We are doing English (my native/our local language) and Russian (his father's native language) and dabbling in Chinese with a smattering of Japanese. I have focused most of our non-dvd language time on Russian, since I am the only Russian speaker that he has daily contact with (he speaks with his dad on Skype for about an hour a week) and it is my second language so I have to really try to remember to use it!

We started Chinese because we watched a Little Pim trial episode in Chinese and my son fell in love. I acknowledge that Mandarin is the next big thing for languages, but I was a little daunted by the reading aspect so wasn't seriously considering it until my son became obsessed! We have LR Chinese, which we use semi-regularly and the Wink to Learn/Little Pim Chinese DVDs and watch them whenever my son chooses (which is often multiple times daily for a week and not again for a month or two). I am considering entering him into the local Chinese Saturday school class when he's 5 (they don't do preschool lessons) for a weekly lesson.

We have very limited Japanese resources - I wanted to do Japanese because I want to learn   but just couldn't find the toddler-friendly resources so it is just a few youtube episodes that he demands occasionally. We might pick it up properly in a few years when he's able to use the 'kids' textbooks. I have also told him that he can watch pokemon (bad-influence uncle  > ) as much as he likes if it is in Japanese

I am definitely planning to add Latin - I really think it is important for understanding the apparently pointless aspects of English grammar (split infinitives, for example) which are rules taken from Latin and applied to English, as well as being a great foundation for the Romance languages (as Koralle4kq mentioned).

My so has (so far) inherited my love of languages, and I expect we will at least dabble in several others eventually  

Probably the best way to label keys would be using the colours - that way you can teach do-re-mi and A B C without changing stickers. I would have thought 123 would be confusing, since he is learning to call the notes by their names, but I'm no expert!

A google search for 'free music flashcards' will probably lead you to the materials you want.

This thread http://forum.brillkids.com/teaching-your-child-music/music-manipulatives/ shows what some of the parents here have made.

This one shows TMT's amazing ideas http://forum.brillkids.com/teaching-your-child-music/perfect-pitch-videos/45/

This is more detail of our daily music lessons (other than LMus and SM) http://dancingwithdinos.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/music-and-our-calendar.html

Hope something here helps you find what you are after!

Manda

I expect that Big Bad Wolf looks incredible!

And I didn't mention maths because we haven't actually started it yet  At the moment he is just counting to 20 in English and 10 in Russian

I had a moment when organizing my son's birthday party when I realised that we didn't have any 'kids' music. He has classical music, tune toddlers, Chinese songs, maths and science songs... we ended up using my album of Disney music

I forget that it isn't 'normal' to not play nursery-rhymes and cartoon themes! The same goes for TV- the mothers at playgroup were discussing their child's favourite cartoons and it struck me that I couldn't really join in, since our favourite was either a Chinese-speaking panda (Pim ) or an old Soviet cartoon, both of which would be regarded as 'odd'.

Probably the thing that makes it obvious that I spend too much time on this forum is the fact that I feel we are 'going really slow' because he's just turned 3 and *only* knows his letter sounds but won't sound out words

EDIT: I forgot to mention that he can sing Twinkle Twinkle in solfege, as well as sing do-to-do and re-to-re scales, recognise the solfege notes and several chords (when he wants to). He has also taken to singing up the scale as he counts (one on do, two on re etc.). Isn't it normal for a 3-year-old to make up tunes that incorporate scales and solfege? 

I'm trying to visualise a six year old with a textbook almost as big as them, working through complex maths equations... it just ends up comical   

Thanks for the heads-up about reinforcing lessons learnt. There is a lot of repetition  - one lesson on one-to-one correspondence required putting counting bears in the AB pattern before counting them, and I seem to remember the same in a lesson using linking cubes for 1-to-1. I think that is what Saxon is so good at (and what would make a 5 year old cry with boredom!) which is one of the reasons I thought I'd like to try their early curriculum. Taking the time to reinforce concepts is why I don't want to rush through the K lessons. I hope that by also following the MEP curriculum, which seems to cover less in more depth and make the child think more about what they are learning, that I can make sure he covers all that he needs to know for each year.

Yes, I would think it would be rather slow and boring for older children. Perfect for a slow introduction at 2-3, though. I think the repetition and slow build-up of facts would drive a 4 year old with EL experience a bit mad, though.

So then you are already 2 years ahead and school hasn't even started and we havnt even attempted to accelerate the speed yet!

Yes! BUT The K curriculum only has 12 lessons per month. I plan to complete a lesson most days (5-7/week), which means the whole K curriculum will be finished in 4-5 months!  The lessons seem short and simple enough that completing 2 books in the year should be quite manageable. In that case, it would be easy to have finished 3rd grade maths before even starting school! Even going to school, I can see no problem finding time (especially in the first few years) for one extra lesson per day, which would have him ready for the Algebra books when he enters Year 2! 

Now, If we accelerated to two lessons daily (which I doubt we will, as I'd also like to work on MEP daily) but if we do it would allow us to cover FOUR years of maths in 12 months and be potentially starting school five or six years ahead!

I really can't get my head around that - my son is smart but no prodigy; I just can't imagine him doing such complex work so young! And yet I can see that it would be quite easy to sit down for half and hour or an hour every day and get him there! The possibilities presented by EL continue to amaze me 

I came across a series of maths-stories yesterday that I really really want 

The first in the series is Sir Cumference and the knights of the first round table 

Robert,
Russian letters do have names (though the vowel names are equivalent to their sounds) though I was never taught them and only picked them up much later because I felt silly spelling out words using phonics.

Koralle,
I do like the Usborne books particularly. I believe they can be found on the bookdepository site with free shipping to most countries, so its not just those of us in the UK that can benefit! Their phonics readers are good fun for very first books (mostly cvc words) and their farmyard tales are excellent for confident early readers with very clear print.


We have most of what I would consider 'good' phonics readers. We have several sets, but they are generally those considered 'advanced' readers - the ones with lots of words and an actual story - that I hope will make the transition to chapter books easier. I can't imagine more than a couple of 'cat on mat' type stories will be tolerated. Once the excitement of actually reading a book himself wears off we'll be straight on to the proper books.

I have one set using the same books the schools use - the stories are ok, but somewhat tedious to begin with, but where I have two books at each level where the school has a box (I would guess 10+ per box, but I can't find official numbers). I know my mum raves about my brothers (Aussie) Reception teacher because she was willing to go against the 'rules' and let the kids skip whole boxes. This in itself is telling that there were lots of boxes of readers to get through!

My mistake - I assumed that since most K-level work I've looked at is about the same as the Reception-level work that they were equivalent.

Yes, thankfully they start phonics straight away in school. There are sets of phonics readers - hundreds and hundreds of them - and in most schools, the kids *have* to read every single one, whether they are easy or not. So even the good readers make slow progress, which turns reading into a boring and tedious part of early schooling for them.  It seems that the government targets are to finish phonics by the end of Y1 (age 6) but there are still lots of children failing to learn to read - I would have thought that phonics taught correctly should prevent this!

I got the Saxon K teacher's manual today. I am glad I didn't go for the 'meeting book' as well (despite how much I love to have complete sets) because it is basically the same as the calendar time session I started with my son last month with an extra patterning exercise that I can easily add to what we already do. This also takes out the issue that the meeting book assumes a September start. I would also advise against the materials kit for anyone who is thinking about buying - I have almost everything already in my EL supplies cupboard! All you need are pattern blocks, counters (they use teddies but I have cars and trains and dinosaurs...) geoboards, linking cubes (or any other blocks that stick together, like legos) tangrams, a clock, dominoes and a balance. I would guess most of us have a good number of these things already 

The lessons themselves look great. They are written word-for-word, which some might find annoying, but at least it makes the content/purpose of the lesson very clear if you want to re-word it and allows for very little prep time.

The first few lessons encourage creative play with the materials to get to know what they are. Lesson 5 introduces graphs. Lesson 9 teaches making AB patterns. Lesson 17 starts story problems. Almost every lesson has a lot of 1-to1 correspondence.

I haven't looked past the first 20 lessons, but what I have seen looks fantastic. It covers topics that I wouldn't think to introduce this early (like graphs) but I have no doubt that my 3 year old could easily understand the material. Each lesson looks to take at most 10-15 minutes and I will easily find time for one each day. Yes, I could easily cover this material on my own, but having a step-by-step guide will make it so much easier to make sure everything is covered and will save me hours of lesson-planning time to focus on other areas. Considering the speed we will probably go through it, I wouldn't have paid the full price, but if you can get it second hand it is a great reference guide.

I will let you know the (more important ) opinion of my son after we have used the material for a couple of weeks.

As for concepts... I don't think it is unrealistic at all to expect him to know those. He is currently at a Kindergarten level right now with good understanding. From my experience doing EL with other children (I have an early education teaching background) with enough exposure most kids have all the Kindergarten-1st grade concepts mastered by the time they turn 4. The issue is, most kids aren't exposed. Parents seldom know what to teach. And daycares and preschools have an emphasis on play and think that early learning can stymie a child.

In the UK, pre-schools and nursery schools have been told by the schools not to teach anything beyond recognising the letter names and numbers. I think also recognising and writing their own name. The schools want everyone to start on a 'level' so they can begin teaching all kids phonics and maths from scratch when they start Reception (Kindergarten) at 4/5. The teachers don't like having to re-teach those who haven't used phonics 'correctly' (or at all) when they come to school already sounding out words/reading. It is just so much easier when nobody knows anything and the teacher doesn't need to work with different levels at the same time!

I very specifically remember what one of the top UK state schools considered to be 'teaching grammar' - we spent several lessons in year 8 or 9 learning that "a verb is a doing word and a noun is a person, place or thing". That was the total sum of my grammar education (if we don't count my choosing to learn Latin, and later Russian    )

I was lucky enough to live near and attend a really "good" secondary school. Despite what the government insists about the GCSE/A-Level exams being equally hard, we all knew it was a joke.Once we had drilled our way through the past GCSE exam papers in any subject, the teachers dug out the O-level papers. They are the exams my parent's generation took which were later replaced with GCSEs. We COULDN'T DO THEM!!!  It was laughable - the older the exam paper, the more we struggled! There were chunks of the paper we had to skip because the topic was no longer covered, and what was covered needed so much more depth of knowledge to answer accurately. That, if nothing else, is a sign that the current system isn't working as well as the old one.

My disillusions with the state school system started at the age of 15 and have only gotten worse with time. I knew before I even finished school that I didn't want to entrust the education of my children to one. They refused to challenge me for years, then called me a failure when I stumbled at the challenge of sixth form (because they let me get lazy and I forgot how to cope with being challenged). I might not have the qualifications to teach anything, but I am positive I can't do worse than the school. If sending my son into the education system becomes a necessity, his primary teacher will still be me

I really favour a literature-based education for my son. I plan to use Ambleside for the most part. However, I put an EQUAL importance on literacy and numeracy - he will get his literature exposure through all the humanities, but I expect my son to excel at maths, too. Unfortunately, there is a much smaller number of maths-based subjects than language-based, so the proportion of time spent on maths compared to specific English grammar will be much greater.

[his holiday]

Thanks again for your insight Robert.

I just want to clarify (as I didn't explain very well) - when I said that I never want my son to think of maths as painful, I meant in the sense that he feels he is stupid and incapable. I fully expect there to be battles against 'boring maths' but I hope that will be because he has 'more important' (to him) things to do, or simply doesn't want to revise topics he considers himself to have mastered.

"Painful" because he doesn't want to take time away from play, I can handle. Painful because he thinks he is stupid and doesn't believe himself capable, I refuse to accept. And if I am in control of his maths curriculum, I will have the knowledge to nip any self-pity sessions in the bud because I will know exactly what he can do and beat in to him (figuratively!) that he is not incapable, he just needs to work at that topic a bit more.

And on the topic of school busywork - my brother came over to borrow my computer for his homework last night. He spent 3 HOURS making a powerpoint presentation (for English class) as prompts for a speech about his holiday!!! Preparing prompts on paper would have taken 5-10 minutes and given the same result.

I never really thought about the content of school homework, but now that I have started noticing it there seems little of any benefit, and little that can't be done without a computer! No wonder children no longer know how to spell (or even write!) - they rarely have the need to put pen to paper, and spelling mistakes are often auto-corrected so they don't even know if they typed it right in the first place!

Thanks I have seen the IXL website many times, thanks for the reminder.

What PDF Saxon books do you have? I have the two that were linked to last week (5/4 and 6/5, student books) - are there any others available?

I agree, price is everything! That is why I gave up on Rightstart - the shipping added 25% to the already not-cheap package     Since I have the first two 'middle school' Saxon books, and I like the theory of spiral progression, I started looking at the Saxon books. But the set I found on amazon was £39+postage, hence this thread to see if it was worth it! Cheap Saxon books in the UK are hard to find (at least ones that aren't shipped from the US at very high postage rates) but after a lot of browsing around, I got a bargain K teacher's manual for £15 incl. shipping. I went for it, because I want to feel confident that I am doing enough in the beginning and the price was right. I doubt I will need the 1/2/3 books once I get the hang of teaching at this level and then I'll use the free resources available to guide me to where he needs to be for 5/4.

I'll make sure to write a review when we've done a few lessons

Thanks. The reviews are interesting - the biggest problem with the K curriculum seems to be the pace is very slow. I agree, not great when starting at age 5/6, but for a 3-year old, a slow pace is probably best.

I would say I don't *need* a set curriculum for this level. I have oodles of maths-related toys/games/manipulatives/worksheets etc. but I am not confident in my ability to cover everything that should be covered. For me, Saxon would be like a security blanket - I am easily distracted by things I like doing, and am afraid that without a set curriculum I will find it too easy to get focused completely on, say, addition and subtraction and completely forget about patterns and sequences. If I am following a set curriculum, I won't forget! MEP does seem good at what it covers, but from what I've looked through in detail (only a few lessons at beginning, middle and end to get a feel for it) it focuses a lot on number recognition/counting etc. - I haven't noticed other areas of maths.

I won't be using Saxon exclusively, if I use it at all at this level. I have MEP, which is very child-friendly and will be our 'fun' maths lessons. I also have various Montessori-style activities that I will have available at other times in the day. I am totally in love with the topics being constantly built on, rather than forgotten for months before they come around again and need to be re-learnt. That is what makes me think it might be worth forking out for the early Saxon books...