Your Child Can Discover

The Your Child Can Discover! Deluxe Kit includes 6 DVDs, 6 Lift-the-Flap Books, and one Music CD.

All of the topics (numbers, colors, logic patterns, geometric shapes, music, prepositions, and opposites) are covered on each DVD and the difficulty level increases with each disc.

Watch the Your Baby Can Discover/Your Child Can Discover videos at least several times a week.

Advance to the next step of the DVD series when your child appears to understand most of the concepts covered in the first video. Advance to the next volume of the series every month or two in most cases, and earlier if the child understands the concepts before that. It will likely take a month or two for most children aged three and older to learn most of the information on these videos. Babies may take about 2-3 months per video. It is very important to frequently review the videos and to do the activities suggested here to help your child learn the concepts.

Since this is for children from 3 months to 7 years of age, children will go through the schedule at different rates. Babies may be learning from this program for 2 years or more, as there is a lot of important content. A small percentage of children may know almost all of the information in Step 1. If that is the case, advance to Step 2 earlier than the recommended schedule.

After viewing the video, try acting out what we do in the videos. For instance, you can try using toys and other objects to make patterns.

Use the Your Child Can Discover books to help the child learn these topics. Ask the child questions and follow the instructions on the inside covers of the books.

Parents are strongly encouraged to reduce or eliminate entertainment-based TV shows or videos that have little educational value.

Follow the instructions in the books and enjoy teaching your child! Initially, focus on the words on the top of the flaps and only the main ideas from each page. As your child learns more from the videos and acts out what is on the screen, teach more of the concepts in the books.

Please use the Music CD while reading the music book some of the time. The CD encourages your child to sing and hum in pitch. Lift the flaps and turn the pages when you hear the appropriate sounds. Try your best to answer the questions and sing in pitch. Do this with your child many times until your child can do it independently. If you don’t sing that well, then let our professional singers demonstrate the pitch. Encourage your child to hum or sing in pitch and play the notes on a keyboard or piano as you read the book (when you are not using the CD).

Here are some specific suggestions for teaching colors and numbers

Colors:

Please read about the importance of teaching the shape bias before beginning to teach colors if you have a child who is 28 months of age or younger. Once babies figure out that the shapes of words generally provide more information about objects’ functions, then they learn novel words more efficiently. For this reason, it is more important to focus on sorting objects by shape than by color until your child learns the shape bias. If your baby is reading words where the words have the same background colors, fonts, and font colors, then your child has already learned the shape bias. If your child is under the age of 28 months and not yet reading words, then please sort objects by their shapes more than by their colors.

Color words are superordinate-level words as well as abstract. Ordinate-level words—such as “cup” and “chair”—name objects. Superordinate-level words are one category level above ordinate-level words—such as “dishes” or “containers” (for cup) and “furniture” (for chair). Superordinate words name groups of ordinate-level words. Superordinate-level words are generally more difficult to learn because prior knowledge is more important. For instance, to learn the word “furniture” one would need to have some understanding of the meanings of words such as “chair,” “bed,” “desk,” “table,” and other types of furniture.

The color “blue” doesn’t generally mean one specific shade or hue. Instead, “blue” refers to many specific shades and hues on the spectrum between green and purple. Each of these specific colors can also be lighter or darker making a very large number of possible blues. Cyan, navy, cobalt, and cerulean are distinct colors that are all blue. In addition to being a superordinate category of word, colors are also abstract concepts, making them even more difficult to learn for babies.

Imagine you are a young child and someone points to a navy shirt and says “blue.” The next time the child hears the word “blue,” the child may see someone pointing to a cyan colored book or a cobalt colored plastic chair. This makes it very difficult to learn colors and delays the child’s learning. When you teach colors, please do it in a logical or systematic manner. For example, you could place eight different pieces of paper next to each other that are all various colors of blue and say “All of these are blue papers. This one is cyan. This one is cobalt blue. This one is sky blue…” while pointing to each paper. You could do the same for green and other colors. Note: I would say the words “blue” and “green” with more emphasis. You can use inflection, volume, and pacing to emphasize different words and attract your baby’s attention. A rule that often applies is the rule of changing only one thing at a time. So, to teach “red” you could use eight different pieces of paper that are various colors of red and show your baby these red papers immediately after doing the same thing with blue and green. If you vary more than one aspect at a time, then there are more possible correct inferences that your baby could make—that would be similar to the example given above where people point to different shades on different objects and say “blue,” and it is not an effective way of teaching colors. Since there are more named colors of some colors than others, you would not need to follow this principle every time. However, following it some of the time should speed up the learning of the main categories of colors.

Another rule to follow is to use objects that have only one color. For example, a rubber duck may be mostly yellow, but it may have some black and some red. If so, then it is not initially as good for teaching the color “yellow.” When initially teaching the colors, use plastic toys, toy blocks, paper, fabric, or other items that are completely one color as much as you can.

We systematically demonstrate colors in the videos and books by varying certain items and keeping others constant.

Numbers:

The concept of number is understanding “how many.” Numerals are the symbols that represent quantities. In the first two videos, we focus on developing the child’s concept of number. In the third and fourth videos, we transition more toward understanding numerals while still focusing on developing the child’s concept of number of larger numbers. In the last three videos, we focus on helping the child read and understand the numerals. Young children understand small differences in quantities with no special training or experiences.   

Parents, frequently count to your babies and toddlers while you sort the laundry, set the table, walk to the mailbox, or do other daily activities. I suggest parents count aloud with the child when parents are thinking about numbers. Parents, please count when your child is taking steps, bites of food, sips while drinking, playing with toys, or doing numerous other daily activities.

Use number words when playing with your child. For example, if you are playing with blocks, you could say “You have five blue blocks and one yellow block on your mat. You have a total of six blocks! You have more blue blocks than I have. I only have three blue blocks.”

Develop one-to-one correspondences between people and objects or objects and objects. For example, you could say, “Here is a spoon for Daddy, here is a spoon for Mommy, and here is a spoon for [child’s name].” When you place a plate, fork, and cup by each spoon, you can quickly talk about it as you do it. There likely will be the same number of plates as forks, cups, and people when you are setting the table.

Please go to TheScienceOfEarlyLearning.com, YourBabyCanLearn.com, and InfantLearning.com for more tips.

More information coming soon!