"We teach 1-year-old babies how to read words silently, 2-year-old toddlers how to read words aloud, and 3-year-old children, how to spell."
Dr. Jeff Cheng, Program Director of Jolly Kingdom
Jolly Kingdom understands that children at different stages of cognitive development require different teaching methods. Children under the age of 3 are thus taught using holistic and imagistic teaching methods to acquire the English language, learning to associate verbal symbols (words) with their corresponding pictures.
On the other hand, children aged 3 and above who are capable of using logic, are introduced to the rules of phonics, learning the English language through the 44 basic phonemes, thus learning to associate verbal symbols (words) with their constituent verbal units (phonemes).
"The child below the age of five can easily absorb tremendous amounts of information. If the child is below four it will be easier and more effective…and below two is the easiest and most effective of all."
Glenn Doman,
The founder of the Institute for the Achievement of the Human Potential
Infants below the age of 2 are the prime learners of language and have a capacity for learning what Chomsky called 'universal grammar'. However, understanding the infant's method of learning is the key to unlocking this rich potential. Infants of this age learn primarily with their right-brain, which has two important implications:
- They are more receptive to learning whole words rather than their constituent parts
- Their learning is of a pictorial nature, meaning that children learn through images
From year to year, a child's cognitive development rapidly progresses. Thus from the age of 2 - 3 onwards, a child's cognitive function begins to qualitatively change from that of the child below the age of 2:
- Rather than thinking holistically, children begin developing their ability to think analytically. For example, children of this age are capable of understanding that the word 'cat' is composed of three different letters and phonemes, /c/, /a/ and /t/.
- Thinking is carried out less through pictorial means and increasingly through verbal means.
