How much time during the day or evening do you spend teaching your baby?

RobynandJason050706 · April 2009

anything from songs, abcs, numbers,shapes, etc.... i am just curious. I never know if i am trying to hard, doing to little just want to know what you all are doing? 12 - 14 month range.

7/04Bride · April 2009

I've been wondering the same exact question!! I feel like I'm not teaching DS nearly enough and I'm a teacher!!! I should be ashamed of myself. The one thing I know I've been good about is reading to DS, but you can never do too much reading, so I can always do more. I was actually thinking of setting aside a little bit of time during each morning to explicitly TEACH DS stuff.....colors, numbers, ABCs, like our own little preschool. Putting Sesame Street on actually reminds me of stuff that I can teach him.

Toni1019 · April 2009

Its not a matter of sitting down and doing it, I try and make it fun. Like when DS is sitting on my lap and insisting on poking my eye balls and sticking his fingers up my nose, I try and repeat each body part 50000000000 times. We have started the counting to 3, but we do the 1......2......3 then throw him in the air or something like that. He hasnt repeated any of it yet though.

With my oldest we did the same. When it came to colors, I taught him using Megablocks. I would ask him to get me a color, and if he brought the wrong one, I would say No thats "blue" or whatever color it was. He was such a fast learner and caught onto things fast. It will be interesting to see how DS#2 does.

RobynandJason050706 · April 2009

i am liking this thank you

MissBlush · April 2009

We're actually working on body parts right now. ?I ask her where different parts of her face are, and I do it several times a day. ?So far she consistently points to her nose, and sometimes her eyes or ears. ?Maybe 10-15 minutes?

We also sing songs at bath time. ?We do Itsy Bitsy Spider (which I do while I'm diapering and dressing her so she'll stay still), Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and the ABC song. ? We probably do about 10 minutes worth of songs a night at bath time.

We also have the 100 First Words book, which we read at bedtime. ?I ask her where certain objects are, and she points them out in the book. ?She can find the baby, ball, bottle, dog, strawberry, and maybe one or two other objects. ?We spend maybe 10 minutes on that book.

We haven't tried numbers yet. ?I tell her the colors of things throughout the day, but I haven't tried getting her to point out colors yet.?

JLSBWG · April 2009

I really try to teach him letters, numbers, animals, body parts, by reading to him, singing songs and general play. I teach him animals sounds sometimes while I am changing his diaper. He loves when we sing songs, so we are singing constantly. He loves the songs where there is hand motions. It has become such a part of our day that I have never stopped to think about how often I do it. He also is in daycare four days a week, so he is learning all these things there too.

jason&robin · April 2009

It's tough. DS loves books but he hates being read to. He just wants to play with the pages himself. I spend a lot of time singing songs and playing with him. I always sing to him when I am changing him or getting him dressed. DH plays a lot with him and does more active stuff like throwing balls and walking.

HeatherAA · April 2009

Well DD goes to school during the day where they go over letters, numbers, colors, shapes, etc during a "circle time" each day. Then each night we go over flashcards of objects and sometimes I'll just do the letter and word of each pictures, numbers, colors (when reading), she plays with fridge phonics at least 5-10 minutes just about every night. If she's willing to sit through all of this, then I will do it. I'd rather teach her a lot than not enough.

jennhawk · April 2009

I work it in throughout the day. When I'm dressing her, I'll say, "Let's put on your pink shirt now." When I give her her spoon, cup, or bowl at breakfast, I note the color as I hand it to her. If we see something at the park or on the walk, I stop and do the sign for it, and she often does it back. I talk to her in the grocery store, mall, car, etc. Lots of singing as well. Sometimes she's up for structured sitting and looking at a book together, and sometimes she just wants to be left alone with it.

I think the important thing is to not force them to sit down and do it, so they start hating learning before they even get to school.

Read2Me · April 2009

I don't explicitly "teach" Eva anything. ?At this age, children learn through experiencing and interacting. ?As long as you are talking to your child and playing together, your child will be learning. ?I am amazed at how much Eva has learned just from being read to and from talking to her as we play together. ?For example, she knows the names of at least a dozen animals and the sounds they make just from reading animal books, playing with stuffed animals and going to the zoo. ?

capecodbaby · April 2009

reading to him is the only "sit down and teach" that we really do. We are constantly teaching him every moment that we are with him - we go over body parts while bathing and changing - dancing now too. We say the color of just about everything that he is interested in (i.e. he loves trees right now - so we say that the tree is green, etc). He loves music so we sing a lot of made up songs that have body parts, colors, numbers, etc. He counts to three before we turn lights on an off, we count the number of steps when we are going up or down stairs. We count cars as they go by. The grocery store is our favorite - colors, shapes, numbers everything you need!

I could go on but the point is that rather than sit down with him and try to teach, we like to teach through experiences.

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