Re: What do you think of the Domans?
Asked by babysmartsdad

Question:
The Domans have some books - How to teach your child to read and how to teach your child math - that rely on strict flashcard routines.  They call it the

gentle revolution and have some good theory behind their ideas.

But the flashcards seem a little outrageous and maybe a bit over the top.  What are people's opinons on the flashcards?  I've done a few searches here and haven't found much on the Domans or flashcards.

My Advice:
Hi,

The Domans' system works.  The best part is that you don't just sit a child down and make them memorize cards.  The system works on the basis that learning is and should always be fun.  You offer the child or baby little bits of information about facts that they need to know and you show them quickly and joyfully. 

I used this system with my son.  He was reading books by 2.  But the main point that I see in it is not to force the child to learn.  The main point is to put the desire to learn into their hearts.  Once you accomplish this they will search out the information. 

My son reads books like crazy.  Not only that, if you talk about a word or subject that he doesn't know then he either looks it up or asks you about that.  He also writes things down to learn or look up later.  I strongly belive that this is because of the gentle revolution. 

The system seems very strick (meaning show this many flash cards at a time and then stop.)  But if you look closer he says that you should stop before the baby or child gets bored.  That means it's flexable.  Some days we only showed my son 5 cards.  Another thing is the size of the cards.  They recomend a very specific card size.  But when I called in and mentioned that if I made the math cards a little different size then I could get 6 cards out of one poster board.  They said that was fine.  The main idea is to make sure that there was enough room for the dots.  My dots fit just fine. 

One really great thing that came from this system was that my son learned math.  How to add, subtract, multiply, and divide.  The best part was found out later as we realized that he is dyslexic and numbers would look different to him.  This would have made learning math very hard.  But because the Doman or Gentle Revolution used dots he had no trouble.  When I started to teach the numbers it did take him a little bit to connect some of the numurals.  This was due to his dyslexia.  But, didn't really slow him down that much.  He is still ahead of his age group even with dyslexia.  I know that this would have made math a much worse subject without the program.

I would recomend this program.  It can be customized to meet you childs needs.  It can even be used for older children or you and I.  The amount of information that a very young person can learn is much greater that you and I or even and 8 year old, but we can still learn. 

Another fun way to learn math or any subject is with rymes. This is a really great article about ryming math. http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/661335/use_rhyming_math_to_make_arithmetic.html?cat=4

I hope this was helpful to you.  If you have any further questions please ask.  I'm more than willing to share.

Peace