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18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A very interesting notion, February 24, 2003
Disclaimer: I actually have no children at this time on which to try this method, so unfortunately I have only to pester my friends to read the book to try it out and cannot speak to the results. That aside, the book was, in itself, tremendously interesting to me. The idea of the "Gentle Revolution" is that children are able to take in and process tremendous amounts of information beginning at birth. This period of intense and specialized learning is to come to a close around the age of five, coincidentally the same time at which most children begin to be formally trained. The author developed his theory, originally, through his work with children who had sustained all different types of brain injury. His discoveries about their learning processes, led to discoveries about the learning process for all children. The reason that I had to give this book four stars, although I did find it so fascinating, is that, if you have read How to Teach Your Baby to Read, you will find that at least half of this book is a reprint of that, with reading taken out and mathematics put in its place. The book does pick up again when they get away from convincing you that you should try this and why, and get to the actual method. The author believes that babies can learn math instantly and quantitatively. He believes that a baby can look at an 11"x11" white card with a lot of 3/4" red dots on it, and immediately know that there are 79 dots. It all seems very "Rainman". He suggests that numbers, or numerals, only serve to confuse the situation, and that babies can be taught math using pure quanities, without the numbers getting in the way. The steps involved include recognizing quanities instantly, addition, subraction, multiplication and division, simple algebra, sequences, etc.. The method seems simple enough, if one is willing to put forth the effort to make up the flash cards and spend the few minutes each day it takes to go through them with the baby. The book also decribes the different ways one might approach this program given different age groups, such as newborn to three months, eighteen to thirty months, up to five and six year olds, and encourages that whatever you do and whatever effort at whatever stage you do it, can only benefit your child. I would recommend this book if you are interested in raising an exceptional child, or even if you just have a general interest in the brain and the learning process.
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