As a mom I always want to give my child the best. And since I’ve been a full-time mom, I’ve tried my best to make Nicholas my biggest priority, focus and yes project.
Project Nicholas has been on since he was about 18 months old. It has been filled with a careful mix of fun, love and right brain learning in the area of English, Spanish and Math. I only recently started on the area of math because honestly, I was deathly afraid I’d do something wrong. However, after reading Glenn Doman‘s Book “How to Teach Your Baby Math“, I realize that the only thing I did wrong was wait until after Nicholas was two years old. I should have started teaching math earlier.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with “Right Brain Learning“, it’s a type of teaching that involves showing your child fast paced flashes of images with enthusiasm within a short period of time, a few times a day. Most of the teaching is about 15 seconds tops.
The point is not to make the learning period long and drawn out and intense, but short, intense, focused and fun. Doman documents that researchers on brain activity have determined that at least with some children who engage in this style of learning, their retention is extremely high. I found the method fascinating after reading about Doman’s method in his book “How to Teach Your Baby to Read”. Essentially, he wrote about how research with brain-damaged children lead to findings that this style of teaching helped many children achieve genius level performance. And some of the children taught with this method had surgery to remove large portions of their brain. Yet the brain-damaged children out performed kids with all their faculties in tact.
At first, I wasn’t sure if the method was working. I had included DVDs from “Your Baby Can Read” and included my style of word games with every day activities. Although Nicholas is a little more than 2 months, he doesn’t talk a lot. He does say a few key phrases, mixed with one word requests and does a lot of pointing with an occasional grunt. However, when we play with words on cards, he almost nails every word — even though the pronunciation isn’t dead on. The method does work. Now he begs for DVDs like Tweedlewink.
I’m only about 2 weeks into the math dots. I keep pressing forward, unsure if his little brain is making the math connection, but I’m following the program. If you’re a mom or dad who has tried this method, I’d love to hear what you did during the first period of starting the math dots to make it stick and make math fun.
