YBCR

Your Baby Can Read. Don't believe me? It's true!

Did you know that in the first years of a child’s life, tens of thousands of synaptic connections are made each second in the brain? This opens the door for increased learning capacity. The most natural time to learn any aspect of language is during the infant and toddler years. There is a natural window of opportunity for learning language where it is easier for children to learn to understand and speak our language at a high level. During this window of opportunity, between the ages of 3 months and 5 years, they can also learn the written word naturally and easily. Why wouldn't we take advantage of this opportunity? It is up to us mom's and dad's to get our child on the track to learning and to love learning before they go to kindergarten, or even preschool! I found these videos and thought I would try them.

YBCR is different from baby Einstein and other video's of the sort. I believe they have a few key elements the other videos are missing. Many of the baby Einstein videos I've seen for infants simply have stimulating pictures flashing to music. In the YBCR system even the very first video they can start at the age of 3 months is focused on word recognition and reading. I had my doubts whether Etta would sit through the videos for 30 minutes. At first she could only watch about 10 minutes, then 15, then 20, and with in a week she was watching the whole video. Another thing I like about YBCR is that there is a system. It comes with graduating videos and a plan on when and how often to watch each video. Lastly, it comes with corresponding flash cards and books so that you can have one on one interaction with your child and reiterate what they've learned through the videos.

I also believe that part of Elizabeth's lovely personality has come through doing this program. It has helped her learn how to concentrate and focus on something for a much longer period of time. This means that she is not so impatient and quick to lose interest in things. She also is very self entertaining and independent. I love that I can just let her crawl upstairs and when I go up 15 minutes later to check on her she's sitting in her room reading a book or playing with her flashcards. I'm serious! I love that her books are always the first thing she goes for...sometimes just to eat the book...but you can really tell she loves it and is genuinely interested. Learning to read helps boost their self confidence and communication skills as well which Elizabeth has loads of!

I really cannot stress how much I've loved these videos. There are testimonials of children reading anywhere from 9-18 months old! Now I don't know if Elizabeth is going to be reading at 18 months old, but what if she's reading at 2 years old, or three? That's still ahead of the game. Most of all it's time I can spend with her learning, it's time she can spend alone developing a love for learning, and one hour a day I can get things done and not feel guilty I'm putting her in front of the television! There's no downside and nothing to lose. So what are you waiting for...go....GO, go get them! http://www.yourbabycanread.com/

Elizabeth started the video's at about 6 months. This was taken at 11months, she's gotten even better since then! She reads cards that prompt her to clap, wave, put her arms up, touch her head, her nose, stick out her tongue, touch her ears, her toes, and makes animal noises when she sees duck and dog...etc. She's also started to speak, saying words from the videos. I will ask where's your ball? She'll say baw baw, look around, and find it. Same with her ka...car, her beeebeee...baby, and many other word's she recognizes and understands. She also sings the beginnings of songs. Her favorite is to sing Row, row, row...row, row, row...urr oat, tee da seam!

Grrrrrr! K...so I tried to load my video like 10 times over the last few days and it isn't happenin. So I'll post it without. It was a video where we would put three flashcards in front of us and ask her to pick out a specific word and she would! I think she got like 8 out of 10! Anyway, it's something to think about.

Like a duck to water...

So I know I need to start taking more pictures of things other than my child. I'm working on it. Until then...

Our little duckie loves, loves the pool.

The baby pools a perfect size for her and she loves her little baby floating tube. She walks around like she owns the place plowing anything and everything in her way. She loves all the little kids around splashing and playing. Definitely a people watching social butterfly! She still needs to learn the concept that putting your head under water equals drowning...!?! However it doesn't seem to bother her one bit so I guess I'll just keep an extremely close eye and let her do her thing. She'll be swimming before you all know it.

Brace Yourselves People

Here come a slew of posts the likes of which you've never seen before. Be careful because they may be everyday and contain levels of adorability that you're not prepared for. Here we go...

We'll start with a small dose. Etta's only marginally cute in these pics compared to her full capacity to wow you. This is her first sippie cup experience. She's can totally do it, but chooses not to. Typically she plays with it and pinches the spout therefor taking away any anitspill technology and rendering it useless. As a result we don't do as much sippie time as we should.

By the way these are from March...March people, I know.

Baby is 9 months and everywhere!

She's definitely gone up the stairs before but this time she started and never stopped. She was up both flights of stairs in a flash of light! She turned around just before finishing, crawling into her room and giving herself a good celebration clap!

9 month stats are:

Head: 17.75 inches (81.17th percentile)
Weight: 17.68 lbs (29.88th percentile)
Height: 27.75 inches (58.66th percentile)

She really is totally crazy. She's into absolutely everything and is on the brink of walking. She's such a blast to play with. She's so giggly and active. We couldn't love our little girl more!

Such a big girl.

So Etta's been doing this for a while now but I just finally got a picture of it. It's super cute and she loves feeling like such a big girl. She climbs up on everything and then kind of jumps and rocks in excitement. The only downside to this new skill is that the only way she's figured out how to get down is to fall backwards...so usually she just holds strong and "calls" for one of us. :)

I'm So Glad When Daddy Comes Home...

Baby gets so excited when Robbie comes home from being gone all weekend. Last time he came home we went up and played with her in her room and this is some of the footage we got.

Little Monkey...babies got skills.

Baby clapping congratulations to her newly acquired skill. Yay baby!

It was seriously cute. I've been trying to get her to clap for a while now, then suddenly while we were at the volleyball game something clicked and she figured it out! No there is no stopping her, she does it all day long. Monkey see, monkey do I suppose. Now if we can only work on her focus...her feet seem to be a distraction in almost all situations. :)

Crawling Chicky

So she's been doing this for a while and is even better at it now but I thought I'd post these from January 3rd. Crazy how far she's come since then.