anZel/Arden

Archive for the ‘Education’ Category

baby DVD and videos == no good?

Read this post from Mark Andreessen of Netscape and Opsware fame. The link to the Reuters news doesn’t seem to work but very interesting read..

Recordings that claim to stimulate baby brain development may actually slow vocabulary development in infants if they are overused, U.S. researchers reported on Wednesday.

For every hour per day spent watching baby DVDs and videos, infants aged 8 to 16 months understood an average of six to eight fewer words than babies who did not watch them, Frederick Zimmerman of the University of Washington and colleagues found. …

“The most important fact to come from this study is there is no clear evidence of a benefit coming from baby DVDs and videos, and there is some suggestion of harm,” Zimmerman said in a statement.

“The bottom line is the more a child watches baby DVDs and videos, the bigger the effect. The amount of viewing does matter.”

Zimmerman and colleagues conducted random telephone interviews with more than 1,000 families in Minnesota and Washington with babies and asked detailed questions about television and video viewing.

Parents of the 8- to 16-month-olds were asked how many words like “choo-choo,” “mommy” and “nose” their child understood. …

“The results surprised us, but they make sense. There are only a fixed number of hours that young babies are awake and alert,” said Andrew Meltzoff, a psychologist who worked on the study.

“If the ‘alert time’ is spent in front of DVDs and TV, instead of with people speaking in ‘parentese’– that melodic speech we use with little ones — the babies are not getting the same linguistic experience,” Meltzoff added.

“Parents and caretakers are the baby’s first and best teachers. They instinctively adjust their speech, eye gaze and social signals to support language acquisition. Watching attention-getting DVDs and TV may not be an even swap for warm social human interaction at this age. Old kids may be different, but the youngest babies seem to learn language best from people.”

Dr. Dimitri Christakis, a pediatrician at Seattle Children’s Hospital Research Institute who worked on the study, said parents frequently asked him about the value of such videos.

“The evidence is mounting that they are of no value and may in fact be harmful,” Christakis said.

in search of day care (#2; non-cliff note version)

Many people are curious about our childcare situation. Most are surprised that anZel is still at home and that Grandma Helen is still taking care of him. Frankly, I am surprised that Grandma lasted this long provided that she only took care of me and my brother full time 67 days each. That was the legal maternity leave then.

Lately, we have drummed up our effort in our childcare search because Grandma really needs a break; anZel can benefit in a more structured environment and learn how to share with others (his days of being #1 in the house is numbered, more on that later); and Grandma really deserves a break.

We have gone with recommendations from friends, newspaper and web ads. I did my homework by searching the net for appropriate questions for daycare before we visited our first daycare. dAd and I were only permitted to visit this place because she was afraid we would disturb her routine. The lady gave us a tour of the place while four or five kids sat and strapped to a row of boasters. They all ate their food diligently. A few even took time to address us. This reminds me of what prison would be like one day if I don’t send anZel to a daycare soon. This was a home daycare. The younger children are luckier as they get to play in the living room with a bay window. There was plenty of light. The older kids gets to stay at the family faces the backyard. There is hardly any light coming thru even at 11 am. Compared to our house where anZel has free reign of cabinets, space and attention, this wasn’t the place I wanted to send him even it came with a recommendation from a friend. The first one I visited. I was shocked and confused about my emotion when I walked out of the daycare crying. There was nothing wrong with that daycare. My expectations were terribly skewed. I was hoping we could find the same exact environment as home for anZel. This isn’t realistic.

So off we go again to look for more. In the meantime, I ask parents whenever I can for daycare references. Most parents are generous about sharing the information. There was one who recommended a place to us. We then find out that they pulled their kids out because they didn’t like the place. There was also a mum who refused to provide the name of her childcare lady even though she and her son love the place. She would “ask” her if she would take anZel in. Before she asked, she told me that anZel is too young to go to her lady. They are all a bunch of two year old. He would be too young to join in. I wasn’t surprised when she called a couple weeks later saying her lady wouldn’t take anZel.

I have heard that some parents visit close to a hundred daycares before selecting one. We haven’t gone that far and hope that we don’t have to do that in order to find one we like. So far, we have what we find a wide variety of daycare experience. Here are some of my observations: a center that smells like the hospital (it was VERY clean); nervous daycare provider asking us if we have visited other places (duh!), if it would be convenience for us to drop off our son to their daycare (DUH!), claims to speak Cantonese and Mandarin but couldn’t really speak neither of them correctly (DOH!), childcare provider discourages us to visit or give surprise visit…we should trust her, children provider who won’t let us meet other parents and would only let us visit before the kids get there, childcare provider has a hard time remembering how many kids she takes care of.

The most comical one was last Friday when we visited a daycare near our house. The teacher told us we should visit at 11 SHARP so we can see how the kids learn. Fantastic! The teacher opened the door with a vacuum tube in his hand (check) and told us where we should sit. The three of us sat in miniture chairs and watched him give his lessons. “Children, we are going to learn (in Chinese) the alfabet (in what seems to be English). What is (in Chinese) alFAbet (in Chinglish)?” “ABCs” the children shouted. He brought out a three-ring white 2” binder and flipped to plastic covered printout of A (no colour, just a white outlined capital “A” and lower case “a”) and an apple. “Children, what is this? (in Chinese)” Children shouted in “A”. As he closed the three ring binder, other materials fell out and one of the children started to burst into a laugh. The other children followed. The class of twelve children was in uproar. At his point, the teacher drummed the vacuum tube on the floor and said “Quite” (in Chinglish). The class was back in order except Marcus. “MARCUS, sit properly (in Chinese), pAi attention (in Chinglish).”

I think dAd summed it well. We would like anZel to learn his languages from native speakers in a stimulaing bright environment and will be able to play outside daily. As I sit on this idea of finding the right place for anZel, I am looking for similar home environment with opportunities to learn and grow for him. There is no place like home. He will always come home to us.

in search of day care

anZel’s 15 months now and it’s about time to kick him out of the house!! beeber and I really wants him to have some structure or routine in his daily life, instead of the do-whatever-you-like-during-whatever-time type of routine. Well, the only routine he has really is to sleep around 8:30-9pm. (I am also secretly hoping that we make the feeding issue someone else’s problem.

We’ve started looking at some of the day cares around here. Most of the day cares aren’t that great. I am starting to think our requirements are too stringent.

1. Given that Mandarin is the official language in China, we wanted anZel to learn Mandarin. So we wanted to find a place where they speak good Mandarin. Half-a** mandarin-speaking day cares are definitely no-go. This requirement essentially limits us to only Chinese day care places.
2. We don’t want half-a** English speaking places either. We are not worried that anZel won’t learn English. After all, we live in the good ol’ U S of A. What we don’t really want is anZel pick up “strange” accents. So if we visit a day care that speaks English to the kids and have a heavy accent, it’s a no go. (We visited one today and it really bugged us.)
3. We speak Cantonese at home and we do want anZel to continue to speak Cantonese. But same as #1 and #2, we don’t want anZel to pick up some “bad” Cantonese accent. So half-a** Cantonese speaking places are out.

Ok, by now you are probably calling us snobs and that our requirements are dumb. But hey, we just want the best for anZel. Many Chinese day care these days claim multi-lingual in order to attract parents. the unfortunate thing is that most of them have heavy “weird” accents in at least 1 language. Some even have problem with all 3!!

Aside from daily routines and languages, we also wanted anZel to have a place to learn.

4. The place has to provide structured education for the kids. We really do like day cares that provide some form of structured learning for kids. Most places provide a curriculum, but you really have to sit through one of them before you know how they teach. There’s a lot of places also claim to follow the MONTESSORI philosophy. Be sure you watch how the kids play and interact with the teachers.
5. As mentioned in #4, we would like to sit through a session or two to see how kids interact. Some of the Chinese places we have been to seems to not want parents to sit through the sessions. The excuse being that they don’t want the kids to be distracted. Well, I am sorry but I don’t think it’s fair for the parents to just “take your words for it.”
6. The place must be bright. Some of the day cares we saw are in fairly dark houses and we really prefer to find one that’s bright. We believe brighter places have happier kids.
7. It goes without saying the place must be clean. If I see carpets are all stained or got tons of black stuff on it, that place is out.
8. We would prefer to have a place where there’s outdoor activities. anZel’s been going out to the local park almost every day since he’s 3 months old. He loves going outside. We would hate to have him locked up in the house all day long.
9. Teacher to kids ratio must not exceed 1:4. We saw some places that have ratio of 1:6, which is crazy!! (I thought that’s illegal?)

let’s see..what else…

Signing to anZel

Being the over-achieving parents that we are, we started signing to anZel a couple of weeks ago.

According to some of the researchers, infants generally have no long term memory until they are five to six months old. That’s why at around 6 months it’s best time to start signing with babies. However, we’ve seen cases where infants starting signing back at four months!!

Not that we really expect anZel to sign back at 3-4 months, but the lil guy loves watching hand gestures. When I do the airplane sign to him, he watches very closely and follows my hand as it moves.

We bought a couple books from Amazon to give us an idea what to do..

We have also been using using these two sites to teach us signs that the books don’t teach us:

• ASL Pro
• ASL Browser

The only thing is that for some reason, some of the same words have different signs from these two sites. I have no idea why…maybe some ASL expert can explain that to me..

anZel’s going to Ohio

Last year way before anZel was born, we did a bit of research into saving for college.

Spent a bit more time the last couple of weeks doing more research into this area. We have finally decided that 529 college savings plans are probably the best way to go. The main reasons being

1. You can use the money for any public or private college
2. Earnings are tax deferred
3. You can transfer the money to a different beneficiary in case your first kid decides he doesn’t want to go to college
4. There are many plan choices, including fund choices as well as the state you can setup the plan
5. No penalty if you decide not to use the money for college (you do have to pay tax on the earnings though)

After much research into the 529 plans, we have decided to go with Ohio’s College Advantage plan. According to Saving For College, Ohio’s plan has the 5-cap ratings. We used the following criteria for comparison

1. fund selection
2. enrollment fee
3. account maintenance fee
4. program management fee

I’ve always liked Vanguard funds. They generally have the lowest management fees and above-average returns. So I was glad to see that Ohio’s plan had Vanguard funds. After comparing the various fees, Ohio turned out to have one of the lowest!

We also searched a bit and found the following links that offer 529 plan comparisons:

• Forbes
• Kiplinger
• CNN Money
• MSN Money Central

Note that Ohio’s not recommended by any of these comparisons. I have no idea why but maybe there were some changes to the Ohio plans after these comparisons that made it much more competitive.

So for now, this matter is settled.

Re: Saving for your kids’ college?

A friend responded to my college saving question. His suggestions is I-Bonds.

It seems like a pretty good vehicle and it’s appprently now paying 6.75%. It allows you to have tax deferred investment. With the Education Bond Program, you can even spend the money on educational related expenses, either for yourself or your kids, without paying any penalties or taxes.

However, the problem is that it has a fairly low income limit:

Tax Year 2005 Income Limits:
For single taxpayers, the tax exclusion begins to be reduced with a $61,200 modified adjusted gross income and is eliminated for adjusted gross incomes of $76,200 and above. For married taxpayers filing jointly, the tax exclusion begins to be reduced with an $91,850 modified adjusted gross income and is eliminated for adjusted gross incomes of $121,850 and above. Married couples must file jointly to be eligible for the exclusion.

Tax Year 2006 Income Limits:
For single taxpayers, the tax exclusion begins to be reduced with a $63,100 modified adjusted gross income and is eliminated for adjusted gross incomes of $78,100 and above. For married taxpayers filing jointly, the tax exclusion begins to be reduced with an $94,700 modified adjusted gross income and is eliminated for adjusted gross incomes of $124,700 and above. Married couples must file jointly to be eligible for the exclusion.

Saving for your kids’ college?

A recent email I sent to a bunch of my parent friends.

Hey all…

you guys seem to be responsible parents so I figure I ask a silly question.

as you know, we will have anZel sometime in Apr, and we would like to start thinking bout the college saving for him. I know I know…it’s 18 years away and I fully expect anZel to get full scholarship from Harvard so that we don’t have to pay a penny. however, just in case my plan to train him to be a genius fails, I like to have a plan C. (Plan B is for anZel to work and save his own college fund, but just in case that fails too)

I checked out the obvious choices like educational IRA and 529, etc. It appears no matter how I calculate it, to get a kid to a U like UC Berkeley, it will cost $215,000 ($25,000/year today with 6% increase year-over-year, 18 years from now).

(kewl ajax calculator: http://sfc.529calculators.com/sfc/csc.htm)

To save enough, with a 6% return on investment, we would have to save ~$500/month!!!

Is that for real!?!?

What do you think? What are you doing? any tips you can share?

Harvard Girl Liu Yiting

Started reading this book a couple of days ago. It’s very similar to the Carl Walter books about early child education. In fact, the mother of Liu Yiting was inspired by the The education of Karl Witte.

The Karl Witte book is an out-of-print book, even on Amazon! And the used ones are like $174!!

The ones (there appear to be multiple Carl Witte books in Chinese, partly because I think the Chinese publishers are trying to make $$ so coming out with multiple pretty-much-the-same books) that I’ve read are all Chinese versions.

If you have the opportunity to read this original book, definitely do so. It’s very much worth it!