Runaway Baby: The Alternative Ways of Showing Cards to An Active Child
July 19, 2007 — Alenka | Posted in Encyclopedic Knowledge, Foreign Language, Math, Music, To Read. 3 Comments »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.
Thanks to smorgasbord for these ideas:
1. Put the cards on the counter or table, hold your child in your arms and whirl around after you’ve read each word.2. Put word cards on the floor and let your child jump from one to the next to the next.
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My daughter was like that, so I started using the computer (powerpoint) to show her, she’s very interested in the computer, I let her push the button to move to the next word and now she asks to “see words”
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You might want to try hang the words on a hallway wall so you child has to see them when she passes by throughout the day. You could also put them on the floor and make some type of game. Play follow the leader and you hop over each card or hop on the correct word(the card may get bent out of shape).
You may also try just showing 2 or 3 words at a time. It can be hard showing a 2 year old words since they are so mobile. Also, show her words that you say to her frequently i.e. Mommy, Daddy, love, hungry, food.
Showing words to your daughter should be a fun activity for the both of you. Make sure you stop showing her words before she wants to stop. This may mean showing only 1 or 2 words.
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You’ve gotten some good ideas. Here are some others to try:
1. Make up word cards with her favorite foods on them. Then right before you serve them say, “it’s time to eat” and then hold up the card and say whatever the card says.
2. Make up word cards for her favorite activities like walk, swimming, outside, bouncing etc. Then when you are ready to do one of them say, “it’s time to” and then hold up the card of what you’re about to do.3. When she’s drawing, right a word that she’s just said or that she’s especially interested in on her paper.
4. You could try showing her a BIT (Bit of Intelligence flashcard picture) and then show her the matching word.
5. Since she likes looking at books, you could try making books with one or two words per page about her life using photographs.
6. She may be one of those munchkins who has got to be moving all the time. If that’s the case then try to make it a physical game. Make a whole bunch of verb cards. Show her “jump” and then you jump and encourage her to jump. Show her “stomp” and then you stomp and encourage her to stomp. Etc.
I agree totally with Pete. She has got to enjoy her exposure to words.
Don’t force her. She’s got to want to see them.
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We also put an easel by my daughters table where we eat breakfast and lunch. A few days ago I wrote breakfast in crayon and pointed it out to her. This morning she pointed to it and said “breakfast”. I have also written juice and lunch and plan to continue with other food related words.
To teach empty and full, I made up word cards and as we were eating I sat a bowl on the appropriate card. This is a much sneakier and more creative way to teaching than sitting
down and doing cards which she doesn’t enjoy either.
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I found a way to get my extremely active toddler to actually look at the cards so I thought I’d share. It is a little unorthodox, but here goes…. He loves to get behind open doors and shut adults out and sit behind the door and laugh as we poke our fingers under and play. So, yesterday I
started poking the flash cards under! Obviously I can’t see his face but I know he enjoys it and he was definitely looking at them because he kept grabbing at them.
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Since your daughter is so active then maybe you can get index cards and label all the things in your house and walk around each day and read the words. Label her room, bed, window, curtain, toys, etc… Make a book of the people she knows and loves. Just put their name and then their picture.
Make a treasure hunt where you have a stack of 5 or 10 words and you have a match somewhere and she has to find it. It can be obvious for younger children and more hidden for older babies. Get some words of objects outside and take her for a walk and show her the cards as you look at trees, sand, grass, etc… I believe you have the inner wisdom to know what you should do. It is nice to have an outsider’s opinion though. I think you are doing wonderful and your efforts will pay off.
To add to it (really unorthodox, but as long as he enjoys it!):
- My son loves cleaning and washing, so we’ve vacuumed cleaned and “washed” every possible card
- We take the cards from the Intelligence Bits and “introduce” them to each other, new words, or new dot cards.
- Our cards dance to the music we listen
- My son takes the cards for a ride at home – to show the fish in the aquarium, the birds at the bird feeder, or to take a nap in a stroller.
Looking forward to hear the comments on some fun ways you got to show the words!
February 1, 2009 at 10:50 pm
Thanks to Yonit Kasten at
Thanks to Yonit Kasten at TeachYourBabyToRead for sharing this with us:
With a toddler, I would probably put the word cards away and focus on books. And by books I mean home made books. Start with a simple 2 word phrase on each page with pictures on the next. Really simple so that your ds can relate to them.
I started with my dd when she was right about that age (around 17 months) – and I also had a newborn. I started my toddler straight on books, and then made word cards with the words in the books for the baby. So for example, some of the earliest books were things like:
Sima’s Breakfast
scrambled eggs
(picture of scrambled eggs)
Orange juice
(picture of a glass of orange juice)
bowl of cereal
(picture of a bowl of cereal)
Delicious!
I did the books on the square bit cards, made the letters nice and big 3-hole punched them and tied them up with yarn. (ChildAndMe comment: You can find more methods on creation of books at Hot to Create my own books and How to Print Power Point Presentations) That is just one example, we had them for going on a walk, her gymnastics class, her family…pretty much anything that was about her and interest her. And as I said, each of the words in the above story was also made into a word card for the baby, and dd would sometimes listen in. As she got into it more, I made the stories more complex and also not always about her. LOL
Also, to give you some encouragement, my well program has always been very haphazard. The reason I started Sima so late was because I was doing a BI program with her older brother and that took precedence. Generally, if we read the book 3 times a day I considered it a success and there were days we didn’t meet that. She is now 8 years old as of about a month ago and reads on a high school level – voraciously. She keeps 3 different librarians in business.
My son who had the BI, is now cured and is 17 and a sophomore at Bard College with a 3.8 GPA and on the swim team.
Any my 10 month old baby proved today that he can read by pointing at the word “Mommy” and saying “mama”. (I wasn’t actually testing him, I was going through some old cards and he happened to see it). Boy did we celebrate that! And yes, his program is also haphazard because he is the youngest of 4 kids and I am homeschooling his 2 older sisters.
Yonit
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July 31, 2008 – 22:16 — Admin
Thanks to Zeng for sharing
Thanks to Zeng for sharing this with us:
I have been trying a new way of doing flash card with my baby. It seems for now get his attention better than Domann’s method. Every day, I paid somewhat attention to what he played most during the day. At the end of the day, I made flash cards for those things. I select five randomly from the pile. After one session, I made a note at the end. Once the note indicate it is 10, I will retire the card. Otherwise, I will leave them in the pile. Every day, to the baby, he more or less see the new cards, especially for each session during the day.
I do three sessions a day, five each session.
I do not know whether he will continue likes it or not, but maybe some other babies will enjoy this method too.
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November 4, 2008 – 10:04 — Rachelle (not verified)
For my extremely active boy
For my extremely active boy who would never sit through 2 pages of any book, i made word cubes. I purchased very thick cardboard, carefully sketched out the cube shapes, wrote the words on each side then made the cube using strong glue to keep it together. I have made about 90 cubes with about 180 words. We have fun throwing the cubes and reading whatever word lands face up. It is brilliant! I have tried to only use a few cubes per week but of course they have all come out and he learnt every single word in only a few months. They are also strong enough to survive being stomped on.
I also have a small whiteboard and marker which i use from time to time to write a word related to what we are doing, he gets to rub the word out which he likes.
I have also written the word of all his puzzle pieces on the back of each piece and in the spot where it is supposed to go in the puzzle.
I painstakingly made a few personalised books for him but alas he hated them and just threw them away. He is not one for sit down activities! Once he was almost 2 and a half we began to read books at bedtime (he wasnt interested at all before this age despite my persistent efforts) and he would point to the words while i read them. I am so relieved that he can read now (at 3 years) as i just know he would have been so incredibly difficult to teach once he started school. Now the skies the limit! His preschool teachers dont understand how such a hurricane of a child can read so well at such a young age!
March 24, 2009 at 9:04 pm
For more fun, I let my son hang the words around our home again. He loved it. When he was asleep, a little “dwarf came along” and messed up all the words – hanged them to all wrong places. My son noticed it by himself and was very happy to correct “dwarf’s” mistakes. A few days of that and then all the cards were gone. Instead – there was a letter in the mail box. He was running all over the house following directions and searching for dwarf’s surprise… Just a little more fun, but I had a chance to have a glimpse at how good he is at reading, and he had a fun practice.
January 12, 2012 at 11:02 pm
I also have a very active two-year-old. She first started reading at 10 months with flash cards, YBCR, and my own homemade materials. When she got older, she would no longer sit still or look at flashcards, so we do a version of ‘I-spy’– with written words, in three languages. She thinks it is a terrific game, it keeps her active and learning, and has an added bonus: My husband and I are scientists, and she has become extremely observant of the world around her as she tries to find things I am referring to. I have also found it is a fantastic way of teaching prepositions because when she needs a ‘hint’, I don’t simply point it out. I provide clues, such as: it is above the tree, beside a silver van, etc…we are now describing things in abstract terms to raise comprehension as well: “I spy something that is a simple machine, is round, and is underneath the silver van…” then write the word on a dry erase board…your creativity is the only bound! Hope this helps…