Thank you, guys! I'm glad you enjoyed watching.  Ella was very encouraged by your comments as well. 

Yes, Kimba! Ella has a new baby sister - little Julia - and she is simply THRILLED to bits!  We have taken a long break from our learning schedule (I had some medical issues during my pregnancy which have since resolved) and are now just picking things up again. We are all looking forward to starting our EL journey with the little one all over again! 

[Playing Minuet 1, Minuet 2, and Minuet 3:]

Here are some videos I took of Ella rehearsing for her Suzuki violin exam. She is such an exuberant and mischievous monkey that it was harder for her to learn to keep still while playing than it was for her to learn to play the pieces!  She has SUCH a hard time trying to keep herself from dancing to the music!   

Playing Minuet 1, Minuet 2, and Minuet 3:

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/yTa5kZHNaes&rel=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/yTa5kZHNaes&rel=1</a>

Playing Etude:

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/m4TMbgzQljg&rel=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/m4TMbgzQljg&rel=1</a>

Playing Allegro and Perpetual Motion:

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

I highly recommend The Suzuki Violinist.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Suzuki-Violinist-International-ebook/dp/B004HFQUBM/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1353029491&sr=8-2&keywords=Suzuki+violinist

 

Dear fellow BK members

I still couldn´t find those files in the download section. If i put in "Soroban" nothing comes up. Which member name should I search for please?

Thanks in advance

Try this:  http://forum.brillkids.com/downloads/?sa=myfiles;u=6459 . There are 3 pages worth of free soroban slides for download from Chris1.

Wonderful video, TmT! Lily is adorable!

Ella's primary motivating factor for participating in violin concerts, recitals, and abacus competitions IS getting to wear the pretty dresses. If she could wear a princess dress to her swim team competitions, she would!!! 

Lzp11,

If you do decide to use the Montessori Crosswords app, I would suggest muting the sound effects to minimize distraction while spelling. Also, AAS suggests laying out the letters in alphabetical order. However, once Ella had mastered this order, I started using the QWERTY option of the app, and this has helped tremendously in speeding up her typing skills.

Finally one more question for Aangeles - you are clearly making fabulous progress with AAS in quite a short space of time. I can say that your milestones are a long way ahead of ours so I'm wondering if there is a reason I should hold off spelling practice until we reach 4 ( which will be in about 6 months).

Actually, I did not plan it that way. Ella had started spelling CVC words when she was 2.5, and I ordered AAS shortly thereafter to help her progress. However, life got in the way    and I did not get to start it with her until she was almost 4. In retrospect, she was already ready a year earlier, and I don't think starting earlier would have slowed down her progress significantly. She most likely would not have been writing the words by level 2, but conceptually, she was ready. AAS level 1 is so gentle in its approach I don't think you would have any problem starting it now.

HTH! 

Aangeles-
Thanks so much for sharing your experience with AAS. We do quite a bit of fun spelling here, with games and ASL, but I really wanted something a bit more systematic, especially because Alex has never needed systematic phonics instruction. I think this will allow me to ensure she does not miss anything, especially as she is not quite three yet.
I didn't notice that it seemed like busy work in the samples, and I am very glad you don't find it as such in subsequent levels.
It does seem that much of level one will be repetition. Did you find it to be? Or did you skip some of the initial materials like letter sounds, etc.? I have just planned on quickly running through everything until we hit something new. I also plan to do away with the manipulatives as she gets a bit older because A) I don't want her dependent upon them B) for portability- this is why we finger spell many words for practice.
Love to hear your thoughts on getting started

Keri,

I actually didn't think there was any busywork at all in this program, even in the first level. Maybe you are referring to cutting out the letter tiles and index cards, but those are for the parent to do so I consider them teacher prep work rather than busywork for the student to do. As for the manipulatives (letter tiles), I think they are great for allowing the child's spelling skills to develop independently of his fine motor/handwriting skills. This is especially true for our EL kids, most of whom will be ready for spelling instruction much earlier than their writing will allow. Of course, you can always substitute with something else that is more convenient for you, such as ipad apps, ASL, etc.

Ella also learned to read via the whole words approach and simply intuited the phonics rules so I never went through systematic phonics instruction with her. She did find the first level very easy, as she was already spelling CVC words by the time we started AAS. We simply went through the first lessons (including letter sounds) very quickly instead of skipping them. One of the things that attracted me to AAS was its systematic and methodical approach and I didn't want to tweak the program so much as to defeat its purpose. So far it has been working wonderfully for us.

 

Hmmm... We have been using AAS for 4+ months now, and we are almost done with level 3. It is a solid, mastery-based phonics approach to teaching spelling, and I have yet to encounter any busy work with this program! A typical lesson consists of a demo of a spelling rule followed by a list of words/phrases/sentences for dictation. If your child "gets" the rule right away and remembers it, you can opt not to go through dictating the entire list. (I still have Ella spelling everything on the list before moving on and we don't skip anything just because she really enjoys writing and spelling.) Most people using it go through 1-2 lessons a week. Daily spelling work can be as short as 10 minutes.

 I bought the student packet with the teacher's manual for the first level, but hardly used the letter tiles or index cards except for the first few lessons. For level 1, instead of the letter tiles, we just used the Ipad app Montessori Crosswords free play mode, since this was less cumbersome to use and there were no tiles to clean up after each lesson. Starting with level 2, Ella's writing had advanced to the point where it wasn't too time-consuming anymore for her to write down each word I dictate, so we stopped using the Ipad and I just had her write down the words in her spelling notebook. With the way we are doing it, I found that I only needed the teacher's manuals for level 2 and up. I am very happy with the way the program is working out for us, and I anticipate finishing all 7 levels (which, according to the AAS website, will have her spelling at a post-high school level) before she turns 5. The most important thing is she also enjoys this program and is very proud of her rapidly-progressing spelling skills!

We are doing both!    Ella started playing piano using Soft Mozart when she was 2.5, and Suzuki violin when she was 3.5. We are also doing LMs, and I think these 3 programs complement each other almost perfectly! She has developed perfect pitch, can play almost any tune she hears by ear, can read notes, AND, I just discovered this recently, can sight-sing!  Interestingly, she can play by ear a bit better on violin than on piano, and can read notes faster on piano than on violin. I had always thought that this was due to the methods I used to teach each instrument, but, now that you mentioned the NOVA show, it might also very well be due to the left brain-right brain dichotomy.

As to why we are learning both piano and violin, it is because she loves music and LOVES practicing her instruments. She has great motivation and amazing (amazing to me, at least!) focus and attention span, practicing violin for 1 hour  in the morning and piano for 45 minutes in the evening. A lot of times, she gets carried away and plays longer, if I let her! 

Seastar,

Ella loves all of the books by James Mayhew! There are currently 4 in the Ella Bella ballet series - Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, and Nutcracker - and she has read them over and over while listening to the ballet music on Ipad. I also highly recommend his Katie art series as well as his geography storybook, Miranda the Explorer; we have all of them and they are just as much loved! Ella's newest favorite is The Book of Tales from Russia, also by James Mayhew.

We also have another series of art storybooks called Anholt's Artists Books for Children that were also big hits with Ella. 

Juliguli,

Ella started spelling CVC words when she was 2.5 using the Montessori Crosswords app on the Ipad. I then decided to order AAS because I wanted a phonics-based spelling program, but didn't get to start it with her until she was a month shy of 4 (due to a lot of traveling and moving cross-country and then internationally). In hindsight, I could probably have started AAS earlier since she is just really breezing through it now. We are almost halfway through the 7-level program, and she is showing no signs of slowing down even though I have started dictating each spelling word/phrase and having her write them down, instead of using the letter tiles. She really likes this program and loves being able to spell independently when she is writing her stories or even just text messaging her dad. 

For History, we are also using Usborne's Encyclopedia of World History as our spine, supplemented by Gombrich's A Little History of the World (we are using the illustrated edition and the audio CDs), Story of the World (book and CDs), Jim Weiss recordings, Yesterday's Classics ebooks, as well as lots of storybooks and hands-on materials. It is working out great for us!   

Oh no, Sonya! Just when I thought I had our math curriculum all figured out!!!   

And the comparisons to Singapore, it's probably as good.  The lessons aren't scripted like Saxon's but there is enough of a script that I even I can teach math out of one of these. That is a huge deal BTW.

Can you please elaborate more on how it compares to Singapore Math?

Sonya,

Thank you for the reviews on the writing programs. I spent the last couple of weeks doing some more reading and research, and for now I have settled on using Writing With Ease/Skill to begin with. I will see if she enjoys it and will reassess her progress in a year or so. She will be 5 at that point and my options will be either IEW + progym OR Classical Writing. Do you think IEW and CW-Aesop will be accessible to a 5-year-old or will be too advanced for her?

As for Ella being gifted, it has been brought up a few times by people who have had a chance to work with her, but we don't dwell on it.    My main focus is to meet her at her current level and provide suitably challenging work so as to instill a strong work ethic and maximize her potential at the same time. Thanks to homeschooling, I have been able to keep comments from other people like "You're so smart" and comparisons to her age-peers at a minimum... so far! 

We also have the Baby Ballet video and I just realized that Ella has been dancing to it for almost a year now. However, instead of the Baby Ballet DVD, I got this compilation DVD instead (also by Rosemary Boross) since it includes not only the full ballet program in the Baby Ballet DVD, but also has the complete Tot Tap and Junior Jazz programs by the same teacher, so I find it gives better value for the money. Ella loves to dance tap and jazz almost as much as ballet. 

http://www.amazon.com/Dancing-Kids-Baby-Ballet-Junior/dp/B00008QSAZ

BTW, Skylark, we also love A Child's Introduction to Ballet in our house! Actually, we like the entire "A Child's Introduction to... " collection. They're all great stuff!

Sonya,

Thank you very much for your very informative and detailed posts. Coincidentally, I had been looking into how to teach writing and the available writing programs out there (including the ones based on the Progym) for the last couple of months, so your posts were very timely! I wish I could feel confident enough to teach writing without having to rely on prepared curricula and workbooks, but I don't think I could teach her to the level that I want her to achieve on my own, as English is not my native language. (Now, math and science are another matter altogether. I have no qualms about being able to teach her all the way up to Calculus and Quantum Physics if need be.   )

So here are the programs I am considering:

Classical Writing - http://www.classicalwriting.com/
Classical Composition - http://classicalcomposition.com/
Writing Tales - http://writing-tales.com/
Writing With Ease/Writing With Skill - http://www.welltrainedmind.com/store/language-arts/writing.html
IEW - http://www.excellenceinwriting.com/catalog/writing

I believe the first three are based on the Progym; I don't think IEW is, and I am not sure about Writing with Ease/Skill. Do you have any experience with any of these? What are the pros and cons of each program?

Just to give you an idea of where she is with regard to language arts:

1. Reading - approximately 5th grade level based on lexile scores and RL. Decoding skills are likely higher if I ignored reading with comprehension.

2. Spelling - about 3rd grade level. She is a natural speller and is blasting through AAS. In fact, the only reason I am even doing a structured spelling program with her is because she learned to read via whole words and simply intuited the phonics rules when she was 16-18 months old. I never went through phonics systematically with her, and going through a phonics-based spelling program is just my way of making sure nothing falls through the cracks. Plus, she is a little perfectionist and absolutely hates it when she spells a word wrong! At the rate we are going, we will be finished with all 7 AAS levels before she turns 5.

3. Handwriting/Writing - She LOVES to write, in both manuscript and cursive. Aside from her daily 25-30 spelling words/phrases, she also voluntarily writes a page or two in her daily journal, which is typically a retelling of a story she had just read, a letter to her dad, or a story from her own imagination. Most recently, she wrote a pretty long letter to the Little Einsteins telling them that Pluto is no longer considered a planet and even included the reasons why. (This was after she watched a LIttle Einsteins episode that included Pluto as a planet.)  

4. Grammar - To be honest, I don't know if I should even be thinking of doing a grammar program with her at this point. With the amount of books she reads, I think correct grammar just comes instinctively to her. She read the Brian McCleary grammar storybooks a couple of times and she can now reliably identify parts of speech, knows punctuation, capitalization, etc. I started doing First Language Lessons 1 with her (mainly because she is so far advanced in all other areas that I didn't want her grammar to lag noticeably behind or hold her back in her writing), and we finished the entire level 1 in a month or so. There is not much that will be new to her in FLL 2 grammar-wise, but she loves the poem memorization and narrations.

So, considering all of the above, when do you think I should start a more "formal" writing program with her, and how would you go about doing it? Does any program come to mind that you think will be particularly suited to her? You all gave me such great advice and food for thought in the advanced math thread that I am certain you will come through for me again!  

And, by the way, even though we are roughly following a classical model for homeschooling (preschooling?), I totally agree with you about the Trivium and how it is not really applicable to our EL children. I mean, just looking at Ella, she is considered to be in the grammar stage because of her age and she proves this by being able to memorize copious amounts of information - such as the entire list of prehistoric creatures, their characterisitics, and where each one occurs in the prehistoric timeline. But she is also able to think about what she is learning in more abstract terms and even express her thoughts about what she is learning. I once found her writing in her journal - "I don't want to be a paleontologist when I grow up. They always get things wrong. First they thought Oviraptor was stealing Protoceratops eggs. But actually it was protecting its own eggs. Then they thought Hallucigenia walked on legs that looked like stilts. But actually they were looking at the fossils upside down. And they were spines on its back. That is funny!"