Beginning to Read

It's no secret, Drew loves his flashcards.  In fact we were busy impressing the man who sat next to us on the airplane on the way out to Kansas City Drew's ability to name all the MLB Teams.

Yesterday Ms. Stephanie called me at work to have Drew read some words to me.  Of course I was one proud Mama to hear that.

She's using some "Sight Word" flashcards that were for her 4-year old. 

Drew's been watching some Preschool videos with her boys and apparently he's picking a few things up. Here's a list of some of the words he was reading on his own (list Ms. Stephanie made for us):

• Up
• White
• Word
• are
• one
• no
• a
• my
• myes
• box
• red
• yellow
• at
• it
• in
• I
• go
• brown
• blue
• big
• be

She made a note that he gets confused with similar looking words like "no" and "on" or "pig" and "big". 

To test this out, I pulled out some sight words we have, and then wrote a few things on his dry erase easel - he definitely recognizes when we write all the colors including "gold" and "silver".  We're quite proud of our little guy.

Ready for MLB

Santa brought Drew a homemade set of baseball team flashcards. You saw a first glance at this new household hit a few weeks ago here.

Well about 2 1/2 weeks later, Drew has them all memorized. That's right all 30 teams!

Spring Training - In Winter

The players aren't even thinking about reporting for Spring Training yet, but Daddy's preparing Drew for the upcoming Baseball season already.

You see, Santa knew something about this family when he made some MLB flashcards for Drew. When he first played with them on Christmas Day, he knew a total of 2 teams... The Yankees & Dodgers.

Here's a little clip from last night:



He now knows 23 of the 30 teams - in less than a week.

Running in Circles

Looking for ways to entertain himself, Drew came up with this one on Wednesday night.

Yes, throw all your flash cards on the ground and run circles around them. Five minutes later he was having a fit because he couldn't find "1". For some reason he always has to know where "1" is at all times.

Oh, keep in mind having flashcards strewn across your floor and running on top of them can be a hazard. He ate it about half-a-dozen times, but kept on going.

Flashcard Controversy

I read something yesterday evening that really irked me and I wanted to set the record straight for our family. One of the websites I frequent had a post about using flashcards with toddlers (ages 18-24 months). It suggested that parents who use flashcards regularly with these toddlers were forcing their kids to grow up too fast - and that it was parent led education.

I beg to differ - at least in our situation. We didn't start using flash cards until he showed an interest in them, which was around 17 months. It all started with our Leap Frog Activity Center - where he loved to push the letter buttons (W & O were the favorite - guess he liked to spell wow). This fascination began around the time he was 9 months. Then after the New Year he moved to a wooden puzzle with the alphabet... and the numbers (he's already mastered the shapes/colors puzzle).

Flashcards came about first at daycare - as a way to calm him down without having to turn on the TV. Drew's kind of a TV/Movie nut. The flashcards were on hand for Ms. Stephanie's 3-year old son who is in preschool. Turns out Drew loved them - and to be honest until Easter we didn't even own any flashcards. Now he asks for them, just as he did this morning.

Does that picture of him today look like a tortured child? We don't force him to do any of it - well unless we're trying to show him off to someone. But what parent doesn't show off their child's skills?

So for the record, while there are some parents who do force their kids to do things they probably aren't ready for - I assure you we're not them. Drew is the one who brings it on. To be honest, I expect him to get bored with it, and find something else that interests him.