Teaching Animals

Glenn Doman has a book called "How to Give Your Child Encyclopedic Knowledge". While I have not read this book I think I understand the general concept. Since Doman believes our children are inherently smart, he believes we can start teaching them things that are "beyond their level" according to normal standards. With this in mind, I'm going to relate an experiment I have started with my Son.

Things you might need:
A book of animals- I really like, and would suggest "National Geographic Little Kids First Big Book of Animals".
A set of toy animals- I suggest Fisher-price animals because they have round, smooth edges and they're big enough that they don't cause a choking hazard for my son.
Youtube

A baby's attention span isn't always very long so I usually only did one or two animals a day. I loved the pictures in the National Geographic book and my son seemed to really like them as well. One caution with this book- it is not a board book. This means that you should always be there with him and doing your best to protect the pages until he learns how to treat books nicely and without eating them or ripping them. Anyways, I didn't read all the statistics for the animal but I would read most of what was on the page. Then I would find a youtube video to watch. This should be a short clip and should be watched with your child, pointing out the animals and trying to mimic the sounds (just do the best you can- even if it's awful, your child will find it amusing and will start to learn which of your animal sounds belongs with each animal). There were sometimes when I couldn't find one for the specific frog (or something else) in the book, so I just did frogs in general. Videos where it shows the animal making sounds or babies playing seemed to be a hit. My son really liked a polar bear clip I found and a lion clip I found. (I will attach a link for what I've found later). Then with the set of plastic animals- I bring them out when I can. I don't have a toy animal for every animal we encounter but when I do, I bring it out and let my son feel it, touch it, look at it and eat it.

As I read other books like "Where's Spot?" or "Animal Babies" (by Eric Carle- get the one with sound), I try to use as many plastic animals as I have with it. "Animal Babies" has become a favorite. I'll read the page and press the sound button. It will make a noise and then I try to mimic it and I play with the toy animal when available.

Eventually add in a field trip to a local zoo. I took my son for the first time before he was 6 months old. He liked the zoo, but he seemed equally in awe of the fences, the wooden railings, the local birds (not in the zoo) as the animals themselves. I would suggest not paying to go to the zoo until your child knows how to follow your finger when you point to something- it will lead to better interaction with your child. Before then, just go to a park and tell him what any animals you see are.

We have a giraffe that has taggies on it as well as a wooden ring, then we have the Sophie giraffe toy, and a plastic Fisher-price giraffe. Needless to say, I think we have more giraffe toys than any other animal. But it was fun for me to see my son interact with a book. I started reading "Rumble in the Jungle" and when I turned to the giraffe page my son excitedly lifted up his hands and leaned forward and brought them down on the giraffe- kind of like, "I found it!" (He's now 6 months old).

Anyways, try to use different mediums to teach and show the same thing: I'm always a fan of books, something physical you can touch and I like video clips. Get out in real life when you can too. We had a book that had Canadian geese in it. I happened to have the book with me and the pond near our house happened to have some Canadian geese. So we took a walk to see the geese. I pointed to the book, saying 'geese' and then pointed to the real birds and we got to watch them for a short while.