Your Baby Can read !!!

[mummyloveslucy]

Hi, I was at work last night when I saw an advert for a reading system called "Your Baby Can read". It did look amazing and there were loads of babys reading words from around 1 year old.

I wondered what you think of this, is it a con or could it really work?

My daughter is nearly 6 and has learning difficulties. I'm thinking about getting it for her to help her to learn to read. It seems to be a multi sensory way of learning. It seems to good to be true, so I'm skeptical. They also say that the childs brain is 95% developed by the age of 5 and that's why it's important to teach them early. If that's the case I might have missed the boat with my daughter.

Has anyone tried it? If so,is it any good?

A load of money-making bollocks I should think

If it was so vital by 5 then many children/adults would never learn

That's what I thought LIZS, I was a bit concerned that we'd missed the boat but then I thought of my Dad who learned to read at 10 years old and now has several degrees.

Do you think it could work as a way of teaching my daughter to read, if it's designed for much younger children?

If you google there are an awful lot of entries about poor service and it being a scam, sorry. I think you could find other, better resources for your £125/135 (+ p & p)

Thanks for letting me know. I certainly can't afford to throw money away. I'll have a look for something better.

its based on sight reading, so quite different than the normal methods favoured these days of phonics. but if you feel a different kind of method may be better for her then may be worth a try? but agree with previous poster that it is a lot of money for what it is (i for some reason thought it would be a good idea to buy when pregnant with my pfb lol) - but if you want to try it out dont buy the whole pack just get the 1st dvd (even second hand if you see it, i think they are on amazon marketplace) and see whether you find it useful?
i wouldn't agree that its a "scam" as such its just a quite expensive set of dvd to learn reading by sight, which is not really suitable for the age its marketed at (3 months lol! ffs).

I wouldn't buy the program, but plenty of very young children can sight read. My child started picking out words at 18 months and I've helped her along. She's 26 months now and I'm not actually pushing the phonics or sight reading but do read alot to her and use flashcards sometimes, bath letters etc.

Plenty of children do learn reading by sight, rather than phonetically, at first. Some languages are only learnt by sight, such as Mandarin. They can usually blend the two, so you're not ruining them by introducing this concept. But don't push it and just keep reading to them. Make picking out the odd simple word a game, NOT an instruction. And at the end of the day, you can't make a young child pick up stuff they're not interested in. But at the same time they are like sponges now, so exposure to the world of reading , the way words sound, the interior world of a story, etc, is A Good Thing.

A word on learning from DVDs. In reality it's not an effective way to learn. One on one and through play is how very young children learn.

If you want to go down this route, and I have the materials myself, you can make your own Glenn Doman flashcards.

One of the main issues that this country has with teaching reading is that we start too young for many, many children. Lots of children who are allowed to learn when they're ready (ie who are home educated) learn very quickly around the age of 6/7/8 or even later.

I think the stuff about brain development sounds rubbish.

Really, that sounds positive. My daughter is being home educated as from the start of this term. We've been doing a bit in the holidays and she seems to love working one to one with me. She didn't like school and said she needed more help. Now that she gets one to one help, she can't get enough of it.
I thought it'd be a struggle but she's the one pushing me all the time.

:)

You'd probably like to read something by John Holt - he's written lots about children learning (although not about those with learning difficulties in particular). How Children Learn is one of his classics. He's provided the 'philosophy' behind a lot of home education.

Books by Alan Thomas e.g. How Children Learn at Home are also good IMO. I got both the above from my local library.

(We're thinking of educating DS at home - although he's only 12 months yet!)

Did you know there's a HE talk board on here?

I've told this story before, but when my dd was a baby and I was just out of a high pressure job and in need of a project, I made flash cards and worked on them with dd - grinning like an idiot and saying "THIS says DOG" with loads of acting. She humoured me for a week or two, then one day, she picked up a card and said "Dis say SILLY!"

I think she was right.

Mummy, sight reading isn't proper reading. it's just memorising shapes.

Angel, that is not true. Children are not 'ready' at a mythical age. Success depends on being taught properly, that's all and most peopel don't know how to teach reading properly, particulalry to people with LD.

Mummy, we talk reading a lot on the SN section. The best product by far (and the easiest and most fun to use) is Headsprout.

Moondog - true, sight reading is about recognising shapes but that is how people who have already learned how to read do it (in English and other similar languages). Not sure it works as a way of teaching people who can't read, though.

Confident readers don't work out M - u - m - s - n - e - t, they see the shape of the word and know what it is. That's why publishers avoid setting large amounts of type in block caps - much harder work as people have to stop and concentrate on the letters.

'Not sure it works as a way of teaching people who can't read, though.'

It doesn't-at least not as a terribly effective technique.It's like only knowing one route hrough a busy city centre. You're stuiffed if you get lost or there's a diversion. No repair stategies

Personally, I wouldn't be interested in whether a child was able to read when they're 1: what I want to know is whether they are still reading when they're 13!

fwiw I grew up in one of the countries where you do other things (mainly practical, outdoors and crafts) for several years before you go to school at a relatively late age (used to be 7). As it so happened, I taught myself to read aged 5, but most of my friends didn't. What I noticed was that the majority learnt to read within the first 6 months of being at school: not to be able to read after a year would have been considered unusual. Which makes me wonder what the advantage was to my own ds in having to spend 3 years learning to read, having started at the age of 4.

cory, that's one of the points often made by homeschooling advocates. Children who are allowed to learn to read when they're ready learn much faster than children at school.

I have a friend whose daughter taught herself age 3, and I've read of children who didn't learn till 8 or 9, but who went from no literacy to reading novels in less than 6 months.

I don't think there's any advantage in starting early. Even the research sponsored by the UK government (by Jim Rose) found that children should start school later to maximise learning. The govt's response was to announce that children will be able to start formal education at an even earlier age in future.

IIRC recognising shapes is one of the strategies used when people learn to read - but it would be pretty useless if it were the only strategy as moondog says. Obviously phonics (sounding out) is useful too, as is inference from the context. Even relatively new readers don't rely solely on phonic decoding.

I've been trying to remember a really good piece of research about how people read / learn to read which we covered in our PGCE course, but the name of the author escapes me at the moment. If I remember, I'll pop back with it.