I have a friend who has indicated interest in teaching her 4 year old son. Page 182 is quite negative about teaching 4 year olds, but does indicate that it’s much easier than waiting til they are 6 or 7.
What I’m uncertain about is whether the cards need to be flashed quickly to do right brain teaching (as they’re so old the left brain would be the primary learning side)?
Has anyone had experience in trying Doman’s cards or using Little Reader in teaching the older child to read?
That is also my concern… I just learned all about the advantages of Right Brain Teaching as well as LR/LM when I joined in last month. (My son is turning 4 this coming July09) Now I’m just confuse if it still worth to buy those software knowing that he will start learning using his left brain side.
YBCR is good for teaching four year olds but is getting them to stay still to watch the DVD. Tweedlewink is also up to 6 years of age so I think that teaching a four year old to read shouldn’t be a problem.
I guess you may have to take a different approach to reading as well by playing more games. You could also label everything in your house and reward the child when they read the word. You can email right brain kids they usually are very help full they will be able to point you in the right direction and maybe suggest some right brain games to open that side of the brain.
You can also teach reading by the natural reading method where your friend reads books to her child but points to every word while reading the story. You could probably introduce phonics as well to help in reading you an go to a website www.starfall.com which is free and teaches phonics through playing games. Sign language is also able to help with reading so maybe start to teach sign language but a more grown up version of it and you can buy some of those big A3 sign language boards that teach you how to sign baa baa black sheep and so on which have all the words on it and you could point to the words while signing the song.
LR would also help, but I think the most important thing is making it fun.
Thanks for the suggestions so far. If anyone has had personal experience in teaching 4 year olds with Doman’s method - I would appreciate any suggestions!
I began teaching my daughter to read using the flashcard method. She had already started school at the time, so I began using the Kindegarten sight words list that she was given on the first day of school. I wrote down the words on index cards and just read them off to her every day once or twice and eventually she began saying the word before I said it. Her reading has improved a lot and I continue to do flashcards, along with native reading, and also having her read a lot as well.
I am teaching my 4 y.o. with Little Reader. I tried the natural method described above and still do that too, but I noticed that she memorizes the story very quickly (Mom, I can tell it to you without looking at the words or pictures!), so being able to mix the words/phrases up helped to see what she really knows. Of course you can do the same with paper cards if you have time to make them and are able tokeep organized with them.
I use phonics approach in words where it makes sense i.e. last week we had “oo” words: look, smooth, food, good. I introduced “oo” sound from the word “look” she has memorized earlier, she knew alphabet, she was familiar with “th” sound, etc. etc.
I just started w/ my 4yo this week (turned 4 2 weeks ago.) We are using the Doman method from his book. She has been in preschool and can read and write some basic things, like her name. We have been doing exercises a few days a week with starfall, and they are slowly working on phonics at preschool.
So we have been doing the flashcards. She has been loving it. She insists that she says the word before I do. She knew almost all of the words after the first session seeing the words. She does get confused at times with words starting with the same letter.
So I’d say be sure to use words that he is interested in. Getting to the couplet/sentence/games stage will keep the older child interested for longer. My daughter loves starfall, and interactive computer learning, so maybe the LR would work well (haven’t tried it myself.)
Hi there!
I actually found about all this when my daughter was 4 and a bit.I was also wondering how to this is what I did
Read to her
hide words around the house
write wordsand asked her if she can help
I used rock and phonics cds and they worked
Good day to all!
Your suggestions are great,I had a son turns 4 this june,sad to say I can’t afford to buy this stuff from Brillkids.But I’m making flashcards using cartoons and bondpapers.It’s good reading and joining this forum,our ideas are a great help.I will try your suggestions.What is DOMAN anywy?
I Took the 2 courses they offer and started when my daughter was 3 years 10 months. It has been fenomenal.
I will tell you the brain is a fantastic organ a wonder ! if you use it of course!
One thing you dont want to do is wait any longer to start a program or even worse to give up without putting a fight !!
everything that is suitable for a 2 year old (here) is good for a 4 (new student) the only challenge is you need to be very smart in how you present the information - it has to be F U N, wait did I say it… F U N !!! - the principles under Doman for teaching are Love and Respect, Right Brain will tell you Relationships before Results and Buzan will tell you the infomation should have or use:
Imagination : exaggeration, laughter, use senses, use colors and rhythms and positive thinking
Association: patterns, use numbers and symbols
for more info see mind maps for kids (tony buzan)
The biggest challenge and danger that unaware parents face is the low expectation that we have about our young kids and what they are suppose to be learning at 1 year old, 2,3,4, etc…
The 4 year old is at a great age to start - and my daughter is living proof of that as she has flourish as I never thought she was able to. (I didnt have a clue about early development so my expectations were the same of any pre-school parent who is sending her daughter to pre-school …
Never imagine that my daugther could be playing violin, speaking 2 or 3 languages, doing gymnastics, reading, math 2-3rd grade, etc… that are simply not part of any Pre-school program!
I will be glad to help in any way I can! how could I help?
Regards,
Gloria
ps: it will be great to have a forum category for older kids 4 years and older - what do you say KL??
Well At IAHP (Doman Institutes) they adviced me to start advance math with small numbers; They discouraged me from the dots, with good reason as there is so much more to learn in math than dots. My daughter already knew how to count and identified the numbers to maybe 50 not sure, so doing dots at this point is very very challenging as they find them boring and their first move is towards counting them.
I am a woman of faith so I did Doman anyway and did it as exciting as possible and as fast as possible; Right Brain training ( WINK program) helped me a lot to better understand how to extend the “right brain period” and in that way she was able to get the training while feeling good about it; I wish LM would have been available then!!! as I believe this program is excellent to help older kids keep engage.
Well my daughter will probably never do instant math but I am sure it has helped more than I realize, I noticed for example when we play observation games (which we do all the time, while walking at the mall checking windows, while driving checking out cars, while reading a book (I select the books that I use for this very well following RB tips) and for example I read a page and ask her to look at the pictures for 10 seconds and then I turned and I ask her questions like how many people (easy warm up), how many females, what were they wearing, and start getting to small details little by little, … the other day we had a clown and she was able to tell me how many stripes he had in each sock and how many dots the neck boe tie had, how many flowers were in his hat and the color for each flower!! I almost faint !!
So somewhere somehow I believe in my heart that the dots helped and I am still doing this kind of training with LM (which I believe is a terrific program).
It is vital that whatever you do, you set up the kids to win - you are to celebrate if they get it right and tickle if they get it wrong, play anyway !! easy small steady steps - make it so easy so they always win and little by little they will be the ones asking you for more.
ok short answer - I do Doman and LM also I am using the books from www.Criticalthinking.com which I absolutely reccomend to all of you, the mathematical reasoning series is my favorite, second the building perceptual skills and Mind Benders as well- I also use Singapore Math.
version of it and you can buy some of those big A3 sign language boards that teach you how to sign baa baa black sheep and so on which have all the words on it and you could point to the words while signing the song.