Everything she does whether little or no previous exposure at all, she masters things quickly and nothing seems challenging enough for her. I lack creativity I think and need to find more ways to make it fun. I will purchase some M&D puzzles and try adding subtracting/multiplication to see if that's more challenging. Not sure if she's ready for learning how to read yet (?)

There is absolutely no reason not to start teaching her to read if she already knows her letter sounds. That might be the challenge she needs, but if not there is a lot more stuff out there to learn.

Keep us posted, I'd love to hear how everything works out.

[methods for teaching my 3 year old]

Hi parents!

I discovered Brillkids today, as I was looking for insights and advice about methods for teaching my 3 year old daughter how to read time, how to understand the notion of 'time left ( before going to bed, ;-). I ran across a time-teaching watch apparently using pictograms instead of digits or hands.   Anybody knows of this method?   Cheers. Daphne.     Here is their website : www.watch-kids.com

Hi Daphne,

I would not recommend teaching a child something that needs to be unlearned. Teaching a child to tell time using pictograms rather than numbers is just slowing down when they will learn to tell real time and cluttering their mind with useless knowledge.

Telling time is quite easy, and given enough exposure to a standard analog clock, many kids will pick it up. At three there is no reason not to buy your daughter a simple watch (white face, black minute and hour hands and preferably no second hand) and to show her what time it is. All four of my kids can tell time on a standard clock to the quarter hour, which is accurate enough for preschool aged kids.

Start with on the hour. Point out to your daughter on her watch or a wall clock every hour. "It's 9 o'clock. We know that because the hour hand is pointing to the 9, and the minute hand is pointing to the twelve." etc. Depending on how consistent you are and how quickly she grasps things, she could pick it up in a week.

Then move to the half hour. Tell her what time it is on the half hours. "It's nine thirty. We know that because the hour hand just left the 9 and the minute hand is pointing to the 6." You don't need to keep telling her the time on the hour unless you want to. You can also start asking her what hour she thinks it is.

Continue until you're happy with how accurate she is. Knowing that 2:10 is nearly quarter after 2 is good enough for me, but I have friends that taught their children (under 4) to the minute.

Hope this helps you decide!

How does she do with nonacedemic things? Is she dressing herself, eating with utensils, etc? Is she running, jumping, hopping, tumbling, and brachiating?

If she's very far ahead in some areas and on level or even behind on others, it would make the most sense to give her lots of opportunity to improve the weak areas, while keeping her challenged in the other areas.

Knowing number names after twenty follows a pattern until one hundred. If she didn't intuitively know that thirty-one follows thirty then it's not time to move into those numbers yet. I would go back and do more addition and subtraction with the small numbers that she knows well. You could even introduce multiplication as serial addition. IE There are three groups of two, how many are there in total? 2+2+2=6

For reading, try teaching her a few CVC words, and then use sight word flash cards to teach enough words to read easy readers. Starfall.com has some simple stories, as well as reinforcement of letter sounds.

Melissa and Doug have 12 piece wooden puzzles. They are recommended for 3+, as most puzzles are, because technically a child could choke on a puzzle piece. If your daughter does not put things in her mouth anymore, it shouldn't be an issue. Once those are mastered M & D have puzzles up to 48 pieces.

I wouldn't worry about review very often, most skills are cumulative (One cannot master the second level without knowing the first) But if she starts struggling learning a new skill, it would be worthwhile to do some sleuthing to see if something was missed or forgotten.

HTH!

Once again you're creating brilliant resources! Thanks, DadDude!

I have been MIA for a few months. Things have been very busy. We have expanded our family permanently by two, and temporarily with a third. Zed is now the youngest of 4.

I have Amy who is 3 years 4 months old. Kai who is 31 months, Andy who is 25 months, and Zed who is 21 months. Amy is significantly delayed and Andy is slightly delayed. Kai is developmentally on track, but emotionally traumatized. His family was in a car accident, he survived practically without injury, his mother is still in the hospital recovering, and the rest of his family were killed. They didn't have any extended family, so he was put into foster care.

I have had to set my house up a lot like a preschool/daycare because of having 4 toddlers at once, and all their appointments for occupational therapy, physical therapy, speech therapy, counselling and doctor's visits.

We've also had to venture into different techniques than what we used with Zed. We have reduced the language load from 7 to 3 because the other kids could not keep up. I had to buy baby toys because Zed was never interested, but Andy needed them for his development.

It's been a steep learning curve. Now that we've finally figured out schedules, sleeping arrangements, which kids need to dress themselves, which kids are afraid of the dark/buses/clowns/dogs/dvd player, etc. I finally have time to chime in online again.

http://educationalfontware.com/

We chose SV Cursive to use. However you get all 300+ fonts when you buy. If we decide to switch script styles in the future we have plenty of choices.

River fish typically are lower in mercury than ocean fish, and small fish lower than larger fish. There is a list near the bottom of this page http://longevity.about.com/od/lifelongnutrition/a/fish_mercury.htm

We tend to eat salmon the most, some sole, flounder, and tilapia.

We are using http://www.nurturedbylove.ca/resources/cuisenairebook.pdf once a week, and
http://ceure.buffalostate.edu/~csmp/CSMPProgram/Primary%20Disk/Start.html and http://www.cimt.plymouth.ac.uk/projects/mep/default.htm twice per week.

But honestly the best advancements come when one of them is just playing and comes up with something neat, and shows the others. For example 2 yellow rods are the same length as 5 red rods. This was very exciting for Andy. Very very exciting. He was talking about it for hours after he discovered it, and then Amy tells him that it's the same as an orange rod. Then she pondered how many yellow rods would be the same as 2 orange rods. Immediately Andy said 4. So I got out the rods for them to test it.

These are the coolest math manipulative I've ever seen. They're practically building blocks and yet impart all sorts of mathematical knowledge. I've been using them along with a few free math curricula. All four toddlers are adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing. They think they're playing  It's only taken a few months. I recommend researching them as a teaching aid for kids too old for dots and too young for conventional programs.

I did modified EC with Zed, but my new kids all arrived much older and not potty trained. I used the suggestions in the book Diaper Free Before Three by Dr Jill Lekovic. I set up 3 (and later 4) potties in the bathroom, one for each of the kids and I took them all at once when I went. The newest is still not fully potty trained (31 months old) but he arrived very traumatically, and it seems that my house is much different than his last. I think his problems are more of adjustment than potty training technique.

Great job improvising! Are your floors carpeted? If they're not, your son could crawl on the floor. Any object could be used to push off from, if it's sturdy enough. If they are carpeted, try a sheet of cardboard about the size of his torso. Put him in socks for friction, lay him on the cardboard. Cardboard on carpet is very slippery, I think it might work.

We eat casein-free, gluten-free, soy-free, and artifical-additive-free whole organic foods. All four of the kids have dietary restrictions.

We eat meat like it's going out of style though, with low-mercury fish once a week.

We decided to use homemade worksheets. I purchased a font package with the cursive my husband and I liked. We printed out the letters in 200pt dashed. I hand drew in a baseline.

I have my kids trace 3 letters per day. Obviously 3 yo DD is doing the best, but 21 mo DS is doing surprisingly well. The two year olds just are not into it. One won't even draw. 

I did a lot of research into letter formation and potential issues, which is why we settled on doing cursive first (not the program cursive first though).

I've heard many great things about this program.
Thanks for the review.

Ha! I cannot At All. I can hang and that's about it.

Zed does fine with monkey bars though. My husband has shown him, and when we go to the park, I cheat. I walk under the ladder but sway so my upper body moves as if I could brachiate. It seems to have tricked the little guy because he thinks monkey bars are the best part of the park.

If you can find good role models have them do it, and if not, fake it.