Thursday, March 31, 2011 1) Baby’s brains are great
statisticians. Between the ages of 6-9 months, they listen to
everything they hear around them, and are able to calculate what
sounds are important to pay attention to in the language they
are hearing. For example, is the difference between “r” and “l”
important? Yes in English, no in Japanese. 2) Babies who grow up
in language rich environments enter Kindergarten with four times
the vocabulary of babies who grow up in language poor
environments. Children who have a higher vocabulary will have an
easier time learning how to read. And those children who grew up
in language-poor environments *never* catch up in their reading
ability. 3) Babies learn through interacting with people. Mom,
dad, Aunt, Uncle, Grandparents, and every other person a baby
spends time with, is a learning experience for baby. Television
does not interact with babies, and even when babies look like
they are fascinated with a television, they have found that
babies do NOT learn anything f