Flash Cards

[jazzle]

Anyone tried this with their babies?

[IvanLew]

Anyone tried this with their babies?

Yes tried that before when my daugther was a baby.
Not very effective. I would recommend to let them listen to
phonic song and when they reach 3 or 4 send them to phonic class.
You will be surprise how phonic can help young children to read and spell.

[jazzle]

Right. The flash cards was supposed to help in building vocab, teach the alphabet and phonics. I heard that after bring exposed to the cards for a while, babies were able to recognise the cards by looking at the correct one when mentioned!

So it didn't work for you child... How old was she when you tried that out , may I ask?

[QRM]

Mine was more interested in the box and plastic bag the cards arrived in. But what did work at a very basic level and was great fun was hand sign language.

Some books gives the impression you can have a discussion on the current political climate with an 8 month old through hand signs, which is kack.

Basic signs like hunger, pain, happy, kaka and scared all worked and was a great bonding experience to be able to communicate with a small baby. I believe we avoided a lot of screaming episodes which normally occurs because of the baby's frustration of not being able to get a message across.

[jazzle]

Really! So it did work? What exactly did you do with the babies? Just kept showing her signs? How long did she take to pick up the skill? How old did you start that with your child? My girl is 6 months old and yes... I saw that she's more interested in the box containing the flash cards! hahah..

[QRM]

I dont know if its worth getting the book as they try too hard to justify the cost of the publication with pages of worthless and impractical dribble.

I found the best advice in the book was to follow your kids own signs, no point teaching them international sign language unless they are deaf, just observe what they do with their hands for hunger, pain etc and just build on it. Once they start to speak they soon forget the signs anyway, so no point going to town on it.

Each kid is different for mine, PAIN was tapping the points of her two index fingers together and pointing the area in pain, KAKA coming was holding two fist above each other, HAPPY/LIKE was left fist cupped in right hand and shaking up and down, and MILK was open on closing of her left fist (like milking a cow).

Alot of it was done through play acting like pretend to stub your toe and do the pain sign and point to your toe.

Bottom line is to make sure that they are having fun, and you will have a happy and confident kid, rather than have one that can recite the alphabet backwards but reclusive because of the fear of the cattle prod.

[durain]

my kids learned baby sign language at their nursery. sign language will be more useful than flash cards as they will use sign language to communicate with you. it's amazing when you see it happening to your kids!

(p/s if you watched the film "meet the fockers", there's a kid there doing sign language.)

[jazzle]

Meet the fockers. Oh yes. Love that hilarious movie.
Yeah I guess perhaps just letting her play and pick up the language along the way will be the best. Accidental learning might be more effective than deliberate and plan ones I guess.

Recently I read an article that talked about the way our children learn. Parents teach the child/babies in a manner too structured. (like flash cards/signs...) They proposed to let children learn through play.

But I guess parents being parents... we just want to be able to teach them something formally, isn't it.