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"Bravo!! What a great product for babies and toddlers. Monki See, Monki Doo has been a big hit in our home!! My son absolutely loves watching the video. When we take out the flash cards for lessons he comes running over- its amazing how they capture his attention.
After a few weeks both my husband and myself noticed that he is able to identify objects more quickly than he had before we introduced the DVD. Thank you for making a product that makes learning fun. Every parent with a new baby should purchase this DVD. We're looking forward to what you have coming up next!"
Melissa Oczkowski
Cambridge, MA
Copyright 2009 Intellectual Baby, LLC
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Baby Spelling Bee?
Can babies learn to spell? Why not? They can learn just about everything else. Years ago my older children would spell out everyone's names in the house. They would spell out I love you and mommy and the names of their siblings. What was the result of that? The ones who were babies at the time spelled right along with them. I recently saw a child, around the age of 2 1/2, who could tell the names of words that were only spelled out to him. I was impressed.
I have been signing with my daughter since she was a few months old. She knows many signs. I recently added a new game to our day. I still sign to her, as I always have, and then I finger spell the words. I see her little fingers moving, trying to mimic the letters, as she blurts out whatever letters she can think of. Who knows, she may just be a champion speller someday? Could spelling be yet another piece of the puzzle to bringing up whole and capable children? I will keep you posted.
Too Good Not To Share
I am always interested in finding new ways of teaching babies to read. After all, teaching babies to read is so much fun. I was watching some videos online the other day and I saw a method that I have never seen before. It was too good not to share.
A mom was confirming her son’s knowledge of some flash cards she had been showing him. She would have him turn around. Then she would put two cards on the floor, side by side. She would put an M&M under one of the cards. Then she would ask her son to get her a specific card. If he got it right, there was a candy underneath it for him. And get them all right, he did! What a wonderful way to encourage our children to show us a pinch of their brilliance while rewarding them. I haven’t tried it yet, but I will keep you posted when I do.
Some babies are more reluctant to show us what they know. This is a very gentle and rewarding way for them to show us what they are capable of learning.
Sing Alongs
If your baby has a favorite song, you can easily turn it into a sing along. By doing this, you will show your baby all or some of the words while you sing it. You can do this through your computer using a program like Power Point to type the words to your song. You can also do this by using sentence strips. These are available at office supply stores and come in packs of 100 for under $5.00. You can begin with just the chorus if you like. You can stick the words up on your refrigerator with some magnets and when you and your baby sing, point to each word. Who says that babies are too young for Karaoke?
ABC Hide and Go Seek
If you have some magnetic letters, you can play ABC Hide and Seek. It is easy to play and fun to do. This is a great way to teach your baby the names and sounds of the letters. All you have to do is get out the letters and put them on your refrigerator in random order. Start with the letter A. Introduce your baby to the capital and lowercase letters and tell them that these two letters are the letter A. Tell your baby that the letter A says "a" for apple. Once you have shown these letters to your baby, tell your child that you are going to hide the letters and your child will need to find them. Just place the letters among the other letters and see if your child can pick them out. The first time you do this, your baby may need some assistance finding the letters. Whenever your baby correctly identifies a letter, congratulate them and tell them this is "aaa" for apple.
Use Words To Tell A Story
A fun way to incorporate new word cards into your baby's daily routine is to tell a story. Choose a few word cards and make up a story around them. As you say the word on one of the cards, show it to your baby, or have your baby hold up the card each time the word is said. This will be a lot of fun for your little one and will reinforce the new words that you are teaching. This may quickly become a favorite activity for your baby, so beware.
Teach Your Baby To Read At The Touch Of A Button
If you want to start teaching your baby to read, the simplest and easiest way to get started is to purchase some videos that teach babies to read. By having your baby watch a reading video each day, you will begin to establish a routine. Once you have gotten into the groove of having your baby watch some reading videos, you may want to add in some flash cards. Your baby will understand that you are showing them words, since they have been seeing them on the television screen now for a period of time. It is very easy to begin using flash cards once you have been using reading videos. You can watch a sample of Monki See Monki Doo if you click here.
Teach Your baby Right and left with the Hokey Pokey
Babies love music. They love to be sung to. They love to sing once they are old enough to do so. How about teaching your baby to do the Hokey Pokey. This is a great teaching song. You can place your baby's right hand in and then out. You can place your baby's left hand in and then out. You can continue on with different body parts. Your baby will learn to identify their body parts as well as being able to differentiate between right and left. This is a fun song that should not be reserved for just older children.
Letter of the Week
Get some magnetic letters and teach your baby a letter each week. You can start at the beginning and choose the letter a. Introduce the letters as capital and lowercase, so your child knows the difference. Then spend a moment each day creating words that start with the letter a. When you begin this, you should start with words that have the short a sound. You can show your baby words like ant, apple, ax, etc... Once you have shown your baby the letter a and words, move on to a new letter. Your baby will naturally learn phonics in this manner, without formal lessons.
Scripture Memorization For Children
Since children have the ability to easily memorize a multitude of things before their fifth birthdays, parents can teach their children scripture memorization with little effort. Children will memorize all sorts of things. This is the way they are designed to learn. Children learn nursery rhymes, the words to their favorite songs and even commit entire books to their memory. Because young children have this ability and will fill their brains with something, we can direct what they learn.
For Christian parents, this can be a lot of fun and very rewarding. All that is required is to choose a favorite passage of scripture and read it to your child about once a day. You can make this part of your bedtime routine. I think you will be amazed at how quickly your child will begin to fill in the words. Go ahead and teach them the chapter and verse as well, since this isn't any more difficult for them to learn.
You can even tape a verse of scripture to the refrigerator and say it before meals. Your child will be able to learn a verse a week, with no trouble at all. Who knows, you might even learn some scriptures too. Just be sure to review the previously learned scriptures once a week or so. This will assure that they are not quickly forgotten.
Play A Rhyming Games
Get out your magnetic letters or some alphabet blocks and start playing a rhyming game with your baby. You will be teaching your baby many things with this simple letter game. You will be exposing your baby to the patterns of our auditory language as well as the patterns visually. Your baby will take notice of the fact that only the first letter is changing when you create a new word. Your baby will be paying attention to the sounds those new letters make and how they affect the part of the word that doesn't change. You can start off with simple words like wall, ball, fall, call, mall, tall, small, stall, etc... You can even have your baby get involved by handing you letters to make the change to the word. This is a very fun, interactive way to teach your baby more about language and its phonetic patterns. Babies are always learning. With just a little stimulation they may surprise you as to what they discover.
Teach USA Geography with Music
When you begin teaching your baby to read, your mind may be overflowing with ideas of all the things you can teach your baby. There is no limit to what your baby can learn. I have found that babies really enjoy learning geography. You can accomplish this easily by getting a United States puzzle and building it with your baby. As you lay each piece, just point to the name of the state and tell your baby the capital and before you know it, your baby will be able to name all 50 US States and capitals, as well as read each one.
If you would like to make it even more fun you can play music that teaches the states and capitals as you sing along. I have used this with my older children to teach geography. I quickly discovered that my one year old soon knew all the states and capitals as well. The song we like is "The 50 States and Capitals Song" by Musical Recall. There entire CD teaches things like the US Presidents, The Continents Song, and 7 Days a Week. You can listen to a sample of it here at Musical Recall Samples. I recently posted a video entry called "Smarty Pants Dance". It shows a little girl, about 18 months old, pointing out the states for her daddy.
Go On A Word Hunt
A fun way to incorporate reading into your babies daily life is to go on a word hunt. If, for example, you have taped up labels around the house, you can hunt for the words. Tell your baby to find the word refrigerator. You can crawl around on the floor with your baby if you want to and go find the word refrigerator. Once you get there you read the word by sliding your finger under the word and saying "refrigerator" with lots of excitement. If you want to you can even tell your baby that they earned a point. Children love to get points, even if they are never added up. Continue on by finding as many different words as you can joyously seek out. Once you have been doing this for a period of time, you can mix the words up. You can purposely put the words on the wrong objects and then fix them with your baby. You can also give your baby a word and have them place it in the appropriate place. I know a mom who claims that the word dwarf came in during nap time and mixed everything up. When her child wakes up they set everything straight again. When teaching your baby to read you are only limited by your imagination. Now go and have fun teaching your baby to read.
Incorportating Baby's Favorite Words
Once your baby has shown an interest in anything in particular, you can incorporate those words into your reading program. For example, if your baby likes Dora the Explorer, you can make flash cards with words related to Dora. If your child likes airplanes, or vehicles, you can create cards with words that are exciting to your baby. There is no prepackaged reading program that will cover everything that is exciting and interesting to your baby. It is important to keep your program fun for your baby. As your child's interests change, be willing to adapt and tailor the program to meet their needs. It is a good idea to keep a stack of 5x8 index cards and a red marker handy so you can create words on demand.
Teach Your Baby Colors
From birth to 3 years old babies are absorbing everything from their surroundings. Learning is not an effort or a chore, it is what they are wired to do from birth. By being aware of this we can easily teach our babies many things on a daily basis, just by changing the way we behave.
In order to teach your baby to identify colors, all you need to do is talk about colors from birth. As you dress your baby describe the color dress you are putting on. You can identify the color of the toys you are playing with, the food you are eating and so forth. Babies naturally and easily learn their colors well before their 1st birthday if taught in this manner. You can also create a flash card of the color word. Show your baby the word and then identify objects of that color. Your baby will learn to read the word as easily as they will learn their colors.
You can find out if your baby knows their colors by placing two or more objects of different colors in front of them and asking them to choose green or red, and so forth. At ten months old my daughter could correctly identify her colors, even though she couldn't speak.
Turn Bath Time To Reading Time
A simple and fun way to expose your baby to written language is to teach your child to read while bathing. All you need to do is buy some foam bath letters. You can use these to teach your baby the ABC's or you can go a step further and teach your baby to read words. Babies can learn the ABC's and how to read with the same level of ease. It is no more difficult to teach your child to read words, which have an immediate use in their life, as opposed to teaching the alphabet, which they won't be able to do much with from birth - 3 years old. We advocate teaching your baby as many words as you can before you introduce the alphabet.
When teaching baby to read during bath time, you can start with names of family members. You may want to teach the names of items found in the bathroom, such as soap, bubbles, shampoo, etc... You can even spell out the words as you are creating them for your baby This will give them an advantage in learning to spell as well. Babies are sponges and will absorb the information that surrounds them. Don't think for a moment that your baby can't learn to read AND spell with ease.
How To Teach The ABC's
So many parents are fixated on teaching their babies the ABC's. They begin to sing them the ABC song shortly after birth. They want to be sure that they are ready for school and teach them what the name is for each of the 26 symbols in our alphabet. This is all great, but there is more to reading then being able to recognize the symbols we call letters.
If parents want to give their child a real tool to use, they should teach the letter sounds at the same time. When pointing out the letter A, they should explain that A makes the beginning sound you hear in the word ant. A says "aaa". You can even make up songs about the sounds of the letters.
Since our words are made up of sounds that blend together to form words, it is much more important that children can recognize these sounds. A child that has been taught the sounds of the letters will be better able to decode the word cat by using this code, the phonetic code. They will say, "Cuh, aaa, ttt" " Cat! Otherwise, they will just know the word as C-A-T. With that they can do nothing.
When you teach your child to read as a baby, they are usually able to pick up the sounds of the language on their own. Adding in some phonics is a fun way to take your reading program in a different direction.
Create a Chore Chart
Another way that you can incorporate written language into your child's daily life is with a chore chart. This works best for children around 2 years old. It will also help them to learn responsibility. Think of some simple tasks that you would like them to do each day. Get a large piece of paper or poster board. You can laminate it if you choose and check off the jobs as they are done each day. The chart might look something like this.
Chore Chart
Make bed
Put toys away
Help mommy with laundry
Dust
You can add whatever jobs are applicable to your daily life. My 2 year old loves to help wash the dishes. Just remember that children love to feel needed. Give your child some responsibility and let them feel proud to contribute to the family. As you look at the chart each day, run your finger under each word as you say it out loud. In no time your child will be reading the phrases you have recorded. How can you lose? You are teaching your child to read and to help out.
Teach Baby to Read with a TO DO CHART
If you are doing a reading program with your baby, you can add a new element to your program by incorporating a to do chart. You would create a chart to keep in the baby's room that may say "Daily To Do's". Create a simple list of things you do each day and read them together before each activity. Your baby will learn to read as well as follow directions. Here is an example of a chart you might create for a 12 month old.
Daily To Do's
Take bath
Brush teeth
Read story
Sing ABC song
Take nap
Go for a walk
Watch video
Say Prayers
Time for bed
This is an easy and quick way to expose your child to written language and train them in following a schedule.
Go Grocery Shopping
A fun game that you can incorporate into teaching your baby to read is to create a shopping list. This is a fun game for babies around 12-24 months old. You can play the game at home, or you can really go shopping.
If you decide to play at home you can play with a pretend set of groceries or you can shop from your pantry. Write out a list of items, in a large, clear print and tell your baby what you are shopping for. You can concentrate on particular food groups, or just list random items. You may shop just for fruit, if those are words you want to reinforce, or dairy items. You can get as creative as you want. You may even want to list a treat on there. When baby reads it, they get to eat that treat.
You can also write your shopping list on a large 5x8 index card and let your baby read you the items as you shop at the store. You can give the baby a pen to cross them off after you place them in your cart. There are just so many opportunities to expose your little one to language. Let me know if you have any great ideas to share.
Have Fun with Big Words
When I began to teach my son to read, we read all kinds of words. I made him picture books and taught him to read the words and know what they were by seeing the pictures of the items. He loved to read his books and I loved to make them for him. It was so exciting to teach him what everything was. When he got to be around 2 years old, there weren't too many new items that I could teach him. We began a new phase of our program.
I would sit and think of as many big words as I could. I chose words that he had heard before, not words that were completely foreign. I taught him to read words like excellent, fantastic, microscopic, and so forth. Of course, I had no pictures for these cards. He didn't mind at all. What was amazing to me was that after seeing the word two times, he knew them. It was not only a lesson in learning to read, it was also a lesson in vocabulary.
Don't limit yourself to small, easy words. Expose your child to all kinds of words. There are patterns to learn from our language and the more words you expose your child to, the faster they will figure out the rules. This will give them the ability to learn to read new words on their own, using the rules of phonics.
Tally marks for Flashcards
Teaching your baby to read with flash cards is a fast and easy. The average number of times that your child should view each card is between 15 and 20 times. When working with babies, sometimes things aren't predictable. You may have a set of flash cards set aside that you are working on. While you are going through them some sort of distraction occurs and now your baby is not interested anymore.
I have found the best way to handle this is to keep track of the number of times a card has been viewed by using tally marks on the back of the card. This keeps the baby from getting bored if I show it too many times. Once the baby has seen a card around 15 times, we place those in our stack of old cards, to use again in the near future. This way at a glance, I know where we stand with each word.
Reading Arround the House
A very easy way to teach your baby to read is to label the house. If you don't want to have your house looking like a school room, you can work on one room at a time. If you want to download 40 free printable labels for items around the house just Click Here. You can start with baby's room. Tape the words around baby's room and several times a day point out the words and the objects that they identify. It takes seconds to do and your baby will quickly and easily learn to read the word labels. After your baby has seen the words around 20 times, you can ask your baby if they know where a certain word is. Who knows? They may just surprise you.
Get to the Point
When teaching babies to read, it is of utmost importance to get into the habit of pointing. When you are reading to your baby, be sure to point out any words that are large enough for your baby to easily see. Babies learn to read by continued exposure to words and written language. Choose a few words that will consistently appear in a story you are reading and continually point them out to your child. You can even make a game out of by asking your child if they can find a certain word on the page.
You can take it a step further and point out words in your surroundings. As you wash baby's hands, tell them what the bottle of soap says. As you pour your baby some juice, read the words on the bottle. Show your baby the word shampoo as you you wash their hair. Point out the words entrance and exit as you enter businesses. Read the words on the doors to the restrooms. Read signs as you are traveling.
It is so easy to teach babies to read. Words are everywhere. Just take a moment to point them out to your baby. There are hundreds of words that we encounter on a daily basis, and the only price tag on these words is your time, so get reading!
Smarty Pants Dance
Yesterday I received an email called "Smarty Pants Dance". It is just precious. This is just another of the countless examples of babies knowing things that most people never believe they can. The fact is, babies can learn ANYTHING, as long as we make it fun for them. This video clip is a perfect example of a father making this fun for his baby. There is so much to learn just from watching this clip.
1. Babies love to learn new things.
2. If we have a good attitude and make them think it is fun, they will think it is fun!
3. Babies want to learn all the things that we know.
4. Babies can learn anything.
5. Learning is play for babies.
6. Babies are not limited in their learning by their age, they are actually unlimited in what they can learn because of their age.
7. Make learning anything fun and your baby will learn it.
Here is the clip. It is an under 2 year old girl, playing a game with her daddy. It is so precious!
Click below to watch the dance.
Create A Family Album
A great way to teach your baby to read and identify all the members of your family, both near and far, is to make them a family album. It is fun and easy to do and your baby will love it.
We recently had my family over for dinner and the favorite pastime of the babies that came was to flip through my family album. I decided I would create one for them for their birthdays and I would share it here.
You will need:
A small photo album, mine is 7 x 6 inches.
Index Cards, 4 x 6 inches
A red marker
Pictures of your family and friends
In order for babies to learn to read, they need to see the word isolated from the picture. You will want to create one page for the word and then a separate page for the picture. Do not place the word and picture side by side. You want the word to be completely isolated, so it is the sole focus of that page.
My album had a space for a picture on the cover and I labeled it "Family". The first page of the album says "my family". When you flip the page, it shows a picture of our family. I then continued in this pattern,creating a page for the name of each member of the family followed by their picture.
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