We've been watching LeapFrog: Letter Factory on a near constant rotation this week (thanks Teaching My Baby to Read for the suggestion). And even while TV's supposed to be the devil for little ones, it just hammers stuff home in a way that I can't do. What took me months to accomplish (singing our ABCs and recognizing uppercase letters - never mind sounding out those letters) this video has accomplished in about a week. We're also sounding out all the letters now and can tell the difference between upper and lowercase. The box is God. (Obviously it's a tag team effort but used in moderation I am such a fan. I give credit to General Hospital for teaching me what persona non grata meant 20 years ago when some slutty blonde temptress got kicked out of a party).
Even B.'s encyclopedic dinosaur knowledge got a boost from watching Dino Dan. We knew all the run of the mill dinosaurs - T. Rex, brachiosaurus and triceratops - but now he can tell the difference between a compsagnathus and a corythosaurus (I had to Google those just to get the right spelling), he knows the difference between carnivores and herbivores and is learning about the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous timeline. So I'll say it once again, TV rocks!
TV has its merits but I think some credit also goes to a child's readiness, i.e. he's some months older than when you started singing ABCs and has become more interested/aware of the meaning of letters. He's smart and curious and ready to absorb all this stimulating programming.
ReplyDeleteJackson wakes up every morning demanding, "FROGS! FROGS!" :)
ReplyDeleteOK, in moderation...AND with parental reinforcement. But I still love TV!
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