Parents having problems like Makeawish experienced could think about employing a toy to help, a toy who is absolutely crazy about words. Try a favourite stuffed toy or purchase a new one that you are certain your child will be excited to meet.

I had problems at one stage encouraging my son to be interested in Little Math, so I introduced him to a new hand puppet called "Numbers Duck" who loved numbers and got all silly when he played with red dots. The puppet was a yellow duck that actually had red dots on it (quite similar to this one - http://www.teddybeartreasures.com.au/product-duck-hand-puppet-4084.aspx).

If I recall correctly I first read about this type of strategy on DomanMom’s website.

It worked brilliantly. We made a special bed in a shoe box and Numbers Duck only woke up to play Little Math and the Doman Red Dot Cards. I would make a big deal of my son and I waking the puppet up to play math and then being very tired all of a sudden and having to get tucked up in bed again. It was so fun and easy to do math together once I found Numbers Duck.

Perhaps find a toy with a word or two on its tummy or paws.

Makeawish, I hope that you found a fun way to enjoy reading together again. Please let us know what worked.

The most important thing is not to worry about all of the different stages your child will go through, just have lots and lots of fun. The laughing will help and it certainly creates memories that are beautiful to look back on years down the track. 

Good luck and good night from Mum.

Thank you SB.

I will show Penny your kind words as soon as she wakes up in the morning, and I know exactly what she will do, give me a bright smile and a hug before dashing off to pull out her writing book and continue working on her next novel, the second book in the series.

We are tremendously proud of our delightful Penny, and it is wonderful for her to also regularly receive congratulations from so many members of our local community – including children, parents and teachers. Penny is particular glowing on the days when she arrives home from school and tells me that a fellow student was sitting in the library at lunch reading her novel and came to find her to say how awesome it is.

You should find Penny’s novel if you google Amazon.com and then search books for either “Athena’s Girl” or “Penny Mercier”. Here is the amazon.com link:

http://www.amazon.com/Athenas-Girl-Penny-Mercier-ebook/dp/B00XOQC5DM/ref=sr_1_9?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1440330025&sr=1-9&keywords=athena%27s+girl

Let me know if you have any problems. I hope that you enjoy reading Penny’s book. I am still amazed every time I read it.

I would also love to hear from parents of other Little Reader "graduates" about what their children's key interests are now and if they attribute them to a very early love of reading.

Thank you again SB and good night from Mum.

In mid-2008 I began nurturing my daughter’s love of reading with Little Reader.

I have wonderful memories of using Little Reader with her, and I would spend many happy hours preparing lesson files for her in the days before the fantastic Little Reader curriculums were available.

Fast forward 7 years and both of my children are addicted to reading, and I am very thankful to the inspirational people behind programs such as Little Reader, Your Baby Can Read and Doman for helping me teach my children to read in such a loving way.

I am proud to announce that my eldest child, Penny, has grown from my “little reader” to a published author.

When Penny was 9, her major class assignment involved selecting a topic to research and a method of presentation. Penny’s fascination with ancient history and love of reading came together in her novel about a girl in Ancient Greece. Now at 10 years of age Penny has decided to raise funds for her school library by selling her novel on Amazon.

http://www.amazon.com.au/Athenas-Girl-Penny-Mercier-ebook/dp/B00XOQC5DM

I thought that I would share Penny’s achievement with you as I believe it helps to substantiate the efforts of loving families who choose to teach their young children to read.

Also, there just might be children out there who, like my children now aged 7 and 10, grew up with Little Reader and may enjoy reading a novel written by a fellow Little Reader “graduate”.

Happy reading!

Goodnight from Mum.

I am also very grateful to all of the contributors of this post as I have been tossing this question around in my head for a few years. I am torn between knowing that my 10 year old is missing out on some important matters and not wishing her to be exposed to much of the dreadfulness in our world.

My children have very minimal TV viewing, around 30 to 60 minutes a week on average, and I am actually surprised that they never ask to watch the programs that they sometimes tell me their friends watch. However, during the Christmas holidays I thought it was time to try and watch a little more TV by sitting together to watch and discuss the news with them. On night one my 10 year old daughter and I successfully sat through the whole program while my 7 year old son was upset with a few of the stories and escaped to his room repeatedly. On the following night my son and I were in tears for two of the main stories   , so I turned the TV off within five minutes and we have not watched the nightly news since, even though I feel that my daughter is probably resilient enough to watch the nightly news occasionally.

For now she is keen and happy   to watch a weekly child focused news program called Behind the News (http://www.abc.net.au/btn/index.htm). One of today’s stories titled Hope Street (http://www.abc.net.au/btn/story/s4243734.htm) resulted in a valuable and interesting discussion which included internet safety. Some of the stories would be of most interest to Australian students, but there are topics that are not country specific, like today's Leap Second (http://www.abc.net.au/btn/story/s4243702.htm).

Perhaps other forum members know of similar child friendly news programs.

Good night   from Australia and thank you again for sharing your thoughts on this topic.

Mum.

Thank you Lappy,

I will contact them as you recommended.

Mum.

Question from Australia

May I please ask why BrillKids users in Australia are no longer able to benefit from any of your promotions.

I have been holding off on a purchase and hoping for a sale announcement, like most of us probably do with almost all of the dollars we part with at present, and was excited about your announcement until reading that you have excluded Taiwan, Australia and New Zealand.

Thank you,

Mum.

Wonderful course idea MamaOfWill. 

A few years ago I put together Bit of Intelligence cards (with 10 facts for each country) for Australia and some of its neighbours, including New Zealand, Fiji, Papua New Guinea and East Timor. I'm eager to expand on these and prepare others to contribute.

I know most of my countries are not on your list, but if you have enough interested volunteers perhaps Country Course 1 and Country Course 2 can be prepared at the same time, while your fantastic participants' excitement is high.

Please let me know what you would like me to prepare.

Mum.

Hi Kezia,

I am using Internet Explorer and haven't experienced this issue with any other site I expected to view in English.

I just tried Firefox and had the same problem.

Thank you,

Mum.

Hi Kezia, I am in Australia.

Hello,

Is anyone able to help with this problem?   

Thank you,

Mum.

Hello BrillKids Team,

I have a small problem when I try to go shopping. I cannot select English as a language from the drop down box.

Could you please let me know why I cannot view the BrillKids Shop in English.

Thank you,

Mum.

Congratulation Team BrillKids. Another superb program!         

We are all enjoying LMs, especially my daughter who has been learning solfege at Yamaha Music.

As usual I do have a few questions to run by you.   

1. Is it possible for me to set the “Auto-Forward slides” selection to “on” for "Solfege Intro" and "Chord Recognition" and “Auto-Forward slides” to “off” for "Hear and Sing (Chords)"?

I like to slow down the lesson (by clicking the mouse) for my 4 year old to give him time to reply when the “?” appears for the chords, but don’t feel it necessary to click through some of the other lessons. It looks like many of the lesson types are all bundled into one for setting "Auto-Forward slides".

2. Would it be possible to select how many times the “Clap-Along” song is repeated in a lesson?

At 4 and 7 years of age, my children are probably much older than Monika2001’s son (who sounds sooooooooo adorable) and now that we are up to Lesson 11 (at a rate of 1 or 2 lessons each day) their interest is not holding for the “Clap-Along” song due to the number of repeats. Today they said they had sore hands! 

3. Is there a reason our “Clap-Along” song’s display seems to be disjointed today?

Yesterday after downloading the update I set Master Settings > Clap-Along > Clap Beats to “1” because by Lesson 2 my 4 year old had mastered the first beat clap (just like many others described, he did clap every beat in Lesson 1) and after trialling the every beat default setting my 7 year old preferred the first beat option.

I didn’t notice anything different with the Lesson we played yesterday with a Clap Beat of “1”, but today the falling icon didn’t fall smoothly as shown in the “Display” tab in “Setting”. The icon always stops about 1½ inches above the line and then reappears on the line for the clap. This makes it harder for my children to follow and clap-along. The character’s image it disjointed too. I have tried other lessons and reset the Master Settings but the problem remains the same.

Am I imagining that something has changed? If there is a problem, what steps can I take to fix it?

4. Will the course eventually incorporate someone singing a song in solfege while the notes appear on screen? My daughter loves to sing the solfege when she knows it for the “Clap-Along” songs.

Thank you,

Mum.

Hello KL,

Congratulations to you and your whole team.

Are you still granting access for LMs Beta Testing? If so, could you please consider my family.

Our music exposure includes my guitar playing from age 10, my daughter’s keyboard lessons with Yamaha’s Young Musicians' Course for the last 14 months and learning about classical music and composers primarily via Themes to Remember, Doman EK cards and LR.

Thank you,

A very excited Mum.   

Hi MonkeynoseMomma,

You can read about our fun with RightStart Math in this thread.

http://forum.brillkids.com/teaching-your-child-math/recommendations-for-good-abacus-program/

Mum.

I would say we are about 80% there.  The hardest part of the work has been done already - finalizing the curriculum, and recording all the files.

Now we just need to find some missing pictures, do some re-records here and there, and put them all together into LR format.

Thank you KL. We are really excited about LR French.

Mum.