“Giftedness starts in the cradle.”
Introduction
A few years ago everybody would have laughed at you if you had told them you were teaching your 3-month old baby to read, to do maths and to master endless encyclopaedic facts.
Happily, all over South Africa and even the world, there has recently been a great awakening amongst intellectual parents who refuse to follow the old tradition that children between 3 months and four years are too young to learn facts and must during this period only learn through play.
Professor Kobus Maree, well-known lecturer at the University of Pretoria wrote in his book, Make your child brighter, that central to everything a child does, is the ability to read. He says that “endless arguments are conducted on where and when a child should begin reading for the first time. It would be meaningful, however, for every parent to help his or her child to read even before they go to school.”
He further advises parents by saying, “Forget about your pre-conceived notions as well as the objections of primary school teachers. By teaching your child to read, you are providing him or her with a key to unlock many doors at an early age.” It will help your child to become cleverer.
Any respected researcher will tell you that reading is the basis for intelligence and that giftedness and a high IQ can be attributed to the level of a child’s motor skills as well as his or her language skills which were instilled already in their early years, prior to school attendance. Reading and mathematics is a natural ability which can easily be acquired between the ages of one and five.
Research has already proven irrefutably that pre-school brain stimulation is imperative if we are to give our learners the maximum enjoyment of their unlimited brain potential.
Intelligence is every learner’s birth right and for that reason it is our duty as parents and facilitators to pass on information to our new generation in an organised and interesting manner.
SmartBrain is a cognitive stimulation-programme whereby neurons (brain cells) are exposed to basic facts over a longer period and through increased repetition.
If you have never encountered any babies reading before, you would have some questions and doubts about whether this is the kind of stimulation you would like to give your child. We hope to answer most of those questions here…