Happy New Year Everyone!

We've had a wonderful start to our new year & been incredibly busy.  Too busy to blog!  The alpine ski racing season has started for my older 3 girls, & the oldest 2 are both on the Jr. high basketball team.   My 2nd oldest has also qualified for the winter games in our province in alpine skiing, so we have been running from practise to race or game & on to the next practice.  K has also had another neurodevelopmental evaluation recently, so that & her program as well as preschool has kept us busy!

The other reason that I haven't blogged until now, is that just before I hit publish on anther post, I got thinking that maybe K should have the first word in 2012.  I have a whole list of other blog posts that I have been working on in the meantime & will post soon, but first, here is her Happy New Year's message from our family to yours!  This is the first take - no practice runs because with our busy schedule, we may not find time again until June!  I think my sleepy little girl (it was bed time - she yawns 1/2 way through) did a great job!

Oh, & my other news for the New Year is that I am now on Facebook! You can find me here: Down Syndrome Up Up Up & Away

Hope you enjoy the video!

New video of K reading!

This book is quite an easy level for K, but I wanted to show her reading a new book that she has never seen before.  She is a little distracted by pictures, &  has trouble with a couple of words, but again, it is a new book. Because she doesn't show off in front of the camera while reading very often, I'll take it!  Anyways, here she is, & as always when she chooses to read in front of the camera, in jammies & with messy hair!



Fast Flashing Method

When I explain to people that we use the fast flash method to show K her cards, I don't think that people always understand quite how quickly we do them, so I thought I would put up a video of a flashcards session. It really is fast!  The 12 cards in this set took  24 seconds to show both the words & pictures.                  

There are a number of reasons for going so fast.  Here are several of them:

1. Kids learn incredibly fast - by going too slowly, kids get bored & lose interest.  If your child won't sit for flashcards, try going much faster, using a very small number of cards, & doing them in very short sessions.

2. K would never have learned enough words to be able to read books unless we went quickly.

3.  Showing the words & images quickly helps with instant recall.

Between camera & computer difficulties, & "out in the country" speed internet, it took longer than expected to get this up ( I'd promised a couple of people that I would be posting it).  Even loading the YouTube page to upload it took 15 minutes. I left my computer running from midnight last night until 9 am & only 60% had loaded.  By 65% at 10:00 this morning, it timed out & I got an error message.  Grrrrr.  I realized later that I didn't turn the title card in between the words & pics - I guess I'm out of practice because we have been doing words only for over 6 months now.  After all of the computer problems I'm having, I finally decided that I'd better just put it up as is.

We flashed through the words as fast as we could say them, then we flashed through the pictures as fast as we could say them. This video is what our typical flashcard sessions looked like. The only thing I usually do differently is to switch the title card in between the words & pictures rather than at the end like I did here - that's what I would change if I could get the other video up.

 I can't believe how grey my hair looks from this view, but here it is:)! 

We also used this method sometimes. We would show the word and read it, then flip the card over and show the picture and say it, then turn the card over again and say the word again.

K learned equally well with either method & was able to associate the word with the picture regardless of how we showed the cards.

This last video is of K flashing through & reading the cards herself.  Isn't it cute how she organizes the cards after each session?

We loosely follow the method in Glenn Doman's Book, How to Teach Your Baby to Read.  I highly recommend reading it.  Here is a link if you are interested in purchasing it:

http://www.gentlerevolution.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=G&Product_Code=0201-40

Reading World Monuments

This video of K was taken in the fall.  She was almost 3 1/2 years.  We used a lot of word cards with pictures on the back to keep her attention as she is only very recently interested in reading word cards without pictures.  At this point, she knew so many words that were nouns, that we had to look a little further to find words words to teach her that still had a picture.  Thankfully, she will now happily read words just printed by hand on index cards or on the computer with the Little Reader program.  With the number of cards we were going through each week, the cost of ink, card stock & laminating materials was going through the roof!  We still do cards like this now, but just for fun.

Onto the words!

This video of K reading words was taken at the same time as the previous video I posted.  I am still amazed every time I look back at my tiny little 2 year old reading.  Check out the sign language & the dancing too!

This video was taken a few months after K's 2nd birthday.  She knew the alphabet before she was 2, however, because we really wanted to make sure that the early learning activities we did were always fun, we were careful never to test her. For that reason, I tried to take videos only when she was willingly & joyfully showing us her knowledge. We have always felt it was more important to take advantage of the moment that she was enjoying showing off her skills rather than have her turned off of reading because we pressured her to perform when we felt the moment was right.  This is also my explanation for the pony tail out to start getting ready for bed, wild  hair do :) !