Teach Your Baby to Read

Can My Baby Read?

My Baby Can Read! Before you think I have gone crazy, it really is possible for babies and young children to read. Scientific research has shown that babies can see and recognize words and even associate them with objects in babies as young as 8 months! We are going to talk about the various options available for early learning and the best programs to help your baby or young child to read.

With the phenomenal success of the Your Baby Can Read program and their regular infomercials on TV one would think that early learning baby reading programs are a recent phenomenon. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Baby Reading and early learning methods have been around since 1980 and the two main approaches can be classified into

1. Whole Word approach also known as look and see and sight approach where words are associate with images and babies and young children. Babies learn to read and pronounce by saying whole words rather than just letters.
2. Phonics is the other approach for reading. In Phonics babies learn to read by learning to pronounce each letter and then try to pronounce the whole word by putting the letters together.

The Your Baby Can Read program is based on the whole word approach and in this article we are going to talk about how you can help your baby to read by using the Your Baby Can Read program.

We picked the Your Baby Can Read program because it's easily the most popular early learning program for babies which uses the "whole word" approach. Your Baby Can Read uses a combination of sliding word cards, videos and games to help your baby read. Dr Robert Titzer who developed Your Baby Can Read calls it the "multi sensory" approach.

Your Baby Can Read is aimed at babies in the age group of 3 months to 5 years.

Your Baby Can Read Package

1. 5 Your Baby Can Read DVD's with Sliding Word Cards
2. 50 Word Game Cards
3. 82 Double Sided Word Cards
4. A Parent's Guide to help Parents use the Your Baby Can Read program
5. 5 Lift a Flap Books

Difference between Your Baby Can Read and other early learning programs: Where Your Baby Can Read differs from other learning programs such as LeapFrog's Talking words Factory in that it uses the whole word approach to learning where you don't just say an alphabet but whole words and associate them with objects and people. LeapFrog's Talking Words Factory on the other hand uses a different approach by teaching alphabet pronunciation and sounds and children slowly try and put the alphabets together when asked to say a word.

How effective is Your Baby Can Read? While there has been a lot of debate which of the two approaches i.e. Phonics vs Whole Word, Your Baby Can Read which uses the whole word approach is undoubtedly an excellent learning tool. As the very popular TV infomercials have shown babies as young as 6 months have shown excellent progress .

How does Your Baby Can Read work? Babies learn to read by viewing words with their associated objects such as a picture of a Cat next to the word Cat or a picture of a Chair next to the word Chair over a period of time after repeated viewing kids start associating the words with the images and within a few weeks you will be able to see them point to the objects when the word is shown to them and vice versa.

Your Baby Can Read was developed by Dr Robert Titzer for his daughter Aleka after he was disappointed with the current learning programs for young children and babies. Impressed with the success and progress Aleka made, he expanded his program and has now been featured on The Learning Channel, CNN, Good Morning America and 100's of other TV programs. Their infomercials run on pretty much every channel and pretty much all of us have seen them on TV at some point or the other.

Dr. Titzer believes that there is a certain period in every baby from birth till about 4 years when a baby's mind is most receptive for learning languages. Dr. Titzer calls this "a window of learning". So while it's too late for you and me and we have already missed our "window of learning" ;) we can still make sure that our babies learn better and faster with the Your Baby Can Read series.

Whether you decide to use the Your Baby Can Read program or some other learning program, make sure you give your baby the right environment to learn. Babies are nervous and need to be comfortable before they can start learning so it's important that you give them that security. Babies need nurturing and in the first year of their birth they need the assurance that their physical and emotional needs will be met you their parents.

There are a lot of skeptics of early learning programs who say that babies that young can't really learn to read. Babies can definitely learn at a very young age, they are learning all the time, they learn to recognize their parents, their favorite toys, they know when you are happy and when you are angry. Learning is not really very different and Your Baby Can Read uses that to teach babies to associate words with objects visually. Your Baby Can Read is an excellent program and once your children are done with it, I am pretty sure you will join the growing list of parents who proudly say My Baby Can Read!