educating your kids

AHarvey

AHarvey

AHarvey

Soldato
Joined
6 Mar 2008
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Stoke area
Hey,

My daughters is a little over 10 months.

We're teaching her as much as possible, she's nearly walking already, climbing stairs, we're teaching her basic sign language and she loves books, us counting or speaking the alphabet.

she's finally learnt that a phone isn't to be eaten and she's using her apps (animals sounds, rattles, popping bubbles etc) but I was wondering if anyone has any suggestions for app's or websites that are great for kids and learning? Any teaching methods that should be looking in to.

A lot of the app's we have a free ones that have adverts so often you'll find her ending up hitting that by accident. :(

I know we've a lot of smart people on here, and some must have kids so would like to hear how you went about teaching your child :)
 
Stick an ipad in front of her with youtube.
My little girl is simply amazing on ours, she finds her way around knows where everything is and if we clear history she knows which one of her favourites to pick to then go searching for others that she likes. She sings, counts and says the alphabet along with a lot of the clips.
 
My sister works on illustrations and stuff like that for kids, she's done some apps and books, this is one she has done for the storycloud website and there are quite a few of them on there to check out, I also think they are ipad/tablet friendly:

http://www.storycloud.co.uk/#/story/talent/play

Nosy Crow are also quite well known as an app maker for kids:

http://nosycrow.com/

They make ipad apps.

Hope that's of some help, not exactly highly educational but still great for young minds to absorb.
 
estebanrey said:
Hmmm, the responses so far seem less about educating your kids and more finding something to shut them up and get them off your back for 5 minutes.
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1 post about bitezise and one about using an ipad.

What exactly is your issue with that?
 
we decided not to go the sign route as i have read that it can slow down speech. if they find a way to communicate they often dont learn to speak as quick.

i have a 1 year old boy. not interested in books apart from pulling them off the shelves or there is an audio button on it (moo sounds etc)

he is walking very well though and speaking a lot more, enough so we can understand a few words and names.

boys are too interested in chasing dogs (ours is always knackered poor thing) and physical things at first. i can see his engineering mind hard at work (im a software engineer, dad was an electrical engineer) so he is constantly assessing things and trying to see how they work.

i wouldnt dare let him near my laptop or iphone as he is too boisterous at the moment. maybe an ipad might be good in the future though.

i havent really spend too much time on the education route. im more playing with bricks etc and walking around with him.

sorry, been **** all use to you here lol
 
we found using flash cards with my son really useful, and still do with number and word recognition. We'd write a few different numbers on cards and place them around the room, and ask him to go and collect certain ones. He enjoyed being able to see how fast he could run to get them, and obviously there was the fact that he was picking the right ones.
He also liked (and his little sister does too) the range of Orchard Toys stuff you can get which incorporated playing games with learning.

I've not really found anything on a tablet or a mobile for learning that has been any good, other than a welsh/english dictionary, and thats more for me! He knows that there are games on it, so wants to play racing cars rather than doing anything particularly useful/educational! He is four now though, so I guess thats to be expected.
 
realBabelfish said:
we decided not to go the sign route as i have read that it can slow down speech. if they find a way to communicate they often dont learn to speak as quick.

i have a 1 year old boy. not interested in books apart from pulling them off the shelves or there is an audio button on it (moo sounds etc)

he is walking very well though and speaking a lot more, enough so we can understand a few words and names.

boys are too interested in chasing dogs (ours is always knackered poor thing) and physical things at first. i can see his engineering mind hard at work (im a software engineer, dad was an electrical engineer) so he is constantly assessing things and trying to see how they work.

i wouldnt dare let him near my laptop or iphone as he is too boisterous at the moment. maybe an ipad might be good in the future though.

i havent really spend too much time on the education route. im more playing with bricks etc and walking around with him.

sorry, been **** all use to you here lol
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Completely agree with the signing, i believe it set our boy back with talking, it was great at first 'hes hungry hes putting one finger in his mouth' but then he didnt need to talk because his method of communicating got him what he wanted. Thankfully hes caught up with the curve. Hes 3 now and we cant shut him up.

Lego and playmobil stuff is great.
 
thedinks said:
Completely agree with the signing, i believe it set our boy back with talking, it was great at first 'hes hungry hes putting one finger in his mouth' but then he didnt need to talk because his method of communicating got him what he wanted. Thankfully hes caught up with the curve. Hes 3 now and we cant shut him up.

Lego and playmobil stuff is great.
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Not a personal experience, but I know someone who has shared the same senitments - the signing is good at first but it makes them lazy about learning to talk. I'd be wary of this technique from what I've heard.
 
I read and tell stories to mine. I don't try and forcefeed them for brain foie. At 10 months playing with you and having stories should do the trick.
 
Relax!!!! Enjoy time with the kids!!! Don't worry about pushing them on or teaching them specific things - just do what come naturally is what I would suggest.

Let them get on with life generally and they learn loads through day to day interaction in general.

My 5 year old boy has just started school and has already been given extra reading working as his reading is at the standard of a 9 year old according to the teacher.

We never gave him stuff to read, he just picked up books and started reading them. He goes to bed with 10-15 books a night and reads bit from each one and falls asleep.

We've never given him anything to read!
 
thedinks said:
Completely agree with the signing, i believe it set our boy back with talking, it was great at first 'hes hungry hes putting one finger in his mouth' but then he didnt need to talk because his method of communicating got him what he wanted. Thankfully hes caught up with the curve. Hes 3 now and we cant shut him up.

Lego and playmobil stuff is great.
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:) im looking forward to getting my old lego out :) still a while off as he is 1 :(

at the moment i just try to build huge towers with those wood blocks things and let him knock them down. i feel like im a city planner and he is Godzilla! :D
 
Well I've got 5 kids the eldest in the the states on a computing scholarship at Carnegie Mellon and the youngest barely walking. So I'm going through it and have been through it. I've also spent most of my life working with children partly assessing developmental levels etc.

I think what you need to accept is that in the early years upto 6-7 then children learn best through informal play rather than directed learning. You can play games where you talk about the colours of the cars you go past etc make things a game rather than anything rigid. Get into the habit of reading from the off - but remember we teach kids at school a particular way - so if you don't know what phonics are look it up. Look up the EYFS - early years foundation stage this is what your child will be aiming to meet by the age of 5 when they start key stage 1. Remember it's not just books and facts and knowledge but social learning. EYFS covers from babies to nursery so it will go through all the developmental stages. Here's a link to it: http://media.education.gov.uk/assets/files/pdf/e/eyfs statutory framework march 2012.pdf

Here's some of my hints:

Don't push technology too soon - it has its place but screens are not so good for children's eyes although small amounts are fine.
Don't push your child to learn - lead them. I've seen far to many burnt out kids of over-bearing parents.
Don't expect them to meet every theoretical milestone on time. Children haven't read the medical development books they don't care for them they are all individual.
Encourage success never punish failure.
Never push children to walk us medics don't give a stuff as long as they can do it by 1.5 years of age - "Congratutions maam you got your child walking by 6months when their bones couldn't cope with the weight ..."
Get down at their level and play at their level so you can maintain eye contact and they can see your non-verbal communication unless you are rollicking them then stand up and make the difference quite clear.
Make a big deal of the rewards you want them to have "If you are a good boy you can earn some mango" said with the appropriate enthusiasm will yield the same results as if said about chocolate just this way you get the good behaviour and the good diet.
And most of all let them learn from you by your example - don't eat junk in front of them, read, don't watch TV all the time etc (I am sure most people do this but an awful lot don't).
 
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Have to agree on the technology point. Yes, by all means let them use touch screens and the like, but its also good for them to do all the traditional stuff like using crayons on paper, and that little bit more physical to encourage hand-eye coordination. And less expensive when they break them!
 
a lot of very good points from Xordium I fully agree to....

Some additional points when our daughter was little:

we limited "screen time" with our daughter that's TV and PC very heavily at that age, absolutely no TV or Computer until she was approx 2 years old. Between 2-5 years she was gradually allowed more time up to 30 minutes and now she is 6years approx 1hour screen time max per day (that's also the reason why I can't recommend any apps for this age group)...and yes it was sometimes a pain to stick to this as "screen parking" works so well and is very tempting.

What we found more important was to encourage her to try different things like various foods or physical activities like singing, swimming, listening to music, eating properly etc. Also important to us was to pass on the love for books and reading, which seems to have worked very well.

at the end of the day their learning is your investment as parent, you have to live by example and spend quality time with you child. You will figure out quickly where your kid is good at and how to raise their curiosity. I also think it is important to challenge you kids and push their boundaries as this helps to develop their self esteem when they succeed (example going down a slightly scary, steep slid etc) . Our target with our daughter was never really to develop her in a "little Einstein", but more to support her to become an active, happy and confident child who likes to learn......so far we were successful.
 
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