Thank you so much Iois1!  You are right, the categories don't make a lot of sense without the course file, I also wonder about the 230 people who only downloaded the categories, but I suppose they'll still make use of the files in their own way. 

If you would like the videos, just inbox me with your email address and I'll give you a link to download them, but be warned, it's a 1.5 Gb download, but to my opinion it really makes the course more enjoyable for the little ones.

My situation is the same Scruff's, only I'm Afrikaans and my hubby is English.  My boy is turning 3 on Saturday, English people think he's predominantly English, Afrikaans people think he's Afrikaans, and speaking both languages very well.  As far as early learning is concerned, initially I treated both languages equal, but as there are a lot more resources available in English, Afrikaans got left behind.  I've got about 1000 Afrikaans flashcards that I've created in LR (these will only work on your PC's Little Reader and not on your iPad) and then about 15% of our reading is done in Afrikaans, that's the extent of his Afrikaans schooling, unfortunately.  I do talk to him in Afrikaans all day long, and I'm still home full time with him, so that's a lot of Afrikaans communication practice.

Wilhelm was a late talker, but once he got going he was ahead in both languages.  Now at 3 years, his French is also coming on ever so slowly, he's been exposed to quite a bit of Chinese and a little of Zulu too.  He's not confused at all, in fact, he sometimes tells me when I'm using English words and what the correct Afrikaans is!

Something that stands out for me but most people will not really notice is that he has a larger English vocabulary, but his Afrikaans language is better than his English use of language.  I think it has to do with the fact that he gets a lot of Afrikaans, but he gets quality English time, maybe...

Yes, the world things we're nuts, but this forum doesn't!

Welcome!  Can't wait to here more from you.

My 2 cents;  you should not care if she's learning or not.  You could have big brother with you, you could even have all the ordinary distractions about.  IMO, the best place to do lessons is where you spend most of your day, maybe in the living room area?

When you're spending time with your little one, holding her, talking to her, singing, reading, playing etc.  you are in fact teaching her a great deal of skills and aiding her development, yet you don't care if she's learning, you're just enjoying her, it's just time spent together.  The thoughts, is she concentrating, is she looking, is she learning? never even enter your mind.  Off course she's learning to talk, learning about body language, learning about love etc  you know it yet you don't even think about it and I think most of us take it for granted, it's things that just happen.  Teaching reading should be exactly like that.  Just run the lessons when ever you feel like it, as if you put it on for yourself to enjoy watching it and the kids just happen to be about. Smooch your little ones during a lesson if you feel like smooching and talk or move about as if you're just watching TV, don't feel like you or anybody else has to be quiet or focused during the lessons - that's for traditional classrooms and that, IMO, doesn't work all that well for any student.

I hope this reply doesn't make you feel attacked.  I can talk about this topic at length because I've made these mistakes I mention, not because I think you are making them too.

Relax, have fun and I hope to hear your success stories in the future.

[download the attached file]

Thank you very much Skylark for your comments about the course and all the time you've put into making this course happen!

Yes, as Skylark said, it's also very important to download the attached file and import it, it's a very small download, but without it your content is not organized as a course.

It is down here in small print, it says, "Country Course Demo.lrc"
     |           |           |           |               |               |                 |                     |
    V          V         V          V             V              V               V                    V

[If you would like this 50 day video-free country course demo, here's how you go about it:]

The country course is in it's very last stages of completion.   The first 50 days (out of 300) is finalized and has been sent around and many families are already enjoying the results of this big team effort.

Wanting to share this on BrillKids, as it's a Little Reader course and this is where the team got together, I've uploaded content for a demo course to the library, free for anyone to download and have a look.  The demo includes all the flashcards, fact slides, games and other audio for the first 50 days' lessons, but it does not include any videos (simply because they are too big to upload to the BK library.)

Getting this demo imported into your Little Reader will take a bit of work, because you need to download and import 22 separate files (again, this is because of the file size limit,)  but to people who love Littler Reader, I really think this will be worth your while.
 
If you would like this 50 day video-free country course demo, here's how you go about it:

First you need to make sure you have the latest version of LR.  You can check your own version under Tools -> Software Information, and compare it to this version http://www.brillkids.com/user/acct-mgmt-purchases.php/Little-Reader-Software.php, where you can also download the latest LR update.

Second you need to download and import these 21 files from the library:
http://library.brillkids.com/library.php?cid=1&criteria=Country+Course+Demo (Take note, part 20 is on the second page)

And finally, download and import the attached file.

It is down here in small print, it says, "Country Course Demo.lrc"
     |           |           |           |               |               |                 |                     |
    V          V         V          V             V              V               V                    V

As Skylark said, this project is just about finished, so we don't have any assignments to give to new joiners (not at the moment.) 

Hippche, msintan and luv2laugh, I've sent you personal messages so please check your BK inbox.

I admit that I'm too lazy to research this topic, I don't know much about the studies done and I probably made a whole lot of hasty assumptions myself, my apologies. 

Here's a link a friend just gave me (just for interests sake, not saying it proves anything):  http://bernard.pitzer.edu/~dmoore/psych199s03articles/Of_Human_Bonding.pdf

Maybe I've been living in this bubble where everybody agrees with the idea of PL and to me it became something that's generally excepted, maybe this assumption even drove me to see things during my pregnancy that were not really there.

Good luck robbyjo, have fun and I hope you find what you're looking for.

So how about thumb sucking before birth?  It is a well known fact that many babies suck their thumbs before they are born.  Sucking might be a reflex, but sticking your thumb into your mouth voluntarily is a learnt behavior.

@robbyjo
So you've fine combed the entire internet on this topic, every language, all restricted documents and also went back in time just to check on the Egyptians and Mayans did you?  That's wonderful!  I hope (for your part) that you've not been doing your research the same way as you've been reading posts here because that would mean you've wasted a lot of your time.  (You can do a lot of research on any given topic and still only cover a fraction, so one should be careful when assuming you know all of any given subject)
 
I say again, I was joking about you providing proof of PL being absurd, but for someone who wants to play this scientific/logical angle, you're very quick to make all kinds of hasty assumptions.

      

@Robbyjo, please define "real learning." 

      

@robbyjo:  You can prove a negative, I can prove that I am not a man.  I suppose you cannot prove that prenatal learning is impossible, but again, that was not what I asked you to do.  You said prenatal learning is absurd, which I interpreted as you saying it's illogical.  One might not be able to prove that PL as a whole is impossible, but one would be capable of taking individual claims and disproving them - that off course will be worthless, but my point is, technically you can provide proof to support your claims if they were true. (Note that I jokingly asked you to provide proof because you asked me to provide proof of something I didn't even say.)

I really don't think you've done even a fraction of the homework on this topic, but let's assume you are correct in saying there is no concrete studies or proof that supports PL, so in that case it would truly just be a theory.  The theory on the other hand is supported by facts, like physical characteristics of premature babies and newborns etc.

I know you're mainly talking about BabyPlus, but clearly nobody else on this thread is, because of the title you chose and your initial attack on PL in your opening post.  Personally I agree with you, I don't like the product and I was aware of the false advertisement (I think most of us were as the product has been discussed at length.)  I don't believe it's harmful though.

Just to be clear, I've been talking about PL in the general sense, as in, the prenatal mind's capability of forming a memory from sensory input in it's surroundings, whether it was generated deliberately/naturally/coincidentally and regardless of the duration the memory lasts.   I'm rejecting what you say about prenatal learning, assuming your definition of prenatal learning is similar to that of mine.

Robbyjo, I was referring to the previously mentioned comment on another thread which you had mentioned that it was ridiculous.

I agree with soccermom on this quote, Robbyjo has changed her tune since starting the thread.

I didn't ever say that early learning has been proved true beyond any reasonable doubt, I said studies have been done that supports the theory (one of many examples http://www.musicaprenatal.com.mx/english/foundations.html), I said that it makes sense to me (if newborns can learn, then surely babies can learn at least the days before they are born) and from personal experience (my baby responded in a highly predicable fashion to certain stimulation before birth and continued after birth.)

There's a big difference between saying PL is not possible and saying that it has not been proven possible.  (Nobody has proven that it is impossible.)  If you still think PL is ridiculous, then I ask, where is your proof?  Robbyjo, you are making claims you can't support, yet I am under no obligation to provide proof of PL being possible as I never said it is.

Quite frankly I don't have time and I'm not interested in doing further research on the topic, but I'm convinced to the extent that I will practice PL with my future unborn children, I've actually got some new ideas for things I would like to try.  Just like most other EL ideas, we don't have much evidence yet we're taking a chance, spending little bits of time with hopes of making a positive difference.

About muffled input in the womb:  The link I provided is a South African study led by Dr Woodward.  I can't verify the claim, but in part of their study they inserted a microphone inside the womb and found that the mother's own voice vibrates internally and can actually be heard very clearly, one need not speak louder than normal for the baby to hear the mother's voice.  Male voices, as they are deeper, can also be picked up in the womb, although nothing else is as clear as that of the mother's own voice.  Also, think about this, muffled speech and music is surely better than none at all.  If the same muffled input is provided consistently, the mind will probably memorize it, and any form of learning exercises the brain, making it worth while even if the child does not remember it after birth, yet many individual accounts suggests that babies can recognize songs, rhymes, books read, music and regular sounds around the home after birth.  If that is true, one can assume the mind is capable of recognizing the basic sound pattern from the muffled sound in the womb, in the not muffled sound  outside of the womb.

About the big bang theory:  The idea of Prenatal Stimulation is much older than the big bang theory and much wider known, probably much wider excepted too, but I now understand why  you mentioned it thanks for clearing it up soccermom.  Yes, it's easier to prove PL than BB, but that doesn't mean it's easy to prove PL.  What would you suggest, we lock a group of pregnant women in a cage to make sure all influential factors are the same except the one group receives prenatal stimulation and the other is forbidden to talk or listen to music, touch their bellies etc.... hmm that's so inhumane I wouldn't be surprised if Kezia asks me to delete what I just said.

One thing that I hate and see with many parents is that you make a parental choice, like stay at home / breast feed / co-sleep / teach reading etc.  and then hate to see when other mothers don't make the same choice as you did.  This thread stinks of that, if you don't believe in PL then don't practice it, it's simple.

There have been lots of studies supporting prenatal learning connected to language and musical memory.  Babies can also be taught to kick when prompted before they are born, and they can be encouraged to push with their arms and legs which helps strengthen them before birth (not that they don't do this naturally.)

Babies are also born with several reflexes, I would not say those were really learned prenatally as they are pre-programmed, although babies do exercise many reflexes prenatally (like sucking their hands in some cases.)

Many people on this forum refer to scientific proof to backup their EL choices!!  And MANY hold religious beliefs other than Christianity!

Yes, the big bang theory is not a fact, so what about it?  Theories are allowed to exist within science without debunking other scientific proofs and facts.  Viewing prenatal learning as a theory(PL), then saying there exists other theories (BB) without scientific proof of validity, does not make (PL) any more or less valid, the theories are completely disjoint.

Children are not science.  Reproduction can be very well defined and explained with science, but reproduction is also not science.

I am hopelessly in love with my little boy and giving birth was the most amazing experience of my life!!  It sure is hard to describe all the feelings, they feel so unique to you, yet every parent experiences it.  I would not argue that the feelings are truly amazing!

I believe in prenatal stimulation because it makes sense to me.  I know that one individual case does not say anything, and I'm not saying Wilhelm was a super baby or anything like that, but I too got comments from hospital staff and our pediatrician saying  how alert and strong he was right from day one.  I'm attaching a photo of him at 2 days old.

Doing exercises focusing on my baby everyday got me into the habit of deliberately educating before he was born, I really really enjoyed it and have the fondest memories of our special time together with him in my tummy.  I suppose one could bond and enjoy pregnancy without deliberately stimulating your unborn baby, but at worst, you really have nothing to loose.

I also thought BabyPlus was a silly gimmick 

Hello Oasis,

I think the reason people hesitate to answer you is because there's not really any precise answer to your question.

If you were to collect a big list of items, like all ShenLi's Dinosaurs for instance, the simplest way would be to create your own category and select 10 dinosaur slides for the category.  You can play that same category 3x day, 10 days in a row, and then replace one everyday from then on in.  You could then start adding facts to the slides you are abandoning, so instead of them saying "Tyrannosaurus" you could have the slide say, "Tyrannosauruses were the biggest meat-eaters.", make 10 of the fact slides and start playing that in addition to the original plan.  (Once you start abandoning them, start adding the next fact, until you get to 10, as per Doman.) 

This whole system get tricky fast, and on top of that, your little one might think that 30 repeats is a bit "overkill", so that's where the course builder comes in.  It might take you some time to figure it out, but I would like to encourage you to start playing with the course builder because it makes your life so much easier.  When you find out your little one wants to speed the learning process up, you can adjust the course you've build in a minute for less repeats, more/less slides per lesson etc.

The big job is to collect facts, the library has tons of slides, but not a lot of facts.  The reason is because this is a lot of work.  Easy to create 100 slides of some category, it gets harder when you want to add 1000 facts to them.  BUT, working as a team, this is becoming a reality, as you will soon see with the country course.

The length of a lesson will depend on your little one.  For me, mine went through stages, sometimes he'll watch many, other times he will not.  When you find a long list in the library, chances are they're not suppose to be used in one sitting.  Now after 2 years of flashing, W can sit through long lessons, but then it's not likely he'll ask for it everyday.  Short lessons (6 or 8 flash cards per type) still works best, but then we watch different courses back to back, with some flashing mixed with stories, videos and slow paced facts.  Some days we'll do long hour long sessions in front of the PC, other days we'll split the session up in 3 or 4 small sessions, and then others we don't even come close to the PC.

The sooner you start trying it out and playing with ideas with your little one, the sooner you'll figure out what works best for you and your boy.  The only "hint" I really want to stress is to start very small, he might sit and watch long lessons initially, but you don't want him to grow tired of it at any stage, because then he might not sit for even the shortest lesson.

Good luck!