My Baby Can Read! Does it work?

Have you seen the commercials for the DVD program that will teach your baby to read?  It has video of babies as young and 18 months reading words off of flash cards and from books.  I'll be honest, I saw these commercials and chuckled thinking "what sucker would fall for that!"  I wasn't sure how they did it but was convinced it must be a scam.  I saw this on TV a lot well before Maddie was born so I had kind of forgot about it until a few months ago when I had someone at church say in passing "my granddaughter does the My Baby Can Read videos and they really work."  I brushed it off as a typical Grandma comment - you know the ones, the "My grandbaby is the best grandbaby ever" comments.  Then I was talking to my long time BFF Brandi and she told me that she did the first video with her daughter Abby.  Abby is 2 and speaks very well and clear for a 2 year old.  This got me thinking of doing the videos just to help Maddie to start hearing words and hopefully start speaking.  I looked into the videos and they were a little pricey ($100 for entire set) but we were fortunate to have my mom buy them for Maddie for Easter.  So that brings me to the point of the next several blogs.  I decided to track Maddie's progress to let other mom's know if it really works.  I will give my honest unbias opinion and will hopefully even be able to post some videos.  I will try to blog weekly with the following:

• What we have done that week
• Any progress I have visibly seen - recognizing words, saying words, picking out words, etc.

I am finding that less people have heard of "My Baby Can Read" than I thought, so let me take a minute to explain what it is. "My Baby Can Read" is a systematic set of DVD's designed to teach infants/toddlers to read.  The program actually encourages parents to start this with their children around 3-4 months.  Children will watch the 1st DVD 1-2 times a day for a month, then move on to the next and watch it 1-2 times a day for two months, and so on (kit has a schedule).  They also have other cards and things to help with the video.  After the program children should be able to read the words with no help.  This is also supposed to help children read faster.  My mom told me she got it on Amazon but I can only seem to find ones with 4 DVD's, ours has 5. 

What the Kit Includes:
5 DVD set for older children & Parent DVD with Guide - The set for older Children has all 5 DVD's and it is listed as being for children ages 3-5, if you have older children you may want to check in to just getting this.  The Parent DVD has the creator talking about how it works and parents asking questions.  It also has his daughter who was the first to benefit from this program.  It was interesting.  There is also a Parents' Guide book that has how to use things and the schedule to follow.














5 DVD's -  I just realized these aren't in order, whoops!  The first video is the only one we have watched and it is about 20 minutes.  I am assuming they are all about this long.  Maddie does seem to enjoy the videos.  They suggest you watch them twice a day but we have only watched them once a day.

Book for Each Level - This is the book for the first DVD.  It is made so you can fold the book back to only see 1 page at a time.  The parts with words are actually flaps that lift either up or down that have the word on it.  So the left page would say Gorilla and then they would open the flap and see the picture.  We have done this a few times but not every day.

Sliding Flash Cards for Each DVD- These are really neat and Maddie loves them!  They have the word and then you pull the tab out and there is a picture.  They are front and back and have the main words from each section.  We don't do these every day either but since Maddie likes them so much we try to.  I go through them with her to make sure she doesn't tear them up but I do let her pull the tab out.

Plain Flash Cards with ALL Words for Each Level - These are just a few from the first DVD.  These are mainly for helping them recognize the word and have different games you can do to help your baby learn.  We haven't used these yet.  Another neat thing is that there are a few blank ones and an erasable marker so you can make your own words!  Once Maddie start's catching on i'm adding "Cowboys" :)

 












This was a little more lengthy than I planned but hopefully the future updates will be shorter.  I would love feedback from anyone who has used this, questions you may have about how it works, things you want to know specifically about our experiment or any other thoughts or comments you may have :)