[meemee]

for my dd it is just a toy. since she loves button, music, etc i got her the purple catterpillar and she has enjoyed the music buttons only. i have not tried to do the alphabets, colours or phonetic sounds with her and nor has she. but she has picked up math (simple addition and subtraction) when she was 2 and her alphabets i am guessing around 18 months old and her phonics around 2. i have no idea how she learnt them (alphabets i am guessing thru dr seuss abc book). i have tried real hard to figure out how she learnt addition and subtraction specifically and i have no idea how she did it.

personally i have not introduced alphabets or numbers to her because they are totally unimportant to me till she goes to school at K. but she was interested and she picked it up. she has shown no interest in reading with me (she is 33 months old) which is perfect with me. but i am not going to run out to buy the leap frog reading program just so she can start reading. if i did she migth start reading but i dont think that is important for her. i would rather she did it at her own time when she felt motivated enough. instead her interest is science and we do a lot of science experiments and she really enjoys that.

as a toy i wouldnt mind buying some for my dd, but not as a learning tool. i would much rather buy her something else.

by biggest gripe with leaffrogs and the whole deal is their attitude of pushing reading and math skills on children. i mean go to any mom's house and even tho the fridge magnets say 2+ you will find them in many crawling baby homes. it seems it is propogating this idea that if my child can read and do math early BEFORE they even go to preschool then they will grow up to be geniuses (HATE that word). i feel the same with baby einstein things which totally exploits the genius idea.

someone just gave my dd the fridge magnets. if u saw her playing with it u would think she is trying to learn. she is trying to pick up the tune and trying to repeat the persons speech.

personally i would not use that medium to teach reading or math. but now if my dd refuses to learn her alphabets in K and the only way she would is by using the leapfrog stuff then i would do it. so i feel 5+... okay 4+ its ok to do leaffrog. but not below that.

 

[meemee]

ok since there are two issue going on parallel i wanted to pipe in with the one i hadnt replied to. i used to use nazi till i found i genuinely offended some folks that i met face to face (who had nothing to do with concentration camps or jews themselves) and i stopped.

but unfortunately in todays world history only seems to survive in slang. in mainstream public i mean. for instance how many of us have studied about nero in our history lesson yet who would ever remember who nero was and what he did if we still didnt use 'nero' as a slang word. i so wish polpot, stalin, mao were slang too so the world still remembers the horrors they perpetrated.

yet if u went on the street and asked who pol pot or stalin or mao was they would have no clue. of course many wouldnt know hitler or nazis but at least some would.

so am i saying nazi should continue as a slang and people use it. absolutely esp. with our school system. does it mean i like it - absolutely not.

http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/tyrants.htm

and yet why did ghengis khan get all romanticised? go figure!!!!

a hundred years or two from now nazi might just be a word the mainstream public heard in a 'seinfeld' episode.

 

[meemee]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ChristaN Oh no, I didn't mean it that way. I know that they don't all even out. I was meaning to express that gifted children don't all learn to read early and early reading isn't always a sign of giftedness. There are other much more accurate means of assessing giftedness than when a child learns to read. eta: I think that there is currently just too much emphasis put on early reading in school and elsewhere. Reading to children from a very early age on can never be overemphasized IMO, but getting them to read themselves at a young age is not as good of an indicator of academic success.

ITA - imaginary/pretend play is a better sign of giftedness.