First Recognized Word????

Last week I purchased the "Your Baby Can Read" dvd set/learning system. Tom and I have been faithfully following it since it came in the mail on the 23rd-3 days ago. We've made sure that Andrina has watched the started video 2x a day and we play with the sliding word/picture cards with her and I read her the starter book at least once a day as instructed. I'm really, really hoping that this system will work and Andrina will be an early reader. I've got good expectations as I researched the developer and his system before I ordered the kit and his studies and system (published in real peer-reviewed journal articles) are legit.

Well, nothing beats personal experience as validation. Tonight when I was reading Andrina the starter book, we got to the page with the word "elephant", then you lift up the flap and there is a picture of an elephant (the essence of how the system works-pairing the picture with the word). Well, at the top of the inside of the flap is a sentence suggesting an activity with the word repeated. Ok, long explanation but here's my point: when I lifted the flap to expose the picture and the sentence was also visible, Andrina pointed to the word "elephant"! Yes, that was the picture she saw and she pointed to the word elephant! I was so incredibly excited at that moment I can't describe it. I'm sure she recognized the word I had just shown her and spoken, that it was not a coincidence.

Now, you could say that she just saw the word "elephant" and had memorized it and pointed to it again when she saw it and the picture. Well, that is exactly the point. I think after being exposed to the word "elephant" and the picture of the elephant many, many times over the past 3 days, she recognized it because she is beginning to memorize the general shape of the abstract symbols that spell out the word that readers recognize as "elephant".

I'm keeping my fingers crossed and I'm continuing on with the system. That after 7 months of 2x daily viewing (each view is only 22 minutes) and us using the cards and books with her, that she will have learned early reading.