Babies are smart! Newborns, Infants, Toddlers and Preschoolers, learn faster and easier than you and I.
What can you do to help your little ones learn right from birth??
#1 Sing to them!
Yes I said sing to them. Sounds so simple, but it really is! But don’t feel you need to stick to the basic Row Row your Boat or Mary Had a Little Lamb. Of course use these fun songs and what ever song your Mom or Dad sung to you as a baby. But lets get creative! Sing the ABCs, count to 100, count backwards from 100, skip count by 2s, 5s, 10s, days of the week, months of the year, etc.
By doing this you are bonding with your child, comforting them, loving them and educating them. My now when Baby Z was an infant, he hated car rides. Our whole family would sing to him, “The A says ahhh, the A says Ahh. Every letter makes a sound, the A says Ahh!” and so forth throughout the whole alphabet. This helped calm him, but it also helped him learning the letter sounds (phonics) at a really early age.
#2 Label EVERYTHING
Little Reader, MemoFlix and Wink to Learn English helped expose Baby Z to so many words. But you don’t need to buy DVDs or computer programs to do this if you don’t want to. (Though it does help a lot.) Label your house and do little home tours pointing to all the words as you walk by with your baby.
When your out with your baby talk about what’s happening. “Oh look! Its starting to rain. Do you feel the drops on your head?’
If you have access to a iPad, take advantage of it! Baby Z learned so much from several apps. Even though many of them were WAY beyond his ability, we did them for him and had him watch. Input, input, input! When he got a bit older I took his hand and made his little hand operate the app. (with his cooperation of course.) Then eventually he was able to operate several of them without my help. This is an awesome way to teach your young child colors, shapes, numbers, letters, letter sounds, sight words, etc. 
This is where I might get some grief. Yes there is a place for flashcards in an infant, toddler and preschoolers life. My boys LOVE flashcards. But its because I do not drill them with the flashcards. I show them to Zakari the same way as I would show him a book.
A few books with looking into at the library or Amazon would be:
How to Teach Your Baby to Read (The Gentle Revolution Series)
How Smart Is Your Baby?: Develop and Nurture Your Newborn’s Full Potential (The Gentle Revolution Series)
These are good reads too, but I would focus on reading the first two listed. Then read these if you have time.
How to Teach Your Baby Math (The Gentle Revolution Series)
How to Give Your Baby Encyclopedic Knowledge (The Gentle Revolution Series)
Now it should be noted that Doman’s method is a lot of work. I did not follow Doman’s method to the tee. I did make many flashcards. I also used multimedia, little Little Reader, DVDs, etc.
There is also no need to make the flashcards as large as Doman recommends. Yes bigger is better, but I found 8×11 works well too.
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You can teach your baby to read, count, know basic kindergarten knowledge in toddlerhood. I know this from experience! The best part is they love it! Children are little sponges, and the younger they are the easier they learn. Why not teach them to read when they are able to do so with less effort at one or two instead of waiting till they are 6 or 7 years old.
Oh but I know what some are thinking. Monique just let them be babies. Tiger mom! Why rush them to grow up? Let them be kids!
My reply to this is, why hold back our children? My two year old loves to read. He gets excited at the grocery store when he can read the words on the wall. He reads what’s in his fruit pouches first to see what flavour he is about to eat. I have by no means forced him to learn. I just enriched his environment. Carefully selected only highly educational programs to expose him to during screen time. Used car time, waiting rooms, potty time, and bedtime to expose him to good quality apps or books with large words.
What did this do? It helped my son who is now 27 months be able to:
- read any 3 letter word he is presented
- know all his colors
- know all his shapes, including shapes like octagon, oval and 3D shapes like cylinder.
- know all his basic farm and zoo animals and their sounds
- knows all his letters and letter sounds. Even is starting to figure out letters like c and g have two sounds.
- know how to read more words then I’m able to keep track of. (we were in the hundreds not including 3 letter words a while back, my guess is we are now in the 1000s)
- understands phonics and can sound out new words he has never seen
- Counts to 20 by ones forwards and backwards(has gone higher but usually only goes to 20 because he loses interest
- Counts to 100 by 10s and 5s
- Counts to 30 by 2s
- knows his days of the week and months of the year
- and much much more
