Reagan's Home Practice update for 1st quarter of yr 2014

An update on Reagan's current home practice as of 18 months onwards in beginning of year 2014..

Alphabets & Phonics
Although Reagan has already mastered all the 26 alphabet letters and their initial phonics letters sounds, I'm still constantly thinking of new activities to enforce further on his alphabets learning.
 
Eg. Matching the upper case letters (magnetic letters) to the lower case letters (printed on a paper). Now he can finally match correctly big capital "A" to small letter "a", all the way to letter "Z".

At times I prepare worksheets like this (below) for him to do. So far he is able to complete them all by himself, although sometimes he would miss out one or two letters, which he would still manage to find it after I gave him some hints.

 

Flashcards

Reagan is still having his daily dose of flashcards, 25-30 topics each session. There are days when I'm feeling tired (or lazy), so I may just skipped all activities and just do the cards flashing only. Till now I strongly believe that flashcards did help in building a strong learning foundation for Reagan as I can see that at this stage, he is picking up learning concepts really fast and I've to literally keep up with his learning pace.

Besides the 25-30 topics, I've also been practicing his words/phrase cards, and at same time, adding more words for him to recognise each week.

Recently I've added in the Glenn Doman Intelligence bits cards as well, topics on "Body Organs" and "Composers", inputting one of the 10 facts each day.

 

Puzzles

I've moved on from 2 pieces puzzles to 3-4 pieces puzzles this year. Reagan knows where each piece should go to form the picture, but he still can't really piece them properly by himself. He just placed them together but not fix them together properly. There are more room for improvement in his motor skill, but I still appreciate that he didn't give up at all..

 

Reading

After Reagan can recognise words, I gradually move on to reading. Reagan is still too young to read out the sentences in the books vocally, however it does not mean that I cannot prepare him on his reading. When he was younger, I used to read and point the sentence (in one direction) to him, then describe the pictures in the book.

 

At 20 months old, I've begin to start him on the habit of pointing to the words on the page himself while he listens to me reading the sentence out loud for him. So as I read, he points the words. And hopefully soon after he turns the age of 2 and develop better speech, he can point AND read the sentence to me by himself!

 

This series of books, "WOW! I Can Read" is bought from one of the "Growing Fun" outlets when I happened to see a sales staff recommending them to a mother who wanted to get something for her 5 years old child. The mom asked if I'm also getting the books, and I replied yes, as I think they be useful to start my boy on reading. She nodded as well and shared with me how she struggles to teach her 5 years old child to read. And then the awkward part came when she asked how old my boy is now....

Well, I don't know how to tell her that my child was just 18 months that time, and getting the same books which she was going to buy for her 5 years old child. I cant blame her if she sees me as some insane kiasu tiger mom. Still I believe it is never too young to start reading especially if your baby enjoys it.

 

So back to the books, what I like is the big clear bold words and pictures with clear background. It also emphasizes on sight words which are usually common in reading, eg" This is, I am, It is, I have, Because...and many more." It comes in 3 sets of 5 books with different difficulty level. I kept the books till Reagan hits 20 months before I started him on the first set. So far he is enjoying the reading session as much as I do.

 

 What more I've planned to do soon...

- Start him on Shichida Math Dots cards again. Repeat from first cycle.
- Focus a little more on Mathematics, teach him the concept of addition and subtraction
- Practice memory games with him (eg. Instant memory, photography memory, space memory, linking memory)
- Practice more tracing and writing with him