Have a safe trip and let us know how it goes. Best wishes to you and your beautiful little man!

Mine downloaded fine. Thanks, Tracy!

WOW, this is fantastic! We need to keep bumping this thread up so that everyone can see it and subscribe! Karma to you, Bella!

It is great that you have taken control over the situation with otitis at such an early stage. My dd's "glue ear" had gone unnoticed until her speech delay became apparent at 2. Her hearing was tested and she turned out to have mild to moderate hearing loss in both ears. She was then tested 4 times over the period of 4 months and her hearing showed no improvement whatsoever. I don't know for how long she had been hearing impaired prior to that. Although the opinion of the audiologist is that "glue ear" does not cause speech delay, I keep beating myself up about the lost early years when she was deprived in this important sensory area.

Hope it goes well with your baby. My best wishes!

I have described some of the activities suggested to my dd by a speech and language therapist a couple of years ago here:

http://lmshomeschool.blogspot.com/2011/01/activities-to-encourage-speech-and.html

You may find some of them useful for your baby.

It is also worth exploring signing and sign language, which a great tool for language stimulation (although I must admit, I did not explore it with LM as much as I should have). Perhaps there are some classes available in your area?

Brilliant review, waterdreamer! Thank you.

I must say DJG approach did seem a bit too "left brain" to me. I have not used Numicon as such myself, but I did make some DIY manipulatives similar to Numicon shapes and I have to say, showing "bigger/smaller", "odd/even", "add one", as well as some number bonds have been a breeze!  (My daughter has a developmental disorder with similar challenges to autism and is a visual learner).

I need to start focusing on math in a more structured way now, so your review has been very helpful.

Mine took about 15 minutes each, but, as I said earlier, only after many unsuccessful attempts.

I was trying to download it in the past few days with little luck. A window advising me to choose where to save it would pop up and the download would not move anywhere from that point. Yesterday I managed to download the first set but was not so successful with the second lot. This morning I finally downloaded the second set. So I guess, you just need to keep trying.

Thank you for the link, heath!

Chris, with the 60 day unconditional guarantee, I understand the costs of shipping both ways would have to be borne by the buyer. Am I right?Thank you.

I read there is a link between the child's learning style and how easily s/he takes to phonics. Apparently many visual-spatial learners are much more comfortable using a whole-word approach and struggle to read phonetically.

Hello Tracy, what you are describing is very similar to the situation with my daughter. YBCR was a great success with her and she seems to be very comfortable with the whole-word approach. I then decided to introduce phonics and started her on DadDude's (Larry Sanger) Fleschcards, but with not much success yet. For the time that she was interested in these (she is not too keen on cards), she did not manage to successfully blend the letters. Although she knows what each letter "says", she would end up blending it into something else. Interestingly, if I teach her similar looking CVC words using a whole-word approach (toy/boy, cat/hat, has/had), she does not seem to struggle to differentiate. I have to mentioned that her speech is delayed, which may be one of the reasons for this difficulty.

I am planning to persevere with phonics and hopefully it will click one day. I also keep showing her the LeapFrog and Montessori videos as recommended by TMT. 

This is very interesting, Chris, thank you! Have you got any data as to how many of these students moved past level 4 to reading regular notes moving on regular score or even reading sheets? Thanks in advance!

Helene,

May I ask if your programme has been successfully used with young students with special needs, such as language delay, autism, etc.? Thank you in advance.

A fascinating article! Karma to you TMT! Although the study did not find a relationship between visualising number forms and greater mathematica ability, it did point to the relationship between creativity and mathematical ability. It looks like colouring the numbers could be a great idea when teaching visual creative learners.

Great list!

I started mine too:

http://lmshomeschool.blogspot.com/