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I Bought Five of These Books!
If your daughters ever spend time caring for young children, I highly recommend you purchase them a copy of this book. When our oldest was just a newborn, I came across the book "Teach Your Baby" by Genevieve Painter. I picked it up for next to nothing at a used book sale and used its ideas regularly. It is not a book of theory or a book that advocates teaching your children to read when they are two, but just a listing of ideas for stimulating and interacting with young children, up to the age of thirty-six months. The only thing many people can think of to do with babies is to over-stimulate them by bouncing them around and getting them to squeal. Here is a solution to that problem. Following are some examples of the ideas included in this book:
For four & five month olds: Attach bells to his booties so he will notice his feet and reach for them.
Six to eight months old: Sit him on your lap facing you. Put your forehead against his and say "Boom". Take your head away and do it again. Soon he will learn to move his head toward yours when you play this game.
Nine to eleven months: While both of you sit on the floor facing each other, shake a small toy until his eyes are on it. Move it along the floor slowly until it is behind your back. See if he crawls around you to find it. Now place a large pillow between you. Again shake the toy until it holds his attention. Move it slowly across the floor until it is behind the pillow, out of his sight. See if he crawls around the pillow to find it. In another variation of this game, catch his attention with the toy and move it slowly across the floor until it is behind him, and see if he turns around to reach it.
Fifteen to twenty months: Put a white, a gray, and a tan cloth in front of him, leaving some space between them. The cloths must be plain colors so they don't distract him. Hold a toy in your hand so that he can still sese a small part of it and move your hand along a path under each cloth. He should see your hand between each cloth as it moves along. Leave the toy under the last cloth. See if he looks under the last cloth. Do this several times, leaving the toy under a different cloth each time.
Thirty to thirty-six months: Cut two sets of circles - two large, two medium, and two small - out of cardboard. They should all be the same color so that you do not confuse teaching color with teaching size. Put one set of circles on the table. Give the other circles to him one at a time and say, "Put the little one with the little one." "Put the big one with the big one." "Put the medium one with the medium one."
There is an introduction to this book that I have never read, and schedules for daily interaction with your children which I have never used. However, the ideas themselves are priceless. There is a copy of this book in each hopechest in our house. You can find copies of this book for sale at www.alibris.com. One version of this book appears to have pictures, which makes it much more costly. We have the cheap version.
Posted by lilypress at February 20, 2006 4:28 PM
