Hello Mahiisland,

Yes you can use Little Reader to only flash pictures.  The basic LR English comes with 600 unique images (totaling 3000 because there's 5 images per slide, like 5 different dog images) and you can easily set the 1 year English course to show only images - within minutes!  That way you have lessons planned out for you for 1 year's use, showing only pictures and no text whatsoever, but you can change it back again as soon as you feel like starting to teach reading.

There are also tons of image slides available in the library and you can also buy a little bit more professionally done slides from the BrillKids store, but this will require a little bit of work.  You'll have to take some time getting to know your Little Reader app.  Filtering through the library will also take time, many are wonderful sets, some are pretty useless, many were created for specific learning areas that might not be of any use to you and sometimes you're not sure what you're going to get until you've downloaded and imported it.  Then, you can play any set of flashcards you download just as you got them, but if you want them to display in an orderly fashion, you'll have to build a course.  Using a course, you can have new slides being displayed everyday while old slides are abandoned and much more.

I can't live without my Little Reader, I'd say go for it!  Even if it means investing in an old PC for your kid to have access to all the time.  Very very short lessons all day long work well (again something you can easily adjust your Little Reader to do is play only very short lessons at a time), but then the PC should be right there where you spend most of your time.  Best time to do a lesson is when your little one asks for it, and he's more likely to ask if he sees the PC all the time.  I always leave books I want to read to my boy on our coffee table, every time he walks past it, he sees it, soon he's asking me to read them.

All the best and good luck

Hi E8080, Jenene and Skylark, couldn't do it without you guys.

Here is one full lesson of our 165 lesson course. 

Each lesson will start and end with an anthem video, the flags and country outlines flash with a photo-eye-play effect, these are roughly 1 minute long each.  Then in between the anthems there are 4 learning sections, each starting with picture flash, then 5 facts, a game and a break time video of about 30 seconds featuring music and images or video of cities, world heritage sites and cultures from the 40 countries the course will be covering.

12 minutes is somewhat of a long lesson, but it can easily be done in sessions and we will also be building country course version for infants with much shorter lessons.

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/Vx7Udmyn-gk&rel=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/Vx7Udmyn-gk&rel=1</a>

Thank you to everybody helping with this project, you guys are the best!

Invest in a good picture dictionary an random read through it every day.

Here's how I do it with my little boy of 2.5 (English is our second language too.)  We've got a picture dictionary with over 3000 images and about twice as many words.  We start on any page in the book and either work forwards from there or backwards.  I'll begin by asking, what do you see?, which one do like? or what definition should I read? If he doesn't pick an image or word on that spread, I'll say something like, how about this one, then I'll read the full definition (it includes things like noun or verb, plural form etc.) If he's still interested after reading the definition, we continue talking about that one image, but he often moves to another image or asks me to page.  My boy also tends to talk a lot about the pictures and the words and even though it's a random mess, he learns so much from it and since it's a dictionary, I can look up things when I get stuck on his questions (looking words up is also something he enjoys, and comparing similar words or similar objects is another)

I'm sure your 4 year old is way ahead of my 2 year old, so you're probably looking for an activity that's more stimulating, but I thought I'll share this idea because it works very well for us.

Here's how I look at it:

Any 2 babies can get the exact same amount of language stimulation, but they will not start talking at the same time and overall their language development will not be the same.  Both babies will eventually speak all the languages of their environment and needless to say they will not speak languages they were not exposed to.

Same goes for anything else.  Expose a baby to something consistently, and he will learn from it, but when he chooses to start experimenting with his knowledge and show you what he knows, or when he figures out that he can do things he sees others doing, is really up to that individual.

Sounds like you and your little one are doing great Chukwuma, have fun!

Hello FeeSpirit07,

Sounds like your little one is doing fantastic!   When it comes to her talking and reluctance to sign, she sounds just like my little boy at that age, and my mom also blamed my early learning.  We are also raising him bilingual, everyday talking primarily in Afrikaans and teaching primarily in English.  I read and talked to him a ton from long before he was born.  I would acknowledge every attempt he made to communicate, asked questions and waited long for any response, putting his communication into full sentence responses.  I talked to him as if he had full understanding (like he is an adult) most of the time, but often talked in parent ease and also used a bit of playful baby language.  I sang to him and said all the rhymes I knew, while having fun with him.  I tried my best to teach him sign language of which I probably used about 200.  I felt like I knew what I was doing (because I did the research) but he just didn't talk or sign! 

I started to feel like there's something wrong!  Maybe my mom was right, all this extra languages and other early learning activities are interfering with his natural development.  Then like magic, somewhere between 18 and 20 months he did start to talk.  You could literal hear the difference daily!  By his second birthday, he was talking full sentences, and probably over 2000 words, and now one year later (he's 2.5 years old) he's talking beautifully in both languages, well above what is average for his age.

I wouldn't push her to talk through holding back an item that you know she wants or anything like that.  You might get her to talk a few months earlier, but it just adds unwanted stress.  If you are in a hurry to find something around the house, your husband asks you what you are looking for and the name of the thing just slipped your mind, wouldn't you be utterly annoyed if he insists you tell him what it is before allowing you to continue your search?  Remember to respect your little one (and I'm sure you do, I'm just focusing your attention on it in this regard), she's just doing things her way and she's doing brilliantly by the sounds of it.

@mom2bee, You asked for advice and Arnau i Pau comes and shares her experience of Little Reader with you, as advice for you not as a question.  She's using LR currently and likes it.  You tell her to looked at RB "instead" of LR.  Why would Arnau i Pau drop LR if she's benefiting from it. 

You say you don't see LR working with older children (I presume you mean older as in 9 or 10 because of previous discussions) because of your experience with using LR (trail?) with toddlers.  - Can you please explain how you came to that conclusion?

You advocate Reading Bear as a good source for English vocabulary, have you even seen the LR library?

You say parents should not rule out their options and make uninformed decisions, but you are ruling out Little Reader as an option and you're giving me the impression you don't really know much about it.

I'm hammering on this (and you will probably feel relieved to know this is my absolute last post to this topic) because I truly believe that no Spanish program can possibly meet the potential of what LR Spanish will have to offer!  I actually don't want to fight with you, I wanted to open your eyes.  Maybe you had one bad experience with LR then gave up on it altogether and what's worse, you're selling this misconception to the new people on the forum.  Above all this, I have a bit of an idea of how seriously you take early learning and how big your goals are, you once said "...and lots and lots of facts..." as one of your goals, and you want to "make your own program."  We share these goals I mention here, we just don't share our views on LR, and personally I think it's because you don't know the application all that well.

If a child doesn't like a program, he or she will probably not learn much from it.  I purchased LM about 18 months ago, and for a long time I thought it was a waste of money, because my little one didn't like it much.  I recorded my own voice and added all the things he loved most, but it didn't help.  Eventually, 12 months down the road, he fell in love with it!  How lucky am I, now we use it almost every day!

I would recommend to all Little Reader users to take the time to really get to know the program, because it's not a reading program for babies, it's an all round educational tool for all ages.

Just to set the record straight, I've built many courses in Little Reader for my little boy with full sentences that we read through slowly and sit and discuss the images that follow at a slow pace.  Both fast and slow are possible in LR, full sentences or short words.  In fact, we could probably do a close replica of reading bear using LR, but reading bear (as fantastic as it is) can not do what LR can do.

Not all Spanish speakers live in Spain.
 

LOL mom2bee!

Reading Bear is fantastic, if you don't worry about the amount of internet it takes (internet is not cheap everywhere in the world.)  If I were to use Reading Bear for two months the way I used Little Reader, it would cost the price of Little Reader in internet expenses.

@mom2bee, what would you change about Little Reader to make it into something you see as useful?

Hello mom2bee,

I love how you are planning ahead, I think it's amazing! 

I can't really add to your list.  I'm completely bilingual and it was easy teaching my son the 2 languages I know (mostly through reading and talking to him.)  In other languages that I'm exposing him to, he will probably never reach fluency in, in his early years.

I wish I had LR right from the start!  If you plan on buying any educational program or DVD or whatever, buy Little Reader first.  I don't know if you've read the Doman books, but they describe how it's best to systematically introduce new material, whilst reviewing old material and I can tell you, it gets pretty unorganized and hectic when you're doing it with traditional flash cards - in Little Reader, you can easily build courses that does exactly that!  You've spoken about your hopes and dreams for your future children and I know your whole hart is in it, so if you're going to be doing a ton of Early Learning activities, do yourself a favor and find out more about Little Reader before you rule it out as an option.

Think about how many flash cards you will be creating, how many facts goes along with them, how many times you want to review, how many children might you have...  10,000 x 10 x 20 x 4 = 8 million = give yourself a break and let technology give you a hand.

It's DomanMom, how neat!  Congratulations to DomanMom.

The Miles and Kelly books use these 100 topics for space (maybe you can get some extra ideas from the list):
Small stars; Life; Space suits; Newton; Nebulae; Extraterrestrials; H-R diagram; The Milky Way; The Universe; Black holes; Mercury; Copernicus; Day and Night; Moon landings; Constellations; Dark Matter; Orbits; Venus; Galileo; Earth's formation; Distances; Spacecraft; The Earth; Comets; Giant starts; Eclipses; Star brightness; Herschel; Rockets; Satellites; Hipparchus; Mars; Light; Magnetism; Atmosphere; Cosmic rays; Jupiter; Space probes; Hubble; Meteors; Pulsars; Elements; Kepler; Space Shuttle; Moons; Saturn; Space stations; Gravity; Light-years; Rotation Uranus; Solar eruptions; Jupiter's Galilean Moons; Tides; Binary stars; Halley's comet; Asteroids; Solar changes; Star birth; Neptune; Atoms; Observatories; Voyagers 1 and 2; Space exploration; Pluto; Einstein; Space telescopes; Radio Telescopes; Astronauts; Space catalogs; Space Travel; Astronomy; Stars; The Sun; Nuclear energy; Supernova; Red shift; Auroras; The Moon; Quasars; Space walks; The night sky; Water; Galaxies; Radiation; Mars landings; Telescopes; Star Charts; Planets; Clusters; Variable stars; Take off; Saturn's rings; Neutron stars; Years; Zodiac; Celestial Sphere; X-rays; Sunspots; The Big Bang

Okay, that's a long list, but they have 10 facts on each of the 100 topics, interesting things and all related to Space.

I was planning to do a course with the above list of topics, 10 facts each, but not straight from the book, I would have to shorten most of them.  I will first finish teaching the most basic or defining fact on each topic, then revisit each topic with the next fact and repeat.  I would also include revision cycles.

I like to work with the following repeat cycle;  repeat a new fact for 5 days review once 5 days later, 10 days later, 20, 40, 80, 160 (in my life 5 days is about a week worth of lessons, because we never do every day)  So I would typically start with 5 new facts, then add one new, abandon 1 old everyday.  I mix the new facts and the revision ones randomly with the rest.  It's been working well for my 2.5 year old, but I think the best is to experiment with your kids and see how they respond, 5 days for a new fact will probably be too much for most kids (they can probably do with 2 or 3 repeats only.)

Extra ideas for fast flash are, types of galaxies, Jupiter's moons, solar planet locations (compared to each other), Probes, Artificial Satellites, Parts of a Spacesuit or Space Shuttle - for fast flash somebody once told me not to flash more than 3 times each, but I don't know about that, I flash at least 5 times.

Good luck and don't forget about DadDude's presentations for some extra ideas, facts and images, he did a few space topics.

@Janene, queriquinta and thethreeofusmcnutts, I sent you personal me (new messages show under your name on the top left of the screen, some people miss this.)

Skylark and I are feeling so enthusiastic about future courses because this first one is going so well!  Things are moving fast, people are enthusiastic and I can only imagine future project running even faster and smoother.  We've been talking a lot about a Bible fact course lately, but currently we've got our hearts set on doing Math and Music programs starting from January 2014.

New members are always welcome to join, and this does not mean that you'll be expected to stay for other courses.

Shen Li's posted some nice art stuff in the library.

Very good testimony Skylark, I'm also a firm believer in the idea that any language exercise or exposure is great for the all round  language development of our little ones.

We've only focused on teaching Wilhelm 2 languages, and mildly exposed him to 2 others.  He speaks well in his two main languages, and only says a couple of words in the other two.  In our case, our boy boy started saying a few words around 6 months too, but went completely silent around 8 months and only started talking again when he was 20 months old.  Now at 2.5 years, his language is well ahead of average.

My little bits of exposure to the other 2 languages payed off, because all of a sudden, he's very interested in learning those languages now.

One place where I'm not sure if it's just his age (other kids do this too) or his bilingualism, but if he hears new words, even words I make up in games we play, he'll remember those new words days later, without it being repeated.  I don't really know how special this is, but it amazes me and I wonder if it's all the language exposure I've given him (through reading, singing and talking to him tons and tons from my pregnancy days.)

We also did one parent one language (I suppose having only 2 languages made this easy) but we were very casual about it.  If we read a book to him we would stick to the language of the book, and later when he started to talk, we would stick to the language he chose to speak.