Where have all the Big Kids Gone?

[mom2bee]

Two years ago, there were tons of parents on this forum with kids that were between 12-30 months. Those kids ought to be between 36 and 56 months now. That's 3 and 4.5 years of age. (or even older) Where have all those parents and kids gone? Ella (I believe Aangles was pregnant, yeah? How is she doing, anyone know?), Cammie, Blaise, Henry, Lily (and Owen) and others whose names escape me at this moment....

What are the kids up to now? Where are they academically?

[MummyRoo]

A lot of us are still lurking around the forum

Nikki is now 3y4m. A brief academic report:
He can decode a lot of phonics words but is still not sight-reading and we are working through Kindergarten level Maths with ease, hoping to get to Grade 1 after Easter. He knows several songs in solfege and is getting there on reading music. We are working on pen control and letter formation. He enjoys learning Russian.

His preschool teacher assessment last week graded him in the 30-50 month group for all the social/physical skills they check but that really doesn't say much because it is such a huge age bracket. He also doesn't do clever things at preschool because he is too busy running around and playing house (they say he needs to work on his 'mark making' skills which is only because they never make him sit down and do any drawing etc.) and were surprised when I said he likes to count things 

Nothing too spectacular (by the standards of this forum, at least) 

[Korrale4kq]

I wasn't so active in the forum in the early days. I did lurk, but James had a very rocky start in life and he wasn't really benefiting from EL.... Or so it seemed....
James was failure to Thrive, non verbal and considered autistic at 24 months. He was also born not breathing had had an almost 90% chance of mental retardation. I just kept plodding along with simple stuff that he was drawn to.

Now... At 3 years and 2 month James is thriving.

Reading:
His reading is coming along well. He hovers around a DRA reading level of 16. Which is a late 1st grade level. He is predominately a sight word reader and uses context clues a lot. He is able to decode words phonetically but only with the more basic phonics rules.

Math:
James is still working through mostly Kindergarten level math. He does do some things on a first grade level, such as place value. Some areas he lags a little more. His money and measurement skills would be assessed at a pre-k level. All in all he is doing well and making steady progress.

Science:
We have been slowly working through topics from BFSU. Most of the topics are physics. James readily discusses states of matter, gravity, and energy.

Drawing/Penmanship
James can draw quite well if I have him copy what I draw stroke by stroke. He identifies colors, shapes, lines. He can mix primary colors to make secondary and a few tertiary colors.
He has proper pencil grip. And he can write his own name. But most other letters are hit or miss.  He can write a few numbers, and draw squares, rectangles, circles, and triangles.

Speech:
James speaks quite well. He is very specific in the way he talks. He will not just ask for some water. He will ask for "a little bit of water" or "just enough water to quench his thirst". His vocabulary is quite good. His grammar is a complete mess. He seldom uses first person for himself. And he completely confuses yours, mine possessive.
He is unable to pronounce the L sound except when he says Lalaloopsy, which he can say perfectly. He can't say play. It is always said as "pwray"

Social:
James knows he is a boy, he has a penis and he is 3 years old. He knows that he is son, as I am mummy and my husband is daddy. His knows mine and my husbands first names. He knows his name is James. But he likes to be called JJ which is his nickname. He says his full name is Dr James St Rino, which is not correct.  When he was little I used to sing a song calling him JJerino. The Dr is because he wants to be an optometrist or a "dr who cuts babies out of mummys bellies" He knows he was delivered via c-section at the hospital.
James still has some issues with eye contact. And he can become completely absorbed in a task suck has making patterns out of his cars.

Music:
We are slowly going through Little Muscisian. James likes to tap out a few little tunes on the keyboard. The only ones he can complete are Hot Crossed Buns and Mary Had A Little Lamb, albeit both are very slow. He can distinguish and demonstrate fast and slow tempo, high and low pitches and soft and loud dynamics.

Physical:
My son was a very early walker at 8 months. But it benefits him very little in the long run because he is a complete klutz and constantly runs into things and falls over all the time.
Some things he can do physically are walk a balance beam. Tucked forward rolls, log rolls. He is working on straddle rolls and backward rolls. He can jump 1 foot spans. He can stand on one leg and hop briefly.
He has been riding a balance bike since he was 15 months old and now he can pedal a bike with training wheels. We will attempt to remove the training wheels in the spring.
Last summer he could swim underwater between my husband and I for about 15ft. But we haven't been to the pool in a long time so I am not sure where he would be with that.

Independence:
James has always had an independent streak. He was completely potty trained before 24months. He now pees standing up. He is good at washing hands and face. He needs help with his teeth still. And he can't floss. He can dress himself mostly. He can put on underwear, pants, shoes (velcro) and a shirt, he needs help with his jacket but he can zipper it. Oh and he can put on footed Jammies. He can remove all those too.
He makes his own snacks and meals. He can make a banana and vegemite sandwhich, or cream cheese on toast.  He can make healthy balanced choices. He will select fruit, cottage cheese and granola to eat as a snack. He knows to eat a rainbow of fruit and veggies everyday and he selects foods according to this.
He gets his own bowl and cutlery when we eat, he often gets mine too. He get his own water whenever he is thirsty throughout the day. And he will get his own milk if we don't have the big milk bottle.
He helps with laundry, doing the dishes and sweeping and cleaning.  He also helps select food when we are shopping. And he pays the cashier sometimes too. He likes to wait for change.

Character:
James has been working on being gentle. Though at times he still gets a little rough. He is quite good at saying please, sorry, Thankyou.  He will say he "appreciates it" when someone does something nice. However he is completely unable to request anything. I have been working on eye contact and having him ask us for something but he can't/won't. If he wants something he gets it himself.
James is extremely stubborn, like his mother. He has tried to push boundaries. His obedience was not so well implemented recently. But we had about half a dozen battles of will and he has figured out that mummy is much nicer when he swiftly does what he is told.
I have been working on his self regulation or executive function. I want James to be able to sit still when needed. And I want him to be able to focus on a task at hand. So far he is doing well.
I have been trying to get him to finish a task, such as reading a book with diligence. Sometimes he doesn't like to finish what he started. James is also is a bit scared to battle anything that looks difficult. I will hand him a book, he will see lots of words on the page and freak out and not attempt it. But he is getting better. We slowly work through it. And I have been letting him know that I will help him.


Sorry it is extremely long. But I love reading about how others kids are doing.

[Tamsyn]

A lot of us are still here.    Peter is my oldest at 5.5.  He started reading at 3.5 ish and is now on a 4-5th grade reading level as far as decoding ability goes, but his attention span hasn't caught up with him.  He still mostly prefers story books with full-color pictures.  But his reading ability has really helped him when it comes to anatomy.  That's his real love.  We bought him a nice anatomy book and he spends hours pouring through the pages and keeps it on his bed.  He isn't as advanced in most other areas, maybe 1-2nd grade math, 2-3rd grade science, and not at all advanced in his penmanship skills.  He's come a long way this year though with that and with music.  Nothing spectacular, but he is very bright and a joy to be with.  He is a good mentor for his younger siblings.
Helen fits in that category too, she's almost 4.  She's doing great and music is her passion, much to her mother's delight.     She reads fairly well and loves school so she does a lot of things with her brother.
Yep, we're here, and we're still trecking through our learning adventure. 

[musica8]

My son (almost 4) arrived at Brillkids @10 mos. old, having completed  YBCR training. He is a tad shy, but extremely compassionate and sensitive to others feelings. Says please and thank you--(and no thank you) without any coaching whatsoever.

We started w/ LR & LM, and did not completely finish math. But, you know what? Even so, he's really advanced in math and can count to 100, and he can skip count to 100 by 5's and 10's. We grouped all of his play food into 52  "pairs" recently. He knows his ordinal numbers, pattern recognition and sorting are amazing to watch. We made a great buy in a Mathtacular DVD. He watched it again and again, dozens on dozens of times. He absorbed a lot and loves working with the manipulatives. He knows there are 100 pennies in a dollar, 20 nickels in a dollar, ten dimes, and so on up to half dollars. We haven't added more than pennies together yet, though.He knows his planets in order (thanks to Rock N Learn dvds). He can add and subtract, and is curious about multiplication, so we're falling back on Little Math again. He shows renewed interest now, and is excited to learn. He knows his months and days of the week. and several other feats I haven't listed. We glued lots and lots and lots of dry beans to popsicle sticks, to demonstrate how math is based on units of ten. We call them 10 sticks. We've gotten all the way to a thousand cube using this method. We have a full set of ones, tens sticks, hundreds squares, and one one thousand cube. I use them mostly to conceptualize larger numbers of things--- like we used them to demonstrate 1,800---the average number of rainstorms around the planet and any one given time.
In science, we performed 30 experiments on air, 30 experiments in the kitchen, and our next unit is plants, but I'm dragging my feet because I don't have a green thumb myself.   I purchased Lakeshore Learning's science folder games with 16 matching/sorting games in it. We covered recycling yesterday. we've done games like- featfher, fur or scales animal matching. He really understands a lot about atmosphere and the weather. We have corkboard cutouts of the human anatomy labeled. He loves learning about the digestive system, but doesn't care to become a doctor. We took his anatomy flashcards and his doctor's kit playset to his last doctor's appointment, and we had a great time despite his illness. I used his kit to "examine" him prior to seeing the pediatrician, so he was less nervous about the whole thing.
In social studies- I printed and laminated coloring pages of all the state flags and flowers of he U.S.  Next unit will include similar, but world countries flags and flowers. The coloring pages can be found on www.coloring-pages-for-kids-boys.com for free, + a good deed. They ask you to print extras of any topic and bring them to children's hospitals, waiting rooms, etc. We purchased several educational dvds from cerebellum, on topics like what is time (history), US Presidents, U.S. History little known facts, and several sets of flashcards spanning topics like world landmarks, flags of the world, and of course the little reader downloads of all those topics and more.---he still prefers using maniulatives. I pretty much let each day evolve and teach to it. My daughter had world thinking day with Girl Scouts recently. My little reader tagged along, so later I incorporated world studies in that day's teaching. He enjoys it, but I've not measured his progress to any state standards or the like.

In languages: we used Little Chinese for some time, but we hit a learning lull. He's showing no interest in that language at the moment. He likes Spanish and I teach to that end three or more times a week.We started out with the first three Little Pim dvds. We have moved to Whistlefritz immersion videos now. I've been signing to him since he was six months old, and he still communicates to me in this language. He probably knows 1,000 or 2,000 individual signs, but I've never really tested him. We got a tremendous deal on signing time videos. Then, I realized the benefits of a classical education, So I bought an ancient Greek for toddlers system, and also their Latin program for small kids on dvd from classical academic press.(you can google them) We follow along when we find time.

For quite a while there we didn't do any reading of hardcopy books, but relied heavily on printed subtitles on various teaching videos.  He got the Reedeez dvds for Christmas,and he loves to follow along with that also.  His sign language videos have captions, so we take advantage of them. He just recently has started asking to read books frequently, so we keep the library on their toes, now. He really likes the feel of board book stories with pictures that have about one sentence per page, But he can read up to two or three sentences per page in some books .I think he likes the comfort and confidence he gains from reading easier books.

As far as Music, we only recently purchased the LM. It's hard to find time to be consistent with it, but with a little push, I could teach him and his two & a half y/o friend I babysit full time now together. They both love it, and will sit together on my lap to view it and LR and LM. they're showing more interest in computer aided learning than dvds at this time. We've used the Kinderbach Piano dvd course since he was two, but his interest stalled about halfway through. He can play seven or eight simple songs, however,and really enjoyed putting on concerts for anyone who would sit down and listen. He's so cute.

He wears big boy underwear at all times, including nighttime. He stands up to go, also. We're still on the sticker chart system, b/c he loves the feeling of accomplishment and pride in a job well done.( Free Printable Behavior Charts.com ) He's not attached to food much.  I think this habit is particularly good for longevity. We use the 1-2-3 Magic discipline program successfully with him. He also amazes everyone with his phenomenal vocabulary and his grasp of syntax, and general understanding of the English language. I can explain almost any concept to him in normal language, and he will understand what I'm saying. He's extremely curious about everything.

I want to train him on the 3G abacus next.  We'll see!  It's been such a  marvelous journey with him. I can't believe I'm having this much fun. I'm forever indebted to Dr. Titzer, and K.L. Wong. The forum has supported me through some rough patches, always with plenty of new ideas and inspiring stories. My son and I have so much love for one another. I'm super-glad I jumped in with both feet and haven't looked back. I've learned so much, too.

[Lolobride]

Hello everybody,

Nice to read such stories from older kids! I'm still reading the forum every week and looking for new ideas what to teach.

My daughter is almost 4 years old now, we startet with LR when she was 11 months old. At 3 she began reading easier books and now at 4 she reads quite good. Books with up to 10 sentences per picture. I don't know, which reading level this might correspond to, as we are reading hungarian books.

With LR we began teaching english to her, and I also read to her sometimes in german. She understands german (as we live in Switzerland), but doesn't speak yet. This summer she goes to kindergarden, so I think she will learn the language very quickly.

In math we do the marsmallow math, she likes to count up to 20, count different things. She can count also backwards and knows the colors and the basic shapes.

In science we didn't do a lot... but I will begin with her now more intensely. Right now we are learning about the solar system, the stars and planets and I plan to make a few presentation to her on this issue. Before we used to read about different animals. But else... we unfortunately didn't do much.

I read to her every day at minimum 30 minutes, often even one hour. We read almost only fiction until now, recently we began reading non-fiction. She likes that also. She has many-many books, 3 bookshelves full of them. Not all are suitable for her right now (I still have a lot of books I read as child / teen). Every day she is also reading at least one book to me or to herself.

In music we began about a year ago with soft Mozart, but at the end she didn't like to play, so 2 months ago we stopped. I would like to begin again in march, and I hope, she likes it more now. We do LMs, she really likes that, we are on lesson 72 at the moment.

Yes, that's what we do. When I read the forum, I often think, we could / should be doing much-much more... but I hardly find the time, because I'm also a working mom. Our second daughter will be born in april and I hope, I can continue everything with my first daughter and also do the program with my 2. Well, it will be an interesting journey :-)

I

[PokerDad]

We still hear about most of these kids from time to time. For example, Henry is now in his second year of homeschooling and has adopted a method of learning where each day he adds a few facts that he's learned and puts them into a memorization software (supermemo) to retain the knowledge. I've been keeping a sharp on eye on this because I personally think the payoff should be massive if this kept up for a few years (let alone an entire span of schooling). They've been at it for about a year now!

Cammie is crushing math and pretty much anything else she touches. She has a little brother that is also well on his way. Likewise, Ella crushes math, reading, languages, violin to name a few. She also has a sibling we haven't heard much about. These two girls in particular really are impressive with what they've done - I can't imagine topping it and really am hopeful to only touch a part of that success - it's truly mind blowing.

[TeachingMyToddlers]

The quick n dirty update is that we've been focusing a lot on music and both of the kids have developed perfect pitch. Lily is progressing very well on piano and Owen is following in her footsteps in everything, although I think he spells better then her at the moment (the kid can google more than I ever imagined possible at this age.) They both read music beautifully and it is particularly wonderful for me to watch them develop an appreciation for the arts. They both learned curwen hand signs (Lily more readily than Owen because his fine motor skills are not as sharp yet) and sign along while singing LMS songs to a slow or moderate tempo. They name all kinds of classical music pieces/composers, and Lily effortlessly transposes music in any key and plays by ear when she's in the mood. Her creativity has shot through the roof in the last few months and she will literally spend an hour or two fully engaged at her easel or drawing table daily, creating page after page of colorful, inspired pictures. For math, they both have a solid foundation in the basics, a lot of what we've done has been pieced together by me (learning how to skip count, solving number bonds, understanding place value, fractions, measurement, money, etc...tonight Lily randomly told me, "only 9 more months until my birthday!" )  and now we are working our way through Singapore math. We recently began buckling down with learning japanese abacus although I know we will make more progress when they can be enrolled in a class in about 6 months after we move. I have no idea what reading level they are "officially" at--they are doing Master Reader (from the hooked on phonics people) and it says it's for ages 7 through 9. Lily is on the last level and Owen is on the second level, although I have not started their brand of chapter books with the kids, Lily and I are buddy reading the Little House (on the prairie) books instead. We've been focusing a ton on right brain activities lately because my current priority is giving them photographic memory within the next year or so. I made the same declaration with perfect pitch and that turned out nicely, so I am sure we can master this key skill next. I am in the process of cracking the code of developing photographic memory and when I do, I'll let ya'll know.    From what I can tell, the early signs are already there.

One thing that strikes me about my kids is their wide general knowledge base and their ability to connect seemingly unrelated events all the time. Even when Owen was just a little over age two, we were reading a book about colors and he saw the word navy (blue) and remarked randomly "just like Navy Federal," which is the name of our bank although we never refer to it as such verbally. Even at that young age, he had seen us drive to the bank and log on to the website so he just put them together. Those kinds of things have continued for the both of them which is a huge sign that the neural net is just growing and becoming better connected. Although it's not discussed much on this site, their intuition is developing nicely as well, although we never attempted to do so. Over Christmas Lily started talking to me about unusual Christmas presents she had never seen and I never discussed with her before, which were wrapped and hidden away in a high closet. Both kids are good at logic and puzzles and they both like riding their balance bike.  We took a break from languages for a while but are now starting to revisit them, although lower on my priority list than some other things are working on. Lily still has a wonderful fascination with insects/spiders and Owen loves astronomy at the moment.

[Tanikit]

My eldest daughter is now 5.5 years old. She started with brillkids at age 8 months and started reading books shortly before she turned 3. She is now reading beyond a 4th grade level though she is still working on stamina. She still reads aloud to me every day so that I can help her with vocabulary. She has been homeschooled since birth and was due to start kindergarten this January. We are at the moment working on her spelling as she starts to write more and more, she is doing maths are grade 1 and 2 level (and every now and then grade 3)  - the reason for the multiple grade levels is that we work on things like lining up numbers when writing them down for addition which she can do while also teaching carrying and mental maths and then work on multiplication separately usually with manipulatives and not so much paper work at the beginning.

She is still in the early stages of creative writing so she does some copy work for handwriting, some creative writing and some dictation. She also does a lot of free writing which I monitor but do not correct so that I know what to teach next. We are working through BFSU with her and reading SOTW 1.

My second child has just turned 2 years old. She knows almost all of the alphabet phonetically and has a large sight word vocabulary. We are starting to teach blending though she may pick this up faster than her sister did as we have been doing it orally for her since she was very little. She has started reading sight word readers but because she is younger than her sister was when we started with this, I take it very slowly and she picks up the flashcards that match the words in the book to work on reading smaller fonts. She is still using Little Reader, flashcards and books. Her speech is moving faster now which is helping as she was slower with speech than my elder daughter. Her fine motor skills are more advanced than her sisters were at this age and she is already trying to write (I think she copies her sister).

[Mandabplus3]

TMT I am looking forward to that update! Photographic memory would be awesome.
Jaykob is a little old for this thread at 5 years old. 
But he started school 3 weeks ago. He can read, both by sight an phonetically. He can read most picture books and any sight word reader. He refuses to do more than that ( again the stamina is lacking) if a book has too many words to a page he just won't read it!
His math is great. He understands much more than I give him credit for. He can count beyond 100, skip count by 2s and 5s ( yeah its probably time I taught him more skip counting) he adds and subtracts 2 digit numbers using paper or the abacus. He loves the abacus!
He has great handwriting. Well for a boy anyway  its entirely legible. He draws pictures like most grade 2 children. He has awesome fine motor skills.
Gross motor is definitely his expertise. He will win all his school races, he has great ball skills, gymnastics skills, and balance. He is FAST! And he can swim too.
He plays piano with softmozart. He will sit and play for 30 minutes or more. He loves to use the computer to play and doesn't enjoy learning pieces by memory. He has perfect pitch for most but not all of the notes yet. He also sings in key most of the time. He wants to do more practice than we have time for. I need to solve this problem soon!
His one year of EL put him 2-3 years ahead of his peers. The areas we focused on are definelty his stronger areas.
I enjoy reading these stories as I can see areas we can work on, and new ideas to try. It's also encouraging to hear success stories from those who started earlier than I did with Jaykob. I don't see any need to feel guilty about not starting sooner when he is already ahead with us starting late....

[JothiShanthosh]

Thank you for giving an opportunity to share about my son Shanthosh Sivam. He is 3.5 years old. Most of the forum members don’t know about him. Because we are not active in the forum. But we are active in early learning. I would like to share his skills:

READING:

He started to read at the age of 1 year and he learned phonetics at 1.5 years old. He was able to read very big words at the age of 1.9 Years. He was
awarded for that from famous school at the age of 2 years when we went for ask admission formalities. Now he is able to read languages English, Tamil, Hindi, Chinese and also Music. He is a fast learner. He was taken just a month to learn a language to read. 

MATHEMATICS:

Initially he was struggled lot to do Math. But now he is doing 3rd grade level mathematics. He can do addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. He can do mental math also. Now we got admission in UC Mas center and started to learn abacus. Now mathematics is his favorite subject.

WRITING:

It is amazing to say that in his age of 2.3 years he learns to write words himself. In the age of 2.5 years he started writing small and big words himself using phonetics. I didn’t get change to hold his hand and thought him to write. He started trying to overwrite letters in the flash card and learned himself. When he was at 2.9 years old all our friends and neighbors come and ask him to write their name. He writes and enjoy it lot.

MUSIC:

Music is his life. He loves it lot. He always likes to play difficult and big songs in SoftMozart. He is able to play more than 50 songs (mostly big songs) in SoftMozart. He is able to do site reading. He can read music notation very fast.

EAR TRAINING:

Within 11 months of Music journey his ear got trained very well. He is able to translate all Film songs, Tune Toddler, Mobile ring tones, Siren sound, Bike horn sound even humming etc. He can translate whatever he hears. He can recognize the sounds of whole Piano (88 Keys) and other than that he can translate more than 45 instrumental sounds individually from the music keyboard. He can recognize all the piano chord.

ENCYCLOPEDIA:

He has very good knowledge in encyclopedia.

PHYSICAL ACTIVITY:

• He is doing scatting nicely.
  He is learning to balance Bicycle.
  He started doing some small physical exercises.
  He started learning small and basic steps movement in dance in house.

GOOD HABIT:

Now he is learning good habit. We could see very good progress in that. He is doing all helps to me if I ask. He plays with his toys and put back properly. One amazing character is when we take him to our friends house he start play with their toys and at the time of leaving he immediately hand over all the toys to them and run towards to us. They ask him to keep that with him but he won’t.

Thanks once again for giving this opportunities…

Jothi…

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