early learning - reading, math, music ...

Hi everyone

I just joined the forum and I have a daughter born in April 2008. I'm looking to find friends who have same interest of teaching our kids from early age.

Research has shown that the most important years for a person is the first 6 years. Bear with me through this summary of info. This is not advertising. I just want to build a group of parents with same interest so we can chat and share research. please contact me if you are interested.

Summary of the method for early learning:

The first 6 years are most important in a human life. It's when the baby is developing the fastest, absorbing the biggest. It's when links between left and right brain are created. It's also the time when these links could die, and certainly die out of lack of usage and stimulation in most cases in this world.

We probably use only up to 5% of our brain and miss out the 95% capacity that our babies could potentially use.

Brain grows by use, so we can still 'grow' our brain. Of course the best time to do such thing is between 0 to 6.

When first born, a baby's brain is right-brain dominant. As he/she grows, he/she will become more and more switched on to left brain. Around 5-6, most children are left brain dominant.

Right brain is for instand memory, visual images, creativity, intuition ... Left brain is for logic, deduction, speech...

Right brain is like a hard drive in a computer, left brain is like RAM. Links between the two sides of the brain are required to draw out what is in the storage (right brain).

To a baby just being born, his/her parents' mother tongue or any other language is the same to him/her, basically a foreign language. There are no limitation of how many languages a baby can learn.

The younger the child, the easier to teach (to read, math, knowledge, languages etc...).

Until 3 or 3 and a half, babies can perceive quantities perfectly. They can tell the difference in 2 pictures of 88 dots and 89 dots. After that age, most children lose that ability.

Famous pioneers in this school of thoughts (right brain teaching or whole brain teaching) are: Montessori (Italian), Doman (USA), Shichida (Japan). They are all famous for their success with children. Doman started working with children with mental disability (over 50 years). He founded an institution teaching problematic children and teaching parents to teach their children to read and do math at an early age. He also wrote some excellent books which I purchased.

Doman focuses on reading, math, and encyclopedic knowledge. There are also materials on multilanguage. They don't do much marketing. And his books are great on details of techniques.

Shichida probably is the most recent pioneer. He opened a series of schools in Japan, then expanded to Singapore, Malaysia,USA . Parents and children go to these schools probably once a week for 1 hour or so, attending the class and practice at home everyday. These schools are very expensive from what I read.

Shichida method involves developing both sides of the brain in a range of activities, and not just focusing on reading or mathematics. Other areas of the mentioned 6 inner senses include perfect pitch music, intuition, multilanguage, instant computerised calculation,...

Shichida wrote numerous books but in Japanese with a few translated into English and Chinese. However from what I heard and read, no details of techniques and the How to do are clear in his books. For that reason I did not purchase his books.

Montessori appeared to be before Doman and Shichida. She is the pioneer of a series of pre-school learning (half childcare in the sense that children can be there half day or full day every weekday). These Montessori schools are the only of this teaching method in New Zealand. Depending on the location, it could be very expensive to attend. However there are a lot of good feedback about them. Montessori schools in NZ are also only for children 2 years and up.

The core of a reading and math program following this method is to flash cards at a rapid rate in agreement with brain wave (=alpha wave). The letters should be bold, big, clear, presented with a loud clear voice so babies can see and can hear. The size is very important.

Math is to be taught in quantities before symbols.

Whole words are to be taught before alphabet.

Play is essential. Learn = play, play = learn. Both teacher and children must be in good mood, relaxing for the session to be effective. Stop if not and do the lesson later. To a child, learning is playing.

Facts are to be presented, not fiction. Babies take everything you present as facts, so you don't want to distort his/her perception of things. e.g. don't present a cartoon character of a frog and tell the child it's a frog.

There are whole heaps more of details in the books.

Now we have 2 parents already following this method in South Auckland.

Now we are planning not just teach our children to read or do simple math, but also mutiple languages, music, art, and vast knowledge of other things (science, astrology, biology,...). and we are planning to do it now and for our babies to learn as much as possible before school age.

Happy parenting

i think there are a few montessori mums on here...

Thanks everyone, will try my luck there then.