Your baby can read

Anyone try any of these videos with their children? http://hubpages.com/hub/Your-Baby-Can-Read-Reviews-my-personal-experience.I was thinking about purchasing them and read some of the reviews. Seems the majority of people complained that the videos were of poor quality and customer service was a nightmare. Alot of people reccomended the monkisee videos.http://www.monkisee.com/ Anyone have any thoughts or reccomemendations?

 

Honestly? Read to/with your child everyday and they stand a better chance of learning to read (and learning to love to read), than if you just bought one of those sets. They require hours of "work" everyday, on flash cards and watching videos together. And in the end, you aren't teaching them to read, you are teaching them to recognize and memorize words. Which is fine, if you just want them to be able to recite a book to impress friends and family, but it's not in actuality teaching a 1 yr old to read.

I've had 4 kids, we (my husband and I), love to read and read often, we read to our kids often, and there is no way in heck they would be reading at such a young age. My oldest is almost 9 yrs old, in 3rd grade and in the gifted and talented program at school, he's very smart, and there's still no way he would have been actually reading at 1-2 yrs old. He is reading at about a grade or more ahead of where he should be, and that was without any special sets or kits when he was younger

 

This is spot on. My son could recognize words at 3 but only when used in context (stop on the stop sign, open on the open sign) but all we have ever done is read to him/with him. My twins at 18 months love recognizing objects in books but if I think they would mutiny if I tried to give them reading lessons.

 

I know you didn't ask about other videos... but I love the Baby Signing Times (which shows words on the screen... but also teaches sign language) and Signing Times - same thing but the original - which is what we're watching now sometimes. And I just got a new set called Little Laureate. Little Laureate I love the World Adventure. It's not about learning to read at all, but is so great with culture and showing the world and different things.

anyway, our sanity is having a few videos that we can pop in and know that they kids aren't getting awful commercials or the like. I did just realize that the price on both are pricey... I got the Little Laureate on sale and am very lucky for that.

anyway, I haven't watched the My Baby Can Read series, though initially it was intriguing to me, but like the other posters, I think it's important to just read to the kids...

 

Your baby can read was just disproven. It doesn't teach them to read. All it is is memorization, not reading. And I 110% agree with Danielle. Read to your kids...it's the best thing you could do.

 

I agree with the previous posters. Read to you kids. Have books available for them to look at tear and eat (what 1-2 year olds do). We discovered that one of my boys could read at 3 1/2-by finding him reading Curious George to himself before bed. The other one didn't read at all until K. And I never did any kind of flashcards, or other types of "learning" activities. They did have the fridge phonics and watch the Leap Frog videos. All that said, now at 8 1/2 and in 3rd grade, the one who read at 3 1/2 reads at a mid-forth grade level (or higher, they didn't test him past that), and the other one, who didn't read until K is at a 5th grade level. Both love to read and have read through the Harry Potter series.

My point is that early reading is not a predictor of future ability, kids will read when they are ready, and the best thing you can do is expose them to books, and have them watch you read.

 

my kids watch it in the car. they can read several words. i read with them at home but when we drive to and from work, i tried to find something better than a cartoon for them to watch.

 

I view the signing time videos as different - they are helping your baby communicate with their hands - their comprehension is ahead of their ability to articulate.

We have only read to the kids and at 4 (he just turned 4), J read the title of my book "The Girl who Played with Fire" -

 

Thank-you to everyone for all your imput. We do read to them everyday. They will not sit through the stories but I try. They are just so interested in anything on TV. They don't get to watch it that much but when they do I would like it to be somewhat educational. They love music and puppets. Just was wondering what everyones thoughts were.

 

I would go for the Leap Frog videos. They teach the ABC's and move on to blends and forming words (in a series of 3 or more videos). The first one is all about the alphabet, it is called "the Letter Factory". It is very cute and my kids watched it over and over and over etc. It teaches the building blocks. At 1 1/2 it is normal for them not to want to sit through a book. Take what they give you, like I said before it is OK if all they want to do is turn pages or chew on the book at that age. Even turning pages is educational, since it is giving them directionality of how a book opens--more important than you would think!

 

I agree with previous posters as well. If you read, and interact with your children, they will pick up on it. You do not need anything special. That said, my girls did get flash cards from our baby shower and love to play with them.

 

The leapfrog, baby einstein or little einstein videos are all good for learning. But, again I'll be honest, I don't have any of those video's, I let my kids watch good kids shows on tv, like blues clues, little einstein's, mickey mouse clubhouse, handy manny, dora the explorer, and they learn from those shows as well. I'm obviously not opposed to tv But moderation is the key, and we always turn the tv off at mealtimes, and I turn it to music often during the day They also won't sit still long enough to read a whole book, you learn to "skim read", just read the first sentence of each page before they turn it! Makes for a totally disjointed story line, but they don't mind, and it's teaching them so much more than you realize

 

Just chiming in to say I agree with the PPs. I have seen the commercials for those videos and it totally smacks of memorization. I leave first words/picture books around the house that we "read" with the boys during the day each day. At bedtime, we read two books to them each (DH with one, me with the other). They will both sit through both books, sometimes three, not wanting to only on the rare occasion (we started the two book routine when we sleep trained them around their 1st bday). In fact, I think it has become their favorite part of their bedtime routine. If there is a night when one is crying or fussy and I ask him if he wants to read a book, he'll usually settle right down. The boys now go and get their books and flip through the pages quietly on their own many times throughout the day. We do pop in videos every now and then (Baby Einstein), so I understand wanting to put something educational on. I do think, though, that you're doing the best thing you can with your LOs which is reading with them every day.

 

I agree with PPs! Read to them often and if you wish, allow them to watch a few educational shows.

 

Think back to when we were kids. It was much simpler and we all turned out ok. I watched Sesame Street and my mom took me to the library at least once a week. I was reading by age 4 and went on to go to medical school. I can't think of why we would want babies to read anyway. Let them be babies! If you want to use TV occasionally, then just pick things that are made for their age level and that they like. My two watch Wonder Pets, Sesame street, Caillou, Dora, the Wiggles and I think they learn plenty.

 

i totally agree with everyone about not worrying about your baby reading at 1yr old...my husband wanted to get that "your baby can read" program and i told him no way...it really is just memorization...i would much rather spend my time teaching my girls how to memorize their colors, letters, numbers, etc than a handful of words...

my girls don't sit very long for me to read full books to them either, so we go over things in the pictures that do hold their interest...i also read to them while they're drinking their milk before nap and bed time since they're preoccupied with drinking...my girls also LOVE baby signing time videos (we have 3), which has taught them how to sign 40-50 words already...they are great videos that you can just pop in and let play in the background...sometimes they sit and watch them and sometimes they watch a little and play a little...either way they love to watch them and also the laurie berkner band...she may not be "educational" but she sings, dances, and "tells a story" with her music videos and my girls love watching and dancing with her videos every day, too...nothing sweeter than hearing your babies sing along with all these songs!

 

We're planning on getting a phonics based program when the kids are a bit older.

 

I only mentioned my favorite videos... since it seemed the the OP wanted something for the kids to watch that was educational... i.e. learning to read. I didn't figure she really wanted her kids to read, though maybe she did. anyway, I love learning from others what they feel is good... that's why I shared.

Also, awesome that your 4yo is reading. very cool.

 

Right, I think you may have misunderstood my response. Since the OP was asking about the my baby can read videos - I wanted to point out that I see signing videos as a good thing (vs the other videos as not helpful). I was trying to differentiate not criticize. Sorry if you took it the wrong way. i wish we had done more with sign language. I tried to teach two signs - more and all done and the kids learned them, but backwards. So B would do the sign for "more" but she meant all done, so i never understood why she didn't eat the extra food i gave her!