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

Books that helped me tremendously were "What Babies Say Before They Can Talk : The Nine Signals Infants Use to Express Their Feelings" by Paul Holinger, Kalia Doner and "Playful Parenting" by Lawrence J. Cohen.

Don't be mislead by the title: the first book is not purely for infants – the principles described there helped me with my husband, with my friends, and, of course, with my almost 2 year old. The first book is more "what you are trying to achieve", and Playful parenting is more "how to get there". I keep rereading parts of both.

• Teach Your Child to read… in Russian: you can find a list of materials, links to computer presentations, Russian sites that offer different methods of teaching to read
• What can I do to preserve the foreign (or native) language in my kids memory?
• Russian Free Online Dictionary: Lingvo
• Russian Grammar and Orthography (and checker)
• Teach Your Child to read… in Russian

I’ve accumulated so much by now, that all the books required a separate page!
They simply wouldn’t fit into one zip file!
How do I use these books?

Russian Books
English Books
Spanish Books
German Books
Books in other languages Fantastic Collection of PowerPoint presentations created by A.P.P.
Terrific Collection of PowerPoint presentations shared by Isa.
Childbrain.org books – humongous amount of home made books in all languages; free, but registration required.
Encyclopedic Knowledge Books

Note: files marked with * include famous works of art. Files marked with include sound effects. Files marked with ^V include links to videos.

Well, not everybody agrees with the benefits of the whole word method. While I believe that different methods work for different kids and no knowledge can hurt a child, a lot of people prefer the classical, the traditional teaching methods. Moreover, as I recently found out, even some governments prefer to set their strong preference for a particular method: whole word method is recently prohibited in France. While it makes me happy that we live in a free country (I do not believe US would ever let something as restrictive pass), where the government does not prohibit various learning strategies, there people who might support French government's decision.

Regardless of my own personal opinion, I believe every parent should make an informed decision on what's best for his/her children, taking into account not only various marketing campaigns or friend's preferences, but pros and cons of every system. So if you are considering a whole word method, you might be interested in some of the opposition that is build against it.