Hi all

great to read about what you have written regarding instruments. I have no knowledge whatsoever about music and musical instruments so it's good to learn what to buy as 1st instrument for my baby.

I always likes piano, violin 2nd choice, excuse my non-professional ear hence preference. However piano is expensive. 2nd hand piano could be much more affordable but the tuning is not cheap, and I have heard that you have to retune it now and then. Problem is that I would not have a clue when a piano needs to be retuned.

If I buy a keyboard, could anyone please tell me what to look for? Thanks a lot.

Hi

Does anyone know where I can buy language CDs to play in the background while baby is playing or eating? CD of native speaker that teach the language. I'm interested in French, Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, German, Russian etc...

with the current economy the more affordable the better as well.

thanks in advance

I've got Wink to learn Chinese. The picture and audio is clear, some minor echo sometimes on the speed flash lessons. All in all it's good. Certainly save you some time of material searching and preparation, especially when you don't speak Chinese.

Thanks a lot. The sample looks good. Just wonder about the animation. Can we let babies watch animation already or is it too early?

Does anyone know where I can go and watch a sample of Trebellina DVD please? Thanks.

Hi I see this DVD in amazon with lots of good reviews. Wonder any of you have used this before? Could you please share your experience. Is it a good piece to teach your baby about music, art??? according to what we're exposed here in the forum regarding rules of early learning I mean.

thanks all.

I found a way to make menu bar of Internet Explorer to disappear (function key F11). However the menu of the game itself stays. And the actual screen where the game is playing/showing stays the same small size, not enlarged.

I maybe fussy but I don't want to present a picture of an elephant to my baby when she can also see lots of other things together with the elephant. Also icons are small for her to pick up, and I don't want to risk straining her eyes.

HI Health

No the world is not perfect but you have done very well. You should be prowd of yourself. I have 1 baby and feel so busy already, can't even imagine what with 2 babies. And my husband helps a lot.

Good on you.

Hi

I will do more research on this and possibility of homeschooling as soon as my material preparation for my baby ease a bit.

However I do wonder how I can do homeschooling when I have to go to work for our family living. As the kid grows up, the material is much more advanced and preparation time is harder. Not to talk about our knowledge is very limited, how can we find out info enough to teach our kids what we have no clue about.

We flash cards when our baby wakes up and just before sleep. We play classical music in the background whenever we can. We play Little Readers when we can as well, usually during weekend.

When we flash cards, we flash a few sets at the same time, if her attention permits.

We bought Wink to learn "Learning Chinese". Have not really played that one as we only started little more than a week ago for teaching English. After 2 more weeks, we will get our baby watch Learning Chinese twice a day as well, after breakfast and after dinner.

During the day she goes to childcare and we to work.

Hi

My baby is 11 months old. I started to do flash cards to my baby about 1 and 1/2 week ago. Now I am doing about 6 sets of 5 words per day and 2 sets of red dots. She goes to childcare during the day so we do 1 flash when she gets up, another one before sleep. Someday when we have time and she is in a perceptive mood we do another flash. We don't have time to wait 15 minutes between sets actually so we do all at one, separated by compliments, encouragement, or some little fast silly game like hi five, peekapoo, clap hands, find things under the blanket etc... As we go out of the stated rule of spreading out the flash sets, whenever she shows sign of disinterest or not so enthusiatic then we stop or drop the undone sets to another time. So far so good. However I must note here that we've noticed her focus span has been pretty good since she was little.

Trulypearl, I think if you watch your baby, he will guide your way. My baby does not show much interest the 1st day or 2 though she looked at all sets presented, then we noticed the difference in her eyes and her sitting posture when we bring out the cards. Sometimes she touches the cards and talks to me though I don't understand very well since she can not really speak yet. I think she tries to tell me the word. Her eyes are also different whenever we add a new set. She giggles or makes some other sounds to let us know she recognises that is a new set.

KL is right in the multisensory method. Whenever possible or remembered, we show her things like touch the nose and said nose etc... She also likes to look at the presentations in Little Reader since they have image, voice, noise attached to a word. My fault we have not used it much as we will have to set the computer up for that and connect it to the television for big screen, and my living room (where the television is) have many distractions compared to the bedroom where we use to flash cards to our baby. I also have to consider the number of sets shown to her per day to keep her interested.

A few days ago my husband accidentally asked our baby "Where is Mommy?" and we did not expect any answer. I think he slipped it out not on purpose. Amazingly she pointed to me (nearby at that time). And we've just shown her that word with a picture of me on Little Reader the day before, and we don't teach her that word before except on the word set starting a few days before that. I'm not a native English speaker so we've been trying to get her call me Mom in a different language.

After that I was burning to know more about her understanding. So yesterday (wickedly I know) I presented 2 red dot cards to her, asking her which one is 14 (out of 13 and 14). She looked at both and looked back at 14 (on my right side). We congratulated her on her achievement. I wanted to be sure so presented her with another 2 words (can't remember which word now for a sudden). When being asked, she again looked at 2 words then look to the right word (this time on my left side) and smiled to it (she can't talk yet). These 2 words have been presented to her for about 2 days.

Now I know for sure she understands at least nearly everything we teach or show to her. And I'm not going to present any other problem solving situation again until much later (depend on her interest).

When we started learning about early learning for our baby, we were prepared to do it without knowing her understanding for quite a while. Info about Shichida methods said you may not see the results for a few years. Now we feel much more encouraged and thrilled.

Are we talking about the same Memory Magic? My one are 2 cd's, not dvd??? And the instruction said to copy it to the computer, then open a file named Start.html

I will try to look at it again.

Hi

I would like to know your experience with Memory Magic,  or anyway to use it effectively please.

I bought those game cds recently, looking forward to compliment Little Reader with those Bits of intelligence, silly stories, follow that dot exercise. However the games are run on Internet Explorer landscape so all menu bars stay to distract the baby. Also the screen and letters are small, as well as the cards (for silly stories on the screen) are too small for young babies (even though the games claim to be for children as young as 6 months old). Connecting the computer to a big television screen does not help the case either.

Anyone have some way to overcome these problems please???

By the way if anyone wants to increase the font size for Little Reader to as big or bigger than what Doman recommends, you can use your big television as a monitor, the quality of the image not changed.

Thanks.

Hi

I read somewhere (forget where but it's a right brain website) saying that you should start with 1 language, then after a few weeks (3-4 weeks) introducing another language along while still teaching baby the already introduced language(s). They said the time lag would be sufficient for baby to distinguish between languages.
Hope it helps.

Jenny, I think the difference is in letting or not letting baby doing some certain exercise, and/or exploring the environment. We Asian people seem to control babies' environment more than Westerners e.g. not letting babies eat by themselves, being afraid of the mess they will create. Making mess is a way for them to learn.

Tasting things with their tongue is another way for them to learn and explore things around. My parents in law used to be not very happy at first when I let my baby taste what she likes (which is everything) so long it's not dirty or poisonous.

Children can sleep alone because their parents train them so. I know one of my workmates get up like 20 times at night to get her daughter back to her bed in another room when the daughter got up and go to parents room. that is part of training. You have to be committed and be consistent. However everyone is comfortable and believe in different methods, so feel welcomed to set your own rules.

One advantage in western world: we have heaps of books and guide on baby development and what we should do with baby during early months. My Plunket nurse (a free nurse service in NZ where they visit you and baby at your home every months for the first 6 months to check on baby and you) used to ask me every visit if I have put my baby on tummy time a lot (since birth). We also hold baby upright here since little. And my cousins in Vietnam still hold their little babies only in horizontal position face up for a few months after birth.

If you have Doman books, you will see that he advised parents to let babies sleep on tummy, crawl when sleeping from birth etc... Some parents oppose that idea though.

there is heaps of info you can read on the internet, just google it, if you don't want to buy books.

Hope this helps.