To read or not to read

The majority of people believe that child’s early development basically means the ability to read at early age, when the kid is 2-3 years old. That’s what I’ve also thought before becoming a mother. However, as the psychologists admit the child being 2 or 3 years old is not able to feel/live/understand completely what he or she reads. Only after 5-6-7 they become emotionally ready to read on their own.

 

That’s what I’m observing with the majority of kids – they are not ready to read at early age, they just do not need it. Though there are lots of methods how to teach children to read from their birth (e.g. Doman), there is just no use of doing it so early.

Besides, there is not a proved link between the love of the books and the ability to read at early age. Real life example: a girl learned to read at 7 y.o., but she truly became the fan of books, going to the library every weekend. The love of books should be inculcated in children by their parents: reading to their kids as often as possible, discussing the characters and the plot together, reading the books themselves to provide an example.

Our way with Maria: she already learnt almost all the letters when she was two. Few months before her third birthday she was able to read short words. Encouraged by this success, I was pushing it further, but felt really strong resistance to continue doing it  - obviously Maria had a “reading allergy” (she didn’t want to look at the texts, she hated the blocks with the letters). So, I gave up and let her do whatever she wanted. Next half of the year I made some attempts to continue our reading, but again not successful. Then I gave up totally and decided to wait for her initiative. Recently Maria (3.5 y.o.) herself chose an activity book with the stickers, where the tasks required some reading skills. Needless to say that she excellently did the tasks herself, which made her really proud (me too, of course). Right now we don’t have any systematic reading exercises and probably we won’t. I suppose that the best way is the natural development of this skill.

Diversity of Impressions

Andrew 8 m.

In the very beginning of life the most important person for everyone is MOTHER, who feeds, nourished, cherishes, sings lullabies and introduces to the surrounding world. Everyday a baby sees his mother, her face, her arms. “So, why not to add some colours and novelties to this scene? “ – that’s what I thought when Andrew looked really puzzled after he spotted me with the towel on my head post hair wash.

 

I was amazed by his widely opened eyes and surprised face expression. I took out some of the animals’ masks, we use with Maria to study English, and every day was putting them on. I added also voice changing effect and it topped the expectations – Andrew was really surprised! He was studying his mum for quite a while. Then, his sister tried it, too, which was also really interesting and unexpected for Andrew. We tend to repeat it once in a while to enrich Andrew’s emotional experience and to have fun together! Now, of course, he is laughing together with us, a bit puzzled but obviously enjoying this masquerade.
 

As I read once, some experts advise mommies to change their appearance from time to time: bright make-up, colourful nail polish, new haircut.. this all means impressions and emotions for the baby! It’s rather interesting to live like this.

Kindergarden Motivators

Maria 3 y. 9.m.

As a rule it is veeeeery tough for many children to get up early in the morning (especially in winter) and go to the kindergarten, even if the child loves to go there. The same for Maria, though she likes her friends, teachers and the time spent there. So, we thought of several motivators to help us to go to the kindergarten early in the morning with a smile and in a good mood:

   ·        In winter: feeding hungry birds when going to the kindergarden; going in the sled; find a cone and decorate the room in the kindergarten;
 

    ·         In autumn: hunting for the colourful leaves and decorate the room;
 

    ·         Bringing the treatment for the mates (they have a ritual of drinking milk and eating some cookies before the day nap);
 

    ·         Once we draw the smiley face on the balloon and it was following Maria before we reached the kindergarden;
 

    ·         Meeting a friend on the road – then the competition starts who will be the first :);
 

    ·         Take some toys, which can be shared with the mates (but it is not the case with Maria as she is reluctant to take her toys to the kindergarden).

The list probably will be prolonged with some more items, but currently we are satisfied with these ones.

Handmade Sensory Toys

Andrew 6m.

Until a child is 3 years old sensory experience is the most crucial for studying the world.  Fun tactile experience will definitely enrich the child with the new impressions! Besides, often kids get bored with one and same toy every day. So, to reach these two goals with Andrew’s 3.5 y.o. sister we made several sensory toys for Andrew's new tactile exploration and impressions.

1.     Caterpillar  - made out of old Maria’s tights, sewed the buttons (caterpillar's eyes and nose). Filled the first segment with the peas, tied over, filled the second segment with the rice, tied over, filled the third segment with the cereal, tied over. The caterpillar can be done as long as one wants, just the filler has to be thought over.

2.    Kinder Surprise® Rattles  - though I'm not too fond of the knitting, sometimes it tends to be relaxing. Kinder surprise plastic shells as a basis, ~10 min knitting per one rattle, a filler (rice, beans, coins).

3.    Hairy sun :) - made several holes in the Kinder Surprise  and passed through them the ribbons of different texture, length, width, colour.

 

Kid’s Reader’s Diary

Maria 3.5 y.

Perhaps, as every child Maria is fond of reading (better, listening to Mum’s/Dad’s reading J) before sleeping. And together, we’ve already gone through many many books for children. Sometimes I’m trying to stimulate the discussion on what we’ve read: on the characters, on their actions/emotions/thoughts, on the environment, on the plot etc. Sometimes, I’m keeping quiet and Maria starts to discuss various issues and asks multiple questions. These thoughts and impressions seem really valuable to me to better understand my child. Once we’ve been reading about a small grasshopper, who lost his parents. Maria said: “Cmon! The parents should have given him a mobile…” This was a kind of explanation to me why she wasn’t willing to stay on her own during her gymnastics classes - she didn’t feel safe if she couldn’t reach her parents whenever she needed to.

Besides, I somehow wanted to structure our reading that we keep a record of what we’ve read. For Maria the reader’s DIARY, which we decided to start, would be also a thing worth to look through once in a while and to recall what she’d read.

We decided to make it like a scrapbook, putting there stickers with characters, drawing sceneries described in the fairy tales, etc. We put there also the tickets from the events such as theatre performance or ballet we attended. I write down in this notebook the comments Maria makes, the questions she asks. Basically, one can do there whatever she wants, depends on the fantasy limits.

Creating summer mood

Maria 3.5 y.

There is a snowstorm, dark and cold outside and, therefore, we decided to organize a piece of summer in our flat by drawing, gluing and making some attributes of this warm and green time.

1.       Summer field with flowers and insects

Painted with watercolours, made flower stamps out of the toilet paper reel, modeled insects out of clay. We prepared the ladybirds according to the guidelines and then sticked them to the summer field. The whole work was purely done by Maria – I just helped to cut out the ladybirds.

2.       Fun and easy summer scenery we made pretty fast thanks to these videos: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. The exciting part of this work is that it grabs the attention of the very active children: you don’t have to care about your accuracy, you don’t have to care too much about the colours you use and it is very interesting to figure out what kind of animal you’ve painted.

3.       Salt Dough Cornflowers

Salt dough (2 glasses of flour, a glass of salt, a glass of water) is really good one for the finger work out. Besides, one can realize his talent when modeling some figures. Another benefit is its cost compared to  the pricey colourful dough found in the craft sets.

 We used the dough to make a panel with cornflowers and a ladybird. We made the buds of cornflowers out of plastic teaspoons, coloured them in blue with acrylic paints, snapped the edges and fixed them in the dough. Then, dried the panel in the oven and finished the panel with the acrylic painting.

10 Favourite Nursery Rhymes to Study English

Maria 3y. 7m.

 

For our English “lessons” we organized a special so called “English Zone”, where we have UK’s map, English books, an envelope with cards for articulatory gymnastics, different animals’ masks and other requisite.  This all is needed for our fun lessons, where the majority of exercises are done by performing some actions like running, jumping, drawing, modeling etc. But the most adorable part of the English studies (except for catch-up game, of course) is singing and finger-playing. Maria learns the nursery rhymes one by one and does it with pleasure remembering the words and repeating them all through the day. here is the list of her most favourite songs:

 

1. Row row row your boat

2. The Wheels on the bus  

These two songs we sing and move the respective transport mean on our UK map and then make particular exercise such as drawing or gluing or making articulatory gymnastics.

 

3. Incy Wincy Spider

4. Hockey Pockey

Excellent finger/body play!

 

5. Finger Family

6. Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes
Very good when one needs to study parts of the body

7. Sing a Rainbow

Absolutely top hit when studying colours

 

And of course the lovely classics such as:

8. Old Macdonald Had a Farm

9. Twinkle Twinkle Little Star

10. London Bridge is Falling Down

The most favourite songs are definitely those, which are sung by the children.