How To Teach Your Baby To Swim from birth to age six by Douglas Doman is a long awaited book on introducing newborns to swimming. A detailed set of instructions, beautifully illustrated with photographs, is separated into 8 chapters, having a chapter dedicated to each age segment. Well written and easy to understand, it has quite a lot of wonderful techniques:

• how to utilize your own bathtub and shower for introducing newborns to holding a breath
• how to walk backwards in a pool creating a current that makes it easier for the little ones to swim continuously

For us this turned out to be the easiest and the most fun so far. And the fact that the last time I’ve heard of music notation was singing “Do-Re-Mi” in kindergarden, didn’t stop me. To aid our studies, I use the following site to get familiar with music reading myself: Introduction To Music Reading . Again, for the litte ones there are myriad of methods:

• Glen Doman method
• Power Point presentations
• Suzuki
• Teaching little babies music: wonderful recommendations from a professional. The most updated version of Tamsyn’s advice is available now at her own site: Professional Mothering.
  Part 1
  Part 2.
  Thanks to Tamsyn for sharing this!
• Other Materials (Toys, CDs, Books, etc.)

Other materials:

• Musical Toys Recommendations
• Classics for Kids: Lots of materials and audio programs about classical composers, their works, and kid oriented interviews with the experts. Can be loaded to iPod. The ones I’ve listened to were really nice.
• Fill the Measure manipulative cards
• Online Music Theory Helper
• Montessori Music Materials
• Montessori Bells online: free internet based program for discrimination of musical sounds by pairing and ordering, developing pitch identification.
• NY Philharmonic : fun site dedicated to music and musical instruments – for kids to explore by themselves
• Classical Mommy musical Power Point Presentations: terrific collection. There are presentations on musical instruments, opera pieces, classical works – all with sounds.
• Beethoven’s Wig Cd’s: these are absolutely my favorites. We are using them every day, in a car, with the kid and sometimes, secretly, even without. These CDs contain the original classical piece, beautifully conducted, and the “song” – funny rhymes written for that classical piece. Usually there is a name of a composer embedded into the song, on CD number three – every piece is for a different instrument. I love that pieces are SHORT: Blue Danube waltz by Strauss is magical, but the complete piece lasts 6-7 minutes. Both for learning and entertainment purposes, 2-3 minutes pieces that capture the main melody themes – are perfect.
• Alan Wasserman – Personality in Their Music: I love this CD. It is a good introduction to music: I’ve learned a few new facts about composers and like how the pieces are performed.
• Music Computer Games: Mozart’s Magic Flute Music Computer Game, Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Music Computer Game, and Alice in Vivaldi’s Four Seasons Music Computer Game – my kid is still too small for these, but my niece loves these the most. And since she is especially attached to the themes from Nutcracker, Tchaikovsky game won her heart completely.
• Classical Composers CD-Subscription: my friend initially signed us up to this as a gift and I love the set that I get every three weeks – 2 CDS with a little collection of different works of this composer, a little booklet with some information about him, and a nice picture on a front of the booklet. We usually select a composer for the week and listen to his CD, looking through the booklet, at least few times a day. So far Bach is my kid’s favorite and he would discern his style even when we listen to some musical works that we’ve never heard before.
• Fandex Composers Guide: I just got this one and found it pretty useful to keep around. As we listen to various music collection cds (e.g. Beethoven’s Wig cds that constantly on in my house), I would show the picture of the composer and try to fish out some quick fact about him from the cards. The format is very portable and quite convenient.
• Lives of the Musicians: Good Times, Bad Times (and What the Neighbors Thought): my sister’s older kids are really into this book. My friend even reads it to her 3 year old, but I think it is a bit of a stretch.
• I couldn’t resist not put Musical Bingo that kid loves so much on this list as well. I find it incredibly educational. Read more in our Musical Toys Recommendations
• Mike Venezia books: I love every single one of them. I think for my sister’s older kids we actually purchased every single one of those. These books have fascinating stories, incredible pictures (both real and comics) and are both educational and fun. The language is very easy for kids ears.
• Flashcards: General Music by Jane Bastien: rather small flash cards, but I find using them easier, then making my own: they have a note on one side, and its name with position of piano on the other. The paper is very thin, but I had so much trouble figuring notes on our xylophone (that we use for Doman’s program of learning music), that these cards really helped. I just wish they were bigger and sturdier.

Doesn't it seem that Doman has a method for everything? Either way sound good to me.
Out of all the programs we do, this turned out to be the easiest and the most fun.
Actually, Doman believes there are quite a few things you can get started with babies:

1. Music appreciation and listening skills
2. Developing the perfect pitch
3. Note reading
4. Rythm
5. Musical Terms

Power Point presentations for teaching music

Music appreciation and listening skills

Well, that's the easiest one: just turn on music and enjoy it! And Doman actually believes it is the most important part of musical program. So, a little more to it:

I found this article waaaay too important to provide everyone with just a link. You can find more information published in other resources at the end of the article. The original article is published in National Post (Canada).
Dr. Stephen Juan, National Post, Monday, October 30, 2006

CAN LEAVING MY BABY TO “CRY IT OUT” CAUSE BRAIN DAMAGE?

Research suggests that allowing a baby to “cry it out” can cause brain damage. Some experts warn that allowing a baby to “cry it out” causes extreme distress to the baby. And such extreme distress in a newborn has been found to block the full development of certain areas of the brain and causes the brain to produce extra amounts of cortisol, which can be harmful.

Summertime. Swimming pool. Beach. Kids are splashing, screaming and our mind automatically sets into the usual math routine on when we should start teaching them to swim. And, of course, there is no need to wait – whether the baby is a few weeks old or had quite a bunch of birthdays by now – he is ready to enjoy real swimming!

[img_assist|nid=970|title=|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=99|height=100]The number of kids who are prescribed Ritalin has grown 5 times in the USA in the last 10 years. Isn’t the price some parents pay for their child’s quietness and obeying is to loose their child? If you think about it, Ritalin is what they call a “mind altering drug”. MIND ALTERING… Get it? You just may end up with a child who has a different mind, brain, consciousness. In other words you will end up with a different child that you gave birth to and tried to up bring. Below are Ritalin’s side effects, taken from a page on Wikipedia, dedicated to Ritalin, also known as Methylphenidate:

Once the baby figures out how to walk, there is no way he can spare the precious time for the cards or other sitting down activities. Don’t despair, there are plenty of “work around solutions” to keep his attention and interest.

Thank you very much to Laurie Tiemens, the moderator of TeachYourBabyToRead and the Home Schooling Mother of 10 kidos for sharing other member’s suggestions.

Here are some ideas for your to try. And if you are still not sure, you can reread Doman’s method results for some encouragement. It has some highly inspirational stories about kids who also were losing interest only to surprise their parents in the end.

I've created Power Point Presentations, showed them on the computer for some time and then printed out (see our ready-made materials ). You can read all about it here: How to Use Power Point Presentations.

And here is a different take – special thanks to Laurie Tiemens, the moderator of TeachYourBabyToRead group, for sharing this:

Why not? There myriad of options available! However, if you are worrying for early TV/computer exposure, read more at Can TV/computer be harmful or helpful for kids development?

Power Point Presentations
Special Computer Programs
Websites
DVDs
Toys

If you are looking for multimedia solutions for teaching Spanish, read more in Teaching Spanish: resources.

Power Point Presentations

The links to files and further resources are available in the Jump Start Teaching Your Baby To Read description of Glenn Doman’s method