Your Baby Can Read

I will have to admit I was (very) skeptical when I saw these advertisements on TV...and maybe this series would be better named "Your Baby Can Memorize Words"...(or at least as far as we have gotten in the series, it is about memorizing words they see and not yet learning letter sounds), but since we received this as a gift we figured - why not?! and decided to give it a whirl.

We started with the very first "Starter" DVD in the series and the instructions say to have your baby watch it twice a day for a month, then whether or not they are identifying words, continue to the next DVD in the series, and occasionally go back to the older ones as a refresher. There are flashcards to test what your baby is learning.

We watched the first DVD for 3 weeks, but only once a day instead of two. For some reason the boys love it. They ask me when they wake up from nap, "TV? BABIES?!" There is something about watching babies, little kids and animals do stuff that is fascinating to this age group.

Tonight after dinner I decided to break out the flashcards for the first time (isn't that what everyone does on a Saturday night?) The flashcards have printed words on one side of the card and picture to depict what the word is on the other side of the card. If they do not get the word right by saying it out loud or doing the action themselves, you can flip it around and show them the picture on the back while you say aloud what the word on the card is.

I was more than a little shocked when they started reading words right off the flashcards! Ethan was the first and he read "Hi" and "Dog" then Mason took a turn and he got "Arms Up" and "Clap" (they said these words out loud instead of just doing the actions). And so on, getting more than half of the words from the flashcards right!

We are starting to work on letter sounds because phonics will help them read new words on their own, but I don't think being able to identify a variety of words, even if memorized, is a terrible thing.

So, to the Your Baby Can Read creator...I am sorry that I doubted you. Are you sure there isn't some sort of hypnotic component to your DVD series that makes my kids want to watch the same DVD over and over and over again? Of course I guess I could ask the same about the Disney/Pixar people who went and made the Cars movie, with which we are equally obsessed.

As of today I guess I can say that My Babies Can Read! (well...sort of...) :)