Creating Environment for Reading

In the previous post, I wrote about the importance of environment in learning a skill. I want to share now what I did to create an environment suitable and fertile for the development of reading skills of my daughter.

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Creating Environment Instead of Teaching

Children are curious. They want to figure things out by themselves. They want to understand the world they live in. This is a very basic human nature or rather human brain's nature. To get a strong evidence of this fact, we just have to watch babies and pay serious attention to what they do. Their brain is continuously picking up information, matching patterns, sorting and storing it for later use...

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Reading Letters on the Fridge

One day she was standing on a stool and reaching for the fridge magnets that were stuck near the fridge top. I was just standing there behind her when a thought came. The word "SAMSUNG" embossed on fridge had caught my attention. "Lets try spelling this word to her", I thought. Since she had been playing with [capital letters picture tray](/parenting/toys-gift-toddler-baby-kids/english-alphabets-...

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Dog On the Street

We were descending from the mall stairs, after buying grocery, when my daughter (2 years) caught sight of a dog on a pavement nearby. She got excited and started screaming "bow-wow". She started pushing my finger towards the dog. But I did not move, at least initially. I could feel the resistance gripping my body. My conditioned mind started giving me many reasons to not pay any attention to my ...

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Thinking Before Shouting "No, don't!"

The other day, my daughter (1.5 years) caught hold of a measuring tape (the steel one). She started investigating it, pulling the tape out and twisting it in the process. Instinctively, I was about to take it away thinking that she will damage it but her sincere, inquisitive manner kept myself from acting on that instinct. As a moment passed, I realized that it is not an expensive or delicate ...

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Letting Her Play With Sugar

My daughter (1.7 years) came into kitchen while I was fixing breakfast in the morning and as usual asked me, pointing upwards to the slab and making insistent sounds, to be seated on the slab so she could see the action clearly. As always I lifted her up and seated her besides me on the slab. Once there, she started looking for something interesting and took notice of the sugar container and ...

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Ingesting a Button Battery

It was a regular day at home. I was preparing meal and my daughter (1.5 years) was playing with her pull along ducks. She soon got bored of it and picked up her toy phone lying nearby and started playing sounds on it. With the sounds she was dancing and roaming here and there. Soon my work got finished and I saw that the toy phone was lying on the floor with its battery cover open. Its 3 button ...

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Toilet Training

Toilet Training is something which brings about a good deal of anxiety in new mothers. As soon as I became a mother, I started hearing advises which more or less sounded like "Start training her from now itself. My kids were almost totally potty trained by the time they are a year old. They never wet the bed!". And thus the pressure starts building up - the pressure to be a good mother who is ...

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A Beautiful Parent-Child Relationship

I have grown up watching the famous TV serial "Udaan". It has remained one of my very favourite serials. Watching its DVD recently, I took notice of something which did not touch my concerns previously. Although parenting is not really the theme of this serial, yet there are some scenes which really made me think as a parent. Below are three clips from the serial, each focusing on parent-child ...

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