Thanks for the kink Izp11. I'm happy it's using the same terms as my daughter's abacus school "small/ big friends". I could use this with my 1-year old who's counting on a physical abacus but totally loves the iPad!

Hi babymum, we don't have CMA in our country but we do have a abacus school that Cammie attends to irregularly (we attended about 20 sessions the whole year). There are major differences between the two such as CMA uses two hands while SIP uses one-handed operation. In terms of ansan practice, I am very impressed with CMA because I haven't seen such speed in our school in the same age-group on your video.

To answer you question, yes soroban will tend to confuse a child IF he has a weak math foundation. The initial trouble we had when transitioning from soroban to Singapore Math is the order of which numbers to add/subtract first. Other than that, it is very similar because of the use of Singapore's grouping by ten method and soroban's bonds of 10.

Honestly, I think soroban could be a great stand-alone math instruction for the basic operations provided that each finger movement is explained and totally understood by the student first. For example, we "shoot-up 7" when adding 7 to 6 because the formula is for adding 7 is -3,+10. Shooting up 7 (moving heaven bead 5 and 2 earth-beads upwards) means lessing 5 while adding 2, which is actually lessing 3. Sorry if this is vague!

Cammie is not receiving mental math instruction yet at SIP but it's a different story at home. I make her solve every question in her school books in ansan (mental math). Regarding her speed, I would say not bad because on her best mood, she is at par with Xavier (brother of Cherlyn Lee, one of the girls on your video) who also attends CMA. So it's not about the school but as all things EL, about practice.

Thank you Keri and Kristiina!

Yes Cammie loves "testing" her baby brother. I'm baffled because he pays more attention to her than me! He just laughs at me when I test him

Penrose Math Puzzles looks great! It'll be a perfect alternative activity for us since we're doing much of word problems now. Thank you! Hugs to Princess Alex! Cammie has the same addiction. Aside from Disney characters, she also loves to be "Queen Esther" from Bible study or "Queen Hutepi" from our Egyptian History lessons.

As always, a great update! Well worth the wait. I liked your idea of showing EK. I did almost exactly the same thing with Cammie before showing them in customized lessons in Little Reader. It is indeed a daunting task, from selecting the words and pictures (I also filtered "large images only"!), to typing to organizing them up in LR. We had 5-6 of pictures only per word because it's tricky to find many that's close to Doman's standards. I would love to share those files but our computer broke before we had a chance to back them up.

Please post a video of Cub swimming! We would love to see him

Keri, what a fantastic idea about the socks! I'll make sure to use them with Robert as he loves to write everywhere-including his body. LOL

Fiesty Robert loves Little Math, Babybit, and basically everything that has numbers but Little Math is the first thing he requests upon opening the computer. He has been counting all sorts of things since he's a year old and knows one-to-one correspondence of up to 10 quantities (as far as we have tested him). We would show a number of fingers and he would correctly identify the quantity.

Here at 19-months old, he counts to 10 in Filipino and to 24 in English before he lost interest (he counts up to 30 if in the mood). A great thanks to Brillkids and all the inspiration and support we get here in the forum.

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Thanks everyone! Ah yes little Robert is quite fond of talking early on! He's a stickler for phonics, practicing to himself over and over the letter sounds, blends, and digraphs. He would face me and show me magnetic letters and pronounce/shout them as if he's the teacher and I'm a student who is hard of hearing. LOL

Little Helen is a total performer! It's delightful to see how she moves to the music. Thanks for sharing Tamsyn.

It may be that your LO feels that she's being tested when you ask her. Games are less-stressing option to show performance. I remember my oldest doesn't like to verbalize before but when I bought a Leapfrog Voice Recorder (the one that has built in word games that makes you participate by recording your voice), she gamely voiced-out what she's thinking. 

You guys are amazing!

I think your wife will eventually accept your view. Experiencing such progress unfold each day is a big eye-opener - enough (for me at least) to debunk several educational views I have.

Adorable! I also watched other videos at your Youtube channel and loved how he talked about the carbon-oxygen cycle

Thank you arvi, newage, and MummyRoo It's nice to hear about your LO's. On his colored abacus, he labels the yellow "Mi", the blue "So" though he knows the color names. He thinks solfege is fabulous On LM's interactive piano he touches not one, but the three (lower, middle, high octave) notes when I told him to find a note. LM is really intuitive!

We are at lesson 24 of Little Musician and is already seeing great progress! Yesterday, I "tested" my 1-year old and found out he can sight-read music notes. His sister can easily identify a bunch of chords and most notes by ear. We're just happily surprised of how fast results are seen. I didn't expect they're taking it seriously because they move around the room, play games, laugh, sings along, and are never still while LM is playing

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Great update Arvi! Congratulations! You must be Thank you for mentioning Miquon math. We'll definitely look into it.

Thanks for the 60 second sweep game. Having done RB multiplication, Cammie recalls the answers fast but needs "reminders" in answering division. I think this game is just what we need!

Now that Little Math is mentioned, I wish it could have fractions, decimals, or even abacus lessons too. It has great potential for these!

Hi Keri, we didn't have a chance of using a soroban software so I cannot comment on mathsecret. I got my information from one of the better-rated books on soroban "Japanese Abacus by Takashi Kojima". I'd be happy to forward an e-book copy. Re using left/right/ both hands, Cammie's and (Ella's) school bridged over to using the one-hand approach after finding out that that method is being used in other countries. They had an international competition and observed that using one-hand is more efficient/faster in doing computations.

I looked at the soroban at thinkgeek. I think it's an abacus with a wooden frame and brown plastic beads. I think it's fine for introducing Alex to the soroban but if you're looking for a quality soroban, you may want to buy at www.soroban.com. We bought a 13-digit all-wood for 4,200 Japanese Yen. Shipping is free.

COngratulations! I had a similar experience with my 13-month old who has been sight-reading since his 10th month.. He loves my mole on my shoulder and can say it well. I wrote the word "mole" and let him read. It's his first time to see the word but he said it clearly "mole".  Babies are really so amazing!