As the Father of potentially the smartest 18 month old ever, I feel an obligation to share/brag to the world. I wish that I was about to brag about my hard efforts to teach Brielle, but in fact I am a mere observer. Janica has really worked hard with Brielle since she was born to help her learn. I am so thankful that Janica stays home to teach Brielle and I honestly can say that if Janica was not at home that Brielle would not be where she is right now. That is not meant to be a dig at working mothers, I admire mother both stay at home and working and think that each person/family must decide what is best for their family and situation. We have merely decided that it is important to us and our family to have Janica home and it is what works for our family. So that being said Janica has been amazing in teaching Brielle each and every day.
As a result of Janica's efforts Brielle loves to learn. She is always learning! I know that children at this age naturally observe and pick up things, but Brielle truly enjoys learning new things. Particularly she loves to learn number, letters and sign language. We try really hard to create a learning environment in our home. As a result we read a lot of books and do a lot of singing. I truly believe that reading books is where it all begins. I bet that in our home we read anywhere form 15-25 books per day. She loves to read.
Now for the real bragging……
Numbers
Brielle really picked up on numbers 1-4 a while back. She was very proficient with counting 1, 2, 3, and 4. That was a few months ago, but just the other night I was watching her and decided to count to 4…… so I thought. We go to 4 and she kept going! I was so impressed she made it to #8!!! We taped it as you can watch below. I feel bad that this video does not accurately reflect her counting as for some reason she skips 2 and 6, and in the video we are kind of “leading her along” but you get the point. Right now she only can count, she doesn’t recognize numbers yet, but that will come soon enough.
We started working on letters a while back and have slowly integrated new letters every so often. I really think that we could push letters a bit more, because she picks them up in about 5 minutes and they are committed to memory. She can correctly identify 8 letters right now. We have decided to randomly teach letters from the alphabet so has not to just teach her them in order. As of right now she knows A, B, C F, I, O, T and X. She loves to point those letters out whenever and wherever she sees them. Sorry no video....YET!
This is what I am most proud of. Every day she shows me new signs that I didn’t even know. I seriously have to ask Janica what this sign is and what that sign is. My daughter has a better grasp on a second language than I do! We initially decided to teach Brielle a few basic signs to help her communicate to us before she was talking. Over about the past 9 months she has picked up more and more sign language. Especially over the last 3 months she has really picked it, more than doubling her “sign vocabulary” Right now she knows over 30 different signs. She can recognize them and tell you what they are or you can ask her do a particular sign and she will. She will also see an object ad use the correct sign to tell you what the object is. For example she will see a tree outside and do the sign and tell you “tree”. I have heard many people say not to encourage sign language as it can inhibit speech development, but I don’t feel that is the case at all. Brielle doesn’t use signing as a way to communicate, but rather as a “trick” or just something that she enjoys doing and not a primary means of communicating. I seriously love how smart she is! Sorry no video....YET!
Well that is my bragging for the day! Sorry it was a long post but seriously do you expect a boasting father to be brief? I love being a Father and I take a lot of pride in my family. Thank you Janica for your constant hard work in our home. Here is a video of Brielle and Janica singing. Sorry no video of Brielle doing signs or letters, but I will post them soon.
