are some bad things that you’ve heard in relation to their use?
As far as our names, I lived in Latin America for some years and there I had no trouble whatsoever with my name but here in the US it’s the other way around. The default option is the wrong one in my and your daughter’s case. I always knew that we should have moved to Europe instead :nowink:
Liza
There is an opinion that kids learning to read “po skladam” (language units) with Zaitsev’s blocks skip the important “blending” stage (linking consonant and vowel, e.g. M+A=MA) and tend to take each unit (“sklad”) as one letter, and don’t realise that it is, in fact, two letters (they may say “the letter “MA””). This problem becomes more serious once they start writing, as they start omiting vowels altogether. The blending stage, apparently, is the most difficult step in learning to read, so although Zaitsev cubes help to skip it, kids end up paying for these initial gains in the long term. This is not my opinion, as I am no specialist, but if I were to use these cubes with my daughter, I would pay a close attention to this aspect.
that’s an interesting observation. one would think that something akin to this is happening with the doman method as well. children learn to sight read words, they are also discouraged from learning letters and phonemes. in any case, i’ll give it a try and see if she likes them more than the flashcards. what are you doing as far as reading is concerned?
thanks for bringing up interesting points,
liza
To be honest, I am taking it fairly easily, as LM has some challenges in terms of her speech, language and communication, which need to be tackled first. Having said that, reading, math and basic writing are still at the top of my priority list as I would like to give her a headstart before she is due to join a compulsory school. I also have this idea that reading may actually help her with her speech and communication.
In English, she does not struggle with the whole-word approach and remembers words quite easily. I tried CVC words with DadDude’s Fleschcards, and although she can sound out each letter, she struggles to blend the sounds together, so I am carrying on with the whole-word approach for now.
In Russian, she started blending with the help of Zhukova’s “Logopedichesky slovar’”. It is still early days, but she is making good progress, so I guess, I will continue with the phonics approach in Russian. We’ll see where this takes us!
I found the following site very interesting : http://nekin.narod.ru/e11.htm. The author tells a story of how he taught his two boys reading and how each needed completely different techniques. While his older son never succeeded with the Doman approach, but took to phonics fairly easily, his second boy, took to Doman like fish to water, but struggled to blend and he needed a more analytical approach.
In terms of teaching your daughter reading in English, have a look at this thread: http://forum.brillkids.com/teaching-your-child-to-read/the-phonics-debate/. You will find some very interesting opinions.
thanks again,
while my daughter napped, i was able to take a quick look at the nekin site you sent, it’s very funny! i guess i should have researched more before asking my dad to get them for me for new year’s. oh well. i don’t think the kubiki will hurt. in any case, the longer one researches these things, the less time is spent actually teaching. time is so short. a two hour nap, and an hour and a half before i go to bed at night myself. i didn’t realize that the kubiki would require so much work. i read on some site about filling them and so on…
thanks again for your input. i am sorry to hear about your daughter’s troubles, maybe it’s because she is bilingual? i am sure you know of this line of thought.
cheers,
liza
Thanks, Liza. She is actually tri-lingual, as her dad is Catalan. Specialists say that this wouldn’t have caused her delay though. Neither should the fact that she had a history of otitis media (“glue ear”) and was hearing-impaired for a while. (Although I am struggling to write these two circumstances off completely). She is doing much better than a year ago and, luckily, her cognitive skills are fine, so this keeps me hopeful…
As for Zaitsev’s blocks, I am sure they are worth giving a try, as long as you keep phonics in mind too. I also saw some ready-made ones on the official site, but god knows how much those would cost you with shipping charges on top!