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Hi Divya,
Yes, you can also do more than one word with a picture. Remember that when we read picture books with children, there are also multiple words on the page along with pictures. This will not affect their learning.
Also, when I first started the Doman program with my son, I used only words which worked well for a time. Then he stopped looking as well. When I added pictures with the words, he started looking again. I thought perhaps it was because the words I was teaching him had no meaning for him because he had never encountered those things in his life. Seeing the pictures gave the words meaning and made them relevant again.
Hi Alekhya Thirumani – 13 months is quite young and usually at this age, the focus for RBE activities are “input” activities – for example, flashcards, where there is no requirement for your child to give an answer.In RBE classes for children at this age, the teacher will play the games with the parent who sits in with the child. If you would like to replicate this at home, you can play it with an older child or dad until your little one is old enough to join in. Otherwise, you can omit this activity until your child is ready for it.You can do them both at the same time if you like. There is no need to wait until you complete the math program.
From Ruwan Thomas:
THIRTY MILLION WORDS – and counting It is a secret hiding in plain sight ” The blurb says. A Book by Three Research Doctors who suggest that parents talking to their children makes all the difference in their academic, emotional well being. But how do you talk – what to do you say – also matters. Will be posting more updates as I read.
It is about a book – The name of the book is THIRTY MILLION WORDS -Building A Child’s Brain. In the book, the 3 authors show detailed research on how the parents talking to babies, improves their performance in every field. Even talking to babies who cannot talk.
So what is this about 30 Million words ? They say, by the age of three, children of Professional parents have heard 30 Million words MORE than the children of parents on welfare. Children from professional families have heard 45 Million words. Children from welfare families – 15 million words.
So what’s the result of that 40 Million exposure? The children from Professional families had a vocabulary of 1116 words at the end of 3 years as against 591 for the children from benefit families.
In answer to your question, I do not see any reason why not. As long as you are able to conduct your lessons first and it doesn’t detract from future lessons, there really isn’t any reason why you should stop her.
This answer will vary again depending on the family and the child. Some children tend to be a lot rougher with handling things and may crush or tear the cards, in which case, you would probably wouldn’t want to do this.
Hi Raji – in RBE classes, a lot of activities begin from 6 months onwards even when the child cannot do them. The idea is to expose the child to the activity by allowing them to observe it in action. The activity will then be repeated when they are older and able to participate.
So in answer to your question, yes, the weekly schedule is meant to be for 10 months old as well. Whether you choose to do all the activities is up to you. You may decide to do the activities and let your child observe it or you may leave some activities to begin when your child is older and able to participate in some way. Either choice is fine.
The goal in these early years is exposure and experience. Obviously, the more they are able to do the more meaningful it will be. However, you will be surprised by how much your 10 month old will take in especially if they are keenly observing what you are doing.
If you can include your little one in some way – for example, allowing them to feel the texture of the dough you are making – this will also add to their learning and development. The intention here is to give you ideas rather than a prescription of activities to follow. Of course, you can also follow it if you like.
I apologise if that sounds like a wishy washy answer. The reason being that children can be very different. What works for one child doesn’t necessarily work for another. Also, children have their own personalities even from this young age. That personality will shape their responses to the things they see – what interests them and what does not. Our role as parents is to observe that reaction and adjust according to their responses. For instance, if you’re child is clearly interested in trains, you wouldn’t try to make they focus on another topic. I hope that helps.
Some of the words will be, but not all. The sight word list is focused on the top 1000 most commonly used words so there will be words your child will not see in the couplets and phrases. For example, the adjective “loud” is included but the adverb “loudly” is not.
From Apeksha Jangde:
understood.. If I take an example of first couplet from RBC “speak loudly” then whether “speak” and “loudly” are covered under sight word section or vocab section of weekly plan ? is my question
Yes, all words should have been covered in couplets but the phrases includes words like “the”, “my”, and words like “ring” as in “ring the doorbell” may be unfamiliar reading words.
From Apeksha Jangde:
thanks for your time. This explains everything I wanted to know. So, the couplets and phrases we have on RBC website aren’t necessarily made of words which are already covered as part of vocab or sight words ?
Hi Apeksha Jangde – I’m sorry for the confusion. Let me clarify:
1. https://rightbrainchild.com/2020/12/02/doman-reading-program/ – this is strictly the Doman Reading program with no extra words added. The Doman Reading program does not use images at all, only word cards, so this is the format I have followed on this post for those who wish to follow Doman exactly as it is.2. https://rightbrainchild.com/flashcards-for-reading/ – these are my extended flashcards using Doman topics but with more words under each topic. So while it may look like there are less words, there are actually more because the categories have been consolidated under one series and extra words have been added. For instance, if you look at “Rooms in a House” – Doman flashcards only include 12 words, whereas “Rooms in a House under this link contains 29 words with pictures. This is the same series of flashcards that are used in the weekly lessons. Hence the addition of the sight words as well. You can ignore this page if you are following the weekly lessons.3. https://rightbrainchild.com/2020/06/09/reading-flash-cards/ – this is the same series as no. 1 but includes pictures. The reason I provide the option of pictures is that when I first used Doman flashcards with my second child (we started very early when he was 3+ months), it worked well until we came to words that didn’t mean anything to him in his world because he was too young to know what those things are, for instance, words like “skyscraper”. I noticed that when I added the pictures, he started to pay attention again.In answer to your questions:1. Yes, you can ignore them and just follow the weekly plan because it is all included there except the couplets and phrases.2. I apologise I have not added couplets into the weekly plan as I did not create a section focused on teaching reading. My initial weekly plan was intended to follow the RBE guidelines which don’t directly focus on teaching reading, however, I will address this in future.3. Couplets are just two words together – for example, “blue shoes”, “brown hair”, “red dress”, etc. Phrases are a series of words that aren’t quite a sentence but a bit more meaningful, like “combing my hair”, “eating my breakfast”, “ring the doorbell”, etc. After this stage, your child is ready to read from books.You will find that the Doman reading program does not have a large compilation of words because Doman believed that once children have seen enough words, they will infer the rules of reading and be able to read words they have not learned. This happens even without teaching phonics. However, the reason why I expand the number of flashcards and suggest teaching phonics is that I noticed that my older boy had a problem with pronunciation. Once he could read, I made the mistake of letting him read alone a lot because I was focussing on his younger brother. Because he read a lot, he had a broad vocabulary even from an early age, but I noticed he was mispronouncing words when we spoke. I knew he understood what the words meant because he would use them correctly in context. It was just the pronunciation that was strange.This is also why I started adding Sight Words – the more examples of words a child sees the pronunciation of, the more data they have for how certain words are pronounced. It technically is not necessary according to Doman’s philosophy, but I felt it can help to fill the gaps in the reading program.I hope that helps to clarify.From Geetha Mohan:
In general, sight words has no meaning. So, Doman focused mainly on the meaningful words. The child will learn the sight words through couplets and sentences.Actually, there is no requirement that there should be 3 sessions a day. Doman states this for the reading program, however, I have often felt it is unnecessary to run so many sessions in a day. The program is flexible and you can adjust accordingly to what works best for your child. If you can complete the cards all in one session, then one is enough for a day. If you need to break it up into 3 or more sessions because your baby is restless or something comes up, you can also do so.
The number of cards I have suggested is provided in the weekly lessons https://rightbrainchild.com/rbe-home-practice-lesson-plans/. You can follow that plan or choose to adjust it if you need more or less. The important part is that your child is happy and enjoying the learning. There is no point to complete 500 cards if your child is fussing and feeling frustrated. I don’t like to set a hard and fast rule because following your child’s lead is more important than following a plan.
