So Long Flashcards

As you can probably tell from my blog posts, we have definitely been struggling with our flashcards.  With me working all day right now, and going to school full time starting in January (not to mention the 3 hours of commute time every day), flashcards are just not working.  Now don't get me wrong, I still fully believe that flashcards can be effective for teaching babies, if implemented properly.  Hopefully, when I have a baby in the future, I will have time to do a full blown flashcard program.  However, being a single mother in school, we need something more flexible.  I will probably stick with educational toys, worksheets, and other fun activities.

I haven't completely ironed out what our new "curriculum" will include.  I know my goals include working on fine motor skills, pre-writing skills, and basic life skills.  I hope to work on some of the early education basics, like colors, shapes, numbers, letters, etc.  I have a feeling it will be an evolving process.  I can't wait to see what types of activities Xander really enjoys.

New Flashcards

Whenever I go to Target I take a quick stroll through their dollar section, looking for anything I can use on our Baby Trays.  A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to stumble upon some great flash cards.  While they won't be used on our trays, I have trouble finding flash cards that I like, so I was very happy with the find.  Since Xander is so young, I try to avoid abstract cartoons on flash cards.  I like accurate representations of whatever it is I am trying to teach him.  I think showing him a picture of a cartoon cat and expecting him to understand that I mean the real live animal is a bit confusing.  Anyway, I found some great sets with photographs and realistic depictions.

We started out with the landmarks set.  I have been showing him five cards, three times a day.  They have become his absolute favorite flash cards.  He is more attentive with these than with his word flash cards.  If I am not careful about where I put them, he likes to find them and play with them.  On the back of each card is a description of the landmark, and a map of its location in the world.  Those will be nice references for the future, but right now we are just doing the names.

When we have made our way through all of the landmarks, we have sets of wild animals, insects, and US presidents.  So nice to have great sets that I didn't have to make myself!  And for only a dollar each!

Organizing - Update

Back in March I wrote about getting organized.  Since then I have gone through a few methods of organizing our lessons and my flash cards before I settled on our current system.  I think I am pretty happy with it, so thought I would share.

Originally I kept the goal sheet on the fridge and the flashcards in one of the office file organizers.  I learned  early on that wet erase markers worked much better than dry erase ones.  The problem was the flashcards were in Xander's room and the fridge was in the kitchen, obviously.  I kept forgetting to go to the fridge to mark off where we were.  Eventually I took the schedule off the fridge and just kept it in Xander's room.  Unfortunately, even printed on card stock and in a page protector, it tended to wrinkle when I erased it.  For those of you who don't know, I am a bit of a perfectionist and having a creased page protector causes the ink to stain, meaning a messy goal sheet, bugging me.

After a while I moved everything to a three ring binder with a cover slot.  Putting the schedule in the cover was nice, and I was able to take the binder from room to room with me easily.  The downside to having the flashcards in the binder was that the Doman dot cards didn't fit.  Also, after about a week the schedule started sliding around in the cover, moving all my check marks, so I had no clue what day I was on.  To solve the problem I went back to the page protector and taped it to the front of the binder. 

Schedule:

As you can see, the current schedule involves two Little Reader and Little Math sessions a day, seven days a week.  He watches one of his reading DVDs a day (listed under SW because we are currently on Preschool Prep's Meet the Sight Words).  I have been having him watch our "current" DVD Monday through Friday and letting him watch an old reading DVD on the weekends since he loves his Your Baby Can Read so much.    

We do three sets of cards, three times each.  The goal is Monday through Friday, but as you can see from the picture, sometimes I do them on the weekends too.  Some days they don't happen at all.  There is one column for a power point, which we hope to do Monday through Friday.  I have downloaded many power points from BrillBaby in addition to making my own.  I usually show him one after we do Little Reader. 

The "PP" column is for perfect pitch, which is our music lesson of the day (post to follow soon), which we also hope to do Monday through Friday.  However, since he likes the music lessons so much, we might end up doing them every day.  

The final column is for our math lessons, which we were doing three times a day, Monday through Friday.  However, I ran out of Doman dot cards and the polygon flash cards I made after.  Since I haven't made new flash cards yet, we are skipping the scheduled math lessons.  Instead we do simple addition or subtraction problems with toys or food.

It sounds like a lot, but most lessons are less than 15 seconds and it DEFINITELY doesn't all happen every day.  They are "goals."  If we are busy, friends are in town, we don't feel well, we didn't sleep enough, etc, we just do what I feel comfortable with.  Some days LR and LM are the only thing that happen.  Some days we only do one set of word cards.  Some days nothing happens at all.  You get the idea.

Flashcards:

Originally I made the GIANT flashcards as recommended by How to Teach Your Baby to Read.  Sometimes we still use them.  However, those were difficult to deal with, not to mention store.  Now I print most of them on card stock from Little Reader, but have also used Microsoft Publisher.  One of our sets of flashcards currently consists of pre-primer Dolche words, which I just wrote on large note cards with a giant permanent red marker.

This is how I store them the majority of the time.  It is just a three ring binder with pocketed dividers.  There are three dividers, one for each word set.  To keep myself organized, set one always goes in the first pocket, set two in the second, and set three in the third.  I have a rubber band on one of the rings to hook my wet erase marker and pen.

Here is a picture of the envelopes we have in the three ring binder.  They just hook in and have Velcro to keep them closed.  I only use them if we are going somewhere and I take the binder with me, which almost never happens.  Usually we only do lessons at home and skip them while we are out.

This is how I keep track of my flash cards (you may have to click to enlarge).  Forgive me, it isn't very neat.  Anyway, there are three sections, one for each set of word cards.  Each section has a column of words removed and words added.  Ever day I take out the oldest card from each set (shown 5 days) and add the newest word.  The day I add one I write it under both the "added" and "removed" columns, so I can just glance and see what word is taken out next.  I sure hope I explained that somewhat clearly.  It may not be the best method, but it has been what works for me.  As you can see, not all three sets are equal.  Since I sometimes only do one or two of the word sets, those have been through more words than set three.

New Approach to Flash Cards

We have been doing flash cards together since Xander was about 3 months old.  We started with math cards as described in How to Teach Your Baby Math.  Then we added word cards.  We are currently doing three sets of five words each, three times a day.  We follow the rules of doing them FAST and joyfully while making eye contact.  Unfortunately, lately Xander has been losing focus.  There is so much else to see and do.  So many muscles to try to master.  I have tried putting in a plain setting with no toys around, but I can't get him away from the distraction of his feet (or hands, toes, lips, etc)..  Today I decided to try a different approach.  Instead of facing him, I set him in my lap.  I held the flash cards in front of him and went through them as quickly as I could. It worked!  He was much more focused and we were able to accomplish the flashcards more quickly and easily.  He even stayed focused through a much larger set of words from a category that we had "retired" a while back.  I am glad we found something that worked!


Today, this is how my little stinker wanted to play.  He isn't very good at it and falls often, but would complain until I set him back up on the couch.

Done with Dots!

Hooray!  Today is a special day!  We are done with our Doman dot cards 0-100!  It took us about 4 months but I get to put them away!  Xander loves them, but they are so big and bulky, it is hard to take on the go with us.  Plus, he will get his review through LM. Tomorrow or Monday we replace the dot card lessons with irregular polygons.  My baby is getting so big!

Monday

Historically, I have not enjoyed Mondays.  This week, however, I am so grateful for Monday!  Last week a realtor I know said he had a client who would be interested in my house.  Since my house isn't listed yet, I was NOT ready.  Anyway, I spent all of last week cleaning, organizing, etc so that I could show it Saturday.  Then I spent all of yesterday resting.  Well, because of all the stress, we haven't been doing all of our lessons the last few days (we only do them when we are both in good moods).  Actually, this weekend all we did was watch YBCR.

This morning I was excited to get back on track!  Apparently Xander was too.  He was incredibly excited to see his Doman math cards.  He was also more excited about his word cards than usual.  He is ok with them, but much prefers the math ones.  It is nice to be able to see that he at least recognized the activity and had noticed its absence.

Oh, and no word on what the client thought of the house, yet.  Hopefully soon!  It would be such a blessing to have it done without needing to list it and host endless open houses.

Cute Quirks & Baby School updates

I LOVE this age.  Xander's personality is starting to show.  His smile makes me smile still, every time.  He squeals and giggles a lot.  Lately, he babbles all the time.  Even when he is upset.  He cries less than he "complains."  I can't understand what he is saying, but from the tone and facial expressions you know he is telling you just how unhappy he is about whatever it is.  He still makes his baby raptor noises, but has also started doing this little shriek.  At first it sounds unhappy, but you take a look at his face and he has this huge grin!  He loves trying out his vocal cords.

He also has some funny little habits.  For example, in order to suck his thumb, he first sticks two to three fingers and his thumb in his mouth.  Then he twists his hand until only the thumb is left.  He has also started reaching up behind his head, to either scratch the top of his head or just sit there and hold it.  It just looks funny since just lifting his arm straight up would get his hand to the same spot more comfortably.  Of course, I have tried to get a picture of it, but he quits whenever I try.

This kid also wants to walk so badly!  He wants to stand while I am holding him, not sit.  He also enjoys standing while I just hold under his hands to balance him.  Then he leans forward trying to GO.  Unfortunately, he has quite a while.  He also has no interest in crawling.  I've read that mastering crawling is important for balance and coordination, so I don't want him to skip it, but he just does not want to be on his tummy.  Regardless, I think I am in trouble when he finally is mobile.  I don't think he will ever stop moving.


Baby School

We've made some slight modifications to his early learning curriculum.

Reading:
He still watches YBCR every day.  We are on disc three.  He loves it!  In fact, when he got hurt the other day, all he wanted to do all night was watch it, back to back.  Our set only came with the first three, and I was debating not getting the fourth.  Well, I think I am going to have to now.  Although, I still think I will skip the 5th, since it is supposedly only a review of the first four.

We still do Little Reader twice a day, 5-7 days a week.  I am hoping to be able to customize it more once he gets a bit older and has more experience with things, and once I get some photo software.

We have started doing word flash cards daily now.  We have two sets of 5 words each that we show three times a day.  We add one word and subtract one word from each set every day.  I've chosen words that he has already seen through LR.  At first he wasn't too interested, but lately he has been enjoying these super quick word sessions.  Since each session only takes about 10 seconds, I'm hoping to eventually move this up to three sets a day.

Math
He still gets three sessions of 10 Doman style dot cards.  We retire two and add two every day.  Right now we are on 47-56.  He really enjoys them, usually squealing and "talking" the whole time.  As much as he enjoys them, it will be nice when they are done. I made them on 11x11 sheets of poster board, so they are hard to take along with us on outings.

We also do two Little Math sessions a day, usually 6-7 days a week.  He seems to like it better than reading.  Maybe I've got a little engineer on my hands?

Since he is too young to do any of his own shape sorting or puzzles, I hold him while I do some sort of spacial activity.  We don't have too many yet (like I said, he is too young), but he does like watching me put the rings on his rainbow stacker, do his simple geometric shapes puzzle, or do his beginner pattern blocks.  It isn't something we do every single day, but it is something entertaining for him.

Colors
He has had some exposure to colors through LR.  I made big 11x11 flashcards of the colors that I have been showing him three times a day.  Additionally, I wrote the colors onto corresponding sheets of foam, both in capital and lower case letters.  I show him these and he likes to look at them, grab them, and of course, chew on them.

Music
We haven't started doing that much with music yet.  I do try to have Pandora going often.  I play a wide variety of music for him, so he hears everything from Beethoven to Barney.  He adores music (and dancing).  I sing to him all the time (although any adult would probably cringe at my singing voice).  He also has a mini tambourine, bells, maracas, and a mini rain stick, most of which were found cleaning out my mom's basement closet.  Once we move, I hope to have the piano in a more convenient location so that we can play on that too (it is currently in the storage room in the basement).


Wow, when it is all written out like that, it looks like a lot.  It doesn't seem like it, because most of the "lessons" take less than a minute.  Also, I look at it as a way of entertaining him.  That kid doesn't know what overstimulation is.  He wants to be looking at something or doing something constantly!  I'm sure we could do more each day and he would love it.  I'm the one who can't keep up with him.

Tummy Time

My child does NOT like tummy time.  I've tried lying on the floor with him, putting toys around him, playing music, etc, and none of it works!  Lately I've started putting his flash cards around him.  He'll study them for a while, until he's looked at them all, at which point he resumes screaming (he LOVES flash cards if I go through them for him).  A couple days ago he was content to watch my dad vacuum, because apparently that is fascinating.  Yesterday, I went so far as to set up my lap top with Sid the Science Kid music videos about simple machines.  It worked for a while, until the internet started acting up.  I swear that child will do anything to watch television.  He even watches Cramer's Mad Money with my dad while I have class.

Watching Sid the Science Kid videos