Joined: 25 Sep 2014 Age: 62 Gender: Male Posts: 929
20 Dec 2014, 6:30 am
As promised, I have "sanitized" one of the earliest video clips that I used to teach my son to focus on stick figures. I made the original video when Ivan was 2.5 years old.
It is very important that all four components of LIVE Communication are used (meaning Letters, Images, Voice and Experience.) The voice has to be the voice of the parent. The Experience refers to the experience of the child. In this case, the preamble video clip shows Ivan playing with toys that he was already familiar with, and the background music ("Twinkle Twinkle Little Star") was one of Ivan's favorite songs. Only if a video clip is based closely on the child's real-life experience, can the video clip truly attract the attention of the pro-video child. The parent's voice also provides a sense of familiarity not achievable by using other people's voice. Stick figure is modulated into this backbone of familiar "carrier signal" of the child, in a gradual and gentle manner. As an intermediate image, the child's picture goes through a "cartoonized" frame first, before arriving at the stick figure representation. The metamorphosis cycle is repeated to reinforce the learning. This video was a success. This was how Ivan started to learn to focus on stick figure drawings.
Ivan is now 5 years old. Two weeks ago he achieved 3 major milestones: he started to draw pictures on the magnetic drawing board, he started to write (beautiful handwriting in big letters), and he also started to type on my wife's tablet PC. Three major milestones all in one week. Pro-video children can be taught with the same tools of pro-picture children, but if parents/educators do not succeed in building the very first bridge of introducing stick figures to these children, pro-video children can easily run the risk of becoming permanently underdeveloped.
20 Dec 2014, 6:30 am
