Thank you for your very helpful replies.

Mum.

Hello KL,

Could you please give us all a quick update on the French curriculum.

Thank you,

Mum.

Hello KL, Lappy, BrillKids Team,

You probably didn't see the previous post for this old thread. 

Are you able to give another update on the LR French Curriculum?

Thank you & sweet dreams, 

Mum.

If you are a non-Chinese speaking family that purchased one of the LR Chinese Curriculums, could you please share how your child (or children) enjoys and has responded to the program.

If you also use other foreign language tools (such as DVDs, CDs and internet sites) how does the LR Chinese Curriculum compare?

Also, which do you enjoy most?

Thank you,

Mum.

G'day BrillKids Team,

Do you have a moment to give us a quick update on the LR French curriculum?

Thank you,

Mum.

Hello ariel,

The RightStart website will show you what is needed for each level. I do not know what level you would like to start at, but here is the list for Level B.

http://activitiesforlearning.com/levelb.aspx

When we are ready to move to Level C I will only need the B to C Add-On Kit, because as you correctly said, the manipulatives are reused. You could certainly buy many yourself and just purchase the unique items from RightStart. From memory I estimated the cost of that option versus buying the Kit, and ended up opting for the RightStart Kit.

At this stage I plan to keep moving through all of the levels. It is easy for me and fun for my children.

We didn’t start playing with the Japanese abacus until my daughter was about 5½. My plan is for us to keep covering 5 to 10 pages of the Text Book each week, which is not a big time commitment as my daughter knows the answers to the equations we are doing, but not what all of the rows of beads represent and how to move the beads correctly to obtain her answer. I am keen to keep this up as I am personally interested in developing the skills involved as much as helping my children develop them. It doesn't matter to me if they don't develop the super powers you see in the videos of those brilliantly talented children, it is simply another fun way for them to view math, rather than fearing it like their dad. 

Mum.

My 6 year old daughter adores Usborne’s Stories from Shakespeare. When she borrows it from the library it is so hard to coax her away.

http://www.usborne.com/catalogue/catalogue.aspx?cat=1&area=ta&subcat=tas&id=1581

However the Usborne’s Stories from Shakespeare is for the more experienced reader. I would suggest starting with the Usborne Illustrated Story Collection’s Illustrated stories from Shakespeare recommended by aangeles above. We also love the Illustrated classics for girls in this series.

These Shakespeare for children stories have been fantastic. My daughter is as familiar with many of Shakespeare's plots as she is with the popular princess fairy tales. I am sure that she knows more of his characters and stories than I do! 

Mum.

lzp11, You are very welcome.

ariel, I agree that the RightStart Mathematics program is expensive. You should try getting it shipped to Australia!    I must say that it has been worth the cost. We started at Level B and I am planning to order Level C during the next couple of months and start working on it with my daughter in the second half of this year.

Also, I have probably saved a fortune since we started RightStart as I am no longer tempted by other math activity books or manipulatives (which can quickly add up) because I know that my daughter is getting a lot of benefit from using RightStart and she truly understands and enjoys our lessons. And there is very little preparation for me before a lesson – the occasional photocopying of a game sheet, once I made some Australian coins out of cardboard and modified a few related lesson plans, gathering toys or the supplied cards for games. Generally I just grab the items in the supplies list at the top of the lesson plan and then sit right down with my daughter without having read through the lesson.    I love it!

The RightStart abacus is specifically designed for the program so you probably wouldn’t be able to just purchase it alone and get the same benefits. I think a child would need to understand 1s, 10s, 100s and so on (which are so clear on the style of abacus like the one used in RightStart which I wrongly thought of as very babyish before seeing how powerful the two-coloured RightStart abacus is), then be introduced to the Japanese abacus.

The student does not use the RightStart Mathematics book, the teacher does. The student does very little writing which is one reason I am using it for my son at 3 years of age. He is a brilliant reader and has had an introduction to math thanks to LM and Doman, but is not a strong writer.

The student sings, plays finger games, plays with toys, plays with the abacus, plays with counters, plays card games, plays board games, plays with shapes….. Plays, plays, plays rather than completes worksheets. There are worksheets, but only a few, and I’m going to incorporate stickers into those lessons so my son will have a blast doing them. When my daughter was 4 and 5 I made up equation questions about fairies, princesses and unicorns with lots of coloured pictures thrown in to make the worksheets more fun.

The student does use books with the Learning Mathematics with the Abacus program, but you can control how much by doing all of the exercises along with them on your own abacus. The books definitely wouldn’t appeal to a 2 year old. The Activity Book is a very plain black and white book and the Text Book is only slightly more appealing. I’m probably not going to introduce the Japanese abacus to my son before he is 5, even though he wants to have his turn now. Also, it is not very strong so I’m afraid he’ll break it. 

The Learning Mathematics with the Abacus does teach math while learning to use the Japanese abacus, but I would not use this program alone to teach a child math. As much as we like learning our Japanese abacus with this program, I am convinced that my daughter would not have the same excellent grasp of math if I had started her math journey with this program. RightStart is far more comprehensive.

I hope that this helps.

Mum.

Hello lzp11,

I started using the Learning Mathematics with the Abacus Year 1 books with my daughter when she was 5. I purchased 2 abacuses and we are having fun learning how to use them together. I would not recommend this style of abacus for very young children as handling the abacus was frustrating at first for my daughter. I think five was a great age to start.

The actual math problems are very simple for my daughter, so I keep each lesson very brief (5 minutes) to ensure we always have fun. We are using it to boost my daughter's powers of visualisation, which we have worked on for some time now with the more basic style of abacus from RightStart Mathematics.

For younger children I love the RightStart program which I started using when my daughter was 4 years old. It is full of variety and many fun activities suitable for youngsters such as singing and playing with our bear counters, pom-poms, straws, animal toys and home-made play money.

I started my 3½ year old son on the RightStart abacus this week and was very happy with the interest he showed and how he could handled it.

I feel very fortunate to have found these abacus based programs. We love our abacuses. 

Happy teaching,

Mum.

Hi KL,

Thanks. I had already thought of that work around, which I only considered a temporary fix rather than a final solution worthy of a product I have enjoyed seeing evolve into a very professional piece of software.

However, I cannot move the Word Settings and Playback Settings tab totally off the screen. I can only move them across to the right so that they take up about one third of the Advanced Play/Edit screen.

Any tips on how to

move the right half of it off the screen so that the image areas are out of sight.

Thank you,

Mum.

Great job BrillKids Team. Many thanks. The new LR version is great. I love the moving pointer and the option to put words under pictures.

My favourite change is the folders. I have been eagerly waiting for folders within folders, so am very excited about the reorganising now ahead of me.

Unfortunately I am not a fan of the new Play Courses screen and Advanced Play/Edit screen set up. At the moment we use LR mostly for Playlists of EK BOI, and my children are very distracted by the pictures (in Word Settings), or words and boxes (in Playback Settings) that they can now see before we play our "games".

Perhaps you could have a Play Playlists & Categories screen between the new Play Courses and Advanced Play/Edit screens.

Thank you,

Mum.

Could you please help me work out how to load the Simplified Chinese Curriculum Trial file.

I downloaded BK-CN-Simplified-Demo.zip from this thread on 22 Nov 2010 and have just today tried to upload it to LR. I still have LR version 1.6.324.

When BK-CN-Simplified-Demo.zip is unzipped I get a folder called BK-CN-Simplified-Demo which contains a folder called Pack which contains a number of folders. There doesn't seem to be a file to select when I try to import into LR and clicking on BK-CN-Simplified-Demo from Windows Explorer does nothing for me.

Could you please help me with the steps I am missing. I feel very silly as so many people have uploaded and enjoyed the trial while I am stumped.

Thank you,

Mum.

Dr Jones will also be recording a demonstration specifically for Brillkids on Early Learning which can be downloaded from this site early next week.

Hello Chris,

I'm watching this topic with great interest but have not been fortunate enough to see your live demonstrations.

Could you please advise the address of the demonstration you referred to above.

Thank you,

Mum.

Right now there are no plans for Semester 3, but we do have plans to release more and more stories, like Aesop's Fables!

Hello BK Team,

Sorry to ask, because I know you are busy with your wonderful creations , but do you have any idea yet when more LR stories will be available?

Thank you,

Mum.

Thank you Marialuisa, that is wonderful.

Mum.