I had only heard of early learning 6 months ago. My son was almost 2.5 and I thought there was more I could be doing for him. At around the same time, my friend mentioned a 4 year old she knew who was already reading. My initial thought was this child was passed down the “smart” gene. My friend said she knew this child was shown flashcards as an infant. So I proceeded to google, and google and google some more and found myself on a crash course on Doman’s reading and math methodologies. I created flashcards which my older son absorbed but my younger one wanted nothing to do with. I also found it cumbersome to keep track of the words in rotation and went back to the internet in search of another approach that better suited the needs of my family and voila! I landed on this website which has changed our lives forever!! I was working part-time and wanted to stay at home with my kids but felt that they were perhaps gaining more from being with their grandmother on the two days I was working. But once I committed to LR, LM and Little Musician and saw the excitement on their faces when they were learning I knew the decision had been made for me and I decided to stay home with them. It was the best decision I’ve ever made!
At 2.5 my son knew his letter sounds but that’s it as far as reading went. We did LR diligently and I slowly started introducing Preschool Prep meet the sight words 1, 2 &3, digraphs and blends and Leap Frog talking words and word caper (all resources from my local library) in addition to a slew of helpful youtube videos. About two months ago, my son started sounding out the letters in words (phonics) so I focused on blending (PSP dvd) and became more diligent about text pointing and word association. Last week I checked out Bob Books from our library and I could tell my son was decoding words and making progress. He also seemed to know the majority of the sight words in the Kindergarten series. Two nights ago, however, it was painstaking to go through one book. He seemed disinterested and words that I thought he knew, he wasn’t reading. Then last night was transformational. He WHIZZED through 5 books (all books he’d never read before) with very little help from me. With each page he read, he grew more confident and motivated to continue reading. I couldn’t believe the speed in which he was reading and he was BLENDING words! For example, if it was a word he hadn’t seen before, he would decode the word then repeat the word but this time blended to the correct word! It was amazing to watch and I was so happy for him. In looking back at the 12 native reading points, I’d incorporated much of it since my son was a baby but hadn’t realized it. He always had a fascination with letters and I tried to nurture it but never thought I could take it this far. We still have a lot of practice to go but I am a total believer in early learning and sticking it out because we are doing so much good for our children. To help them make learning fun by teaching them this early will unlock so much potential for them least of which is the love of learning. Thank you Brillkids for the insight and motivation!!!
thanks for sharing your experience with everyone.