GT4K Story

When my eldest son Stephen was around 2.5 years of age I took him for his first ride in an aeroplane. When the air hostess handed him a lolly he looked at the wrapper and turned to me and said “Look Daddy, that’s the same as the sign on the outside of the aeroplane” I thought to myself, “that was pretty clever for a 2 year old”.

At the time I was working for the NZ Justice Department and was in fact en route to a Social Work Conference. During one of our lectures we were addressed by one of NZ’s top Child Psychologists and she told the class “We underestimate the intelligence of children and tend to restrict them to what we think they should be learning; instead of allowing them to learn at their own pace.” I then related the encounter I had experienced with my son on the plane.

Following her lecture she came up to me and said “Do you realise your son is ready to start reading?” I said “What? At just 2 years of age?” She said “Yes, if he can recognise symbols like that, he’s ready to recognise the symbols on the written page.” She gave me phonetic based concepts and recommended some basic readers to use.

I began to haphazardly employ these ideas on Stephen not really paying attention to the outcomes. Around his third birthday, he came up to me one day with the local newspaper and asked:

“Daddy is this word correct? hos - pi - tal - i - sa - tion”.

I almost fell out of my chair. By the time he was three and a half he could read anything and everything.

GT4K is dedicated to my son Stephen, who unfortunately I lost, in the prime of life, at just 21 years of age.

All the basic elements I used with him are all there - except through my 20 years of experience as a music teacher - I have used this format for more efficient delivery of the subject matter.

Children pick up the songs and rhymes in a matter of minutes - assimilating all the information without even trying. They will then play with Game Books, audio CDs, computer games and DVDs to bring all this information to the conscious level.

Hope you enjoy the GameTime4Kids experience.

Author / Creator
GameTime4Kids