Like most of you with children I have ambitious hopes for my recently turned two year old son (who can already distinguish a triangle, rectangle, circle, square, oval and semi-circle by their names).
Anyway, anyone have any advice, methods or know of any resources to peak their child’s interest to learn?
books with both words and colorful pictures.
things he can build with his hands, stuff that needs a screwdriver to put together
building blocks
crayons
Very little television and video games that are nothing more than distractions from learning
Depends what kind of videogames. I play 9 characters at once on a private everquest server with a bunch of grad students. I use macros written in C++ and a local server so they can talk to eachother.
I’d just stay away from rigid content, like consoles. The advantages of PC games are the modding community. Even if you don’t contribute, you get to see how creative the human mind can be. That in itself is invaluable education. You have to know what kinds of things are possible before you yourself can attempt them.
I would say to read him books. I don’t know how old children should be before you read them books. I’m bad with ages. But if you think he’s old enough, I believe reading stories before I went to bed at night helped me the most in life because it gave me an appreciation for writing and taught me how to make up stories for myself. This world wouldn’t be anything without creativity.
“Depends what kind of videogames. I play 9 characters at once on a private everquest server with a bunch of grad students. I use macros written in C++ and a local server so they can talk to eachother.”
“I’d just stay away from rigid content, like consoles. The advantages of PC games are the modding community. Even if you don’t contribute, you get to see how creative the human mind can be. That in itself is invaluable education. You have to know what kinds of things are possible before you yourself can attempt them.”
Fair enough. I can’t really talk much because I do a little video gaming myself. With the Xbox of course!
Read to them. As much as you can. And then some.
Leap Frog has some good educational videos that worked well for my kid…Letter Factory for now, and Word Factory when your boy is a bit older.
Good post. Video games are like most things–in moderation they can be good, but in excess they can take over your life.
My deep and abiding interest in Roman history was sparked when I was thirteen by the game Rome: Total War. Within a year of buying that game, I had written a fifty page essay on the Punic Wars (and within two years, a seventy page essay on Marcus Tullius Cicero). I also got into the modding community and learned a lot about computer stuff and game design.
Needless to say, it irks me when people dismiss video games as mindless entertainment for immature people.
Read! Reading is so absolutely important to develop proper scholarly skills. Get them interested in Victorian era books, which is what my grandparents did for me, and then they’ll be able to pick up a lot of vocabulary that most kids in their generation won’t even be able to comprehend.
Personal favorites of mine are Greek history/mythology, anything related to Anthropology, Israeli history, World War II, German history/fairy tales, Christian history, and American history.
To learn what?
The desire to learn comes natural. I think the trick is to not squash that desire.
Which parents and school can do by accident when the child is not learning the “right” things.
if most kids in the child’s generation ‘won’t even be able to comprehend’ the words, that I would have to question the value in learning them.
@Joe a rich vocabulary enhances your comprehension, introduces you to new ideas and in general expands your conceptual framework.
In short, it makes you wiser. Even if you are alone.
That’s my take on it 
QFT.
I always had an interest in learning, despite school trying to destroy my love of learning.
Right from the first day, I always had a philosophy of not letting my schooling get in the way of my education (I didn’t quite articulate it quite so well when I was 4/5 y/o, but the principle has been the same all along).
Just don’t ruin learning for a child, and read to them a lot. Once they can read, make sure they have a lot of interesting books to read.
Above all: avoid mistakes like sending them to terrible schools, daycare etc - and don’t stress out too much about it yourself.
What I did around the time that I began dominating in school was logic puzzles. You get a few clue statements, make a (data) table and put x in the boxes until the truth is deduced. Have him do that 24/7 along with chain memorization and he will be smarter than you by age 10. Forget about facts and figures; that is ephemeral.
Also, never reward him for being “right” or punish him for being “wrong” and make sure that nobody else does either. Unless you want him to have the intellect and personality of a poodle, like most kids…
teach him to question everything and everyone, including you.
You don’t need to undermine the kid’s epistemology. That’ll turn him into a little skeptic.
Just make sure he has a base in critical thinking and then he’ll call the shots himself.
Pick up a copy of Human Action by Ludwig von Mises for him. I heard it’s an excellent read for the young mind.
His new obsession is elephants and triceratops! Since I am going to home school him I haven’t really even worried about teaching him ABC’s and other trivial stuff, I just want to think of thought provoking ways to make him “wow”! Eventually we’ll get into some formal stuff and I would like to take him to college with me on the nights I teach just to sit-in and listen. Anyway, what’s some wow type moments for a toddler or young child?
Easy. Go to a science center.
Edit: More like a museum/aquarium for that age. I’ve been to quite a few of these. Some theme parks these days have them as well. The best aquarium I’ve ever seen by far was at Alton Towers.
Duplo (and then Lego) are fantastic. So are plain wooden building blocks (and to a lesser extent mechano and konnex). In fact, I feel like playing with them now…