Edutainment!?! (Repost from THT)

I'm getting irritated with "educational" television today and rather than pointing out my pet peeves to the little man as he enjoys his favorite show, I thought I'd vent with some other Moms.

This morning on a new show on Public T.V. called "Super Why" (which was a really big hit with the Little Man) they were teaching reading. Cool. However, one of my biggest beefs with most shows that teach reading is that they always show uppercase letters and teach the names of the letters. I am always left wonderin' a super WHY??? Hello! Those two things make learning to read MORE DIFFICULT! (Yeah, it was a big revelation to me too.)

When I finally discovered a program called Zoo Phonics, it was a big "Aaaahhhha" moment. I was always into phonics, but I always taught letter names first too, because that's the way I'd seen it all my life.

Here's what the brilliant ladies at Zoo Phonics say:

"One of the primary premises of Zoo-phonics is that we teach the lowercase
letters and their sounds first. That is because they are both needed 95% of the
time in reading and writing. ..when dealing with letters, it [preschool] is too
early to show children two different forms for the same letter sound (B and b).
Multiply two times 26 and you have 52 differrent shapes to master. It is just
too much right now for young children. Be patient - it will all come - they will
have wonderful mastery of these concepts, rather than confusion."

(and NO, this is not an ad.) Princess S's kindergarten teacher used this program, and she learned all her letter sounds in 1 month! She was reading in the first quarter of kindergarten. With no help from Mom, because I'm not really that kind of mom - plus I was Teaching Full-Time at the same school she was attending. When she started reading to me, I had to go ask her teacher what she'd been doing to get those amazing results.

I started doing it with my special ed kids, 4th - 6th grade mostly w/ Down Syndrome, and they had the letter sounds down in about 6 weeks. Anywhere from 40 - 96%!!! Plus, they retained it. When I tested them the first day back from Summer vacation, with no review, every child was at almost the same percentage they left at. Unbelievable results!! Especially considering that many of those kids had been drilled on letter names for years and just weren't getting it! (Want to know why? Email me at lotsostuff at hotmail dot com, and I will gladly expound on my theories. LOL!)

Well, Duh! It totally makes sense doesn't it? Look at this sentence and count the capitals, then count the lowercase letters used. Be real, you don't need to count it to see that we use a HUGE amount of lowercase compared to uppercase. So why is just about every letter set you purchase comprised completely of uppercase letters? WTH!?! Also, why did those idiots who wrote/produced Super Why? choose to spell out
pee-el-ay-why-dee-ay-tee-eee
instead of sounding out
p/l/ay/d/ay/t/
???

Okay, moving on to Go Diego, Go! They taught the small children to say "Pigmy Marmaset" and then when baby Pigmy Marmaset sustained an injury, they frickin' called it a BOO-BOO!!!!! WTH!?! I despise baby talk words. If they can say Pigmy Marmaset, they can say scrape, cut, puncture wound, or pulminary embolism. Keep it clear and concise, but baby talk is just idiotic!

On a happier note...If you thought that my toddler kitchen project (part 1, part 2) was cute, check this one out! I saw it at Costco yesterday! Holy cow, it's darling! If I were rolling in dough, I'd dump my project and snap this baby up in a second!