On most mornings, our daughter sits in her activity center and listens to me read her a children’s story and then the Bosnian alphabet.
The alphabet book is by Neira Pekmez, and it has a wonderful balance of letters, words, and illustrations that doesn’t overwhelm our daughter. She’s always interested and pays close attention to what’s on the page, especially when we land on Ð for đak (student) or L for lisica (fox).
The readings start with me repeatedly pronouncing the letter on the left-hand page and then shifting to saying the three words that start with the same letter on the right-hand page. During this time, our daughter scans the pages left to right and right to left, seemingly without blinking, and sometimes tilts her head as if to be suspicious of them. She’s very focused and determined, which genuinely surprises me, especially when she’s rubbing her eyes toward the end of the book.
The key part I’ve observed during this reading is that when our daughter is done scanning the pages, she shifts her eyes onto my mouth and watches me pronounce the letters. When this happens, I tend to pronounce the same letter over and over in hopes of reinforcing her learning. I never skip to the next letter because I want her to learn each letter as well as possible before thinking about the entire alphabet.
As part of observing her shifts in focus, I’ve realized that she (and all babies presumably) are visual learners at this early age. It’s important for her to watch closely in order to learn, whether it’s my moving mouth or a static picture in the book.
I’ve also realized that maybe all of us are more of visual learners than we realize because most things that we engage with in the world are visual. Using the alphabet as an example, our adult brains do not necessarily categorize it as visual, but all letters in the alphabet consist of shapes that are seen by the writer or the reader, similar to sign language.
In another example, the Chinese language is highly visual and consists of pictograms, which are descriptive characters or letters that actually look like what they mean. This helps young learners start picking up the language quickly before they move into more complex characters and letters.
While Bosnian is not visual like Chinese, our daughter seems to be focused on seeing and learning it through her picture book.