Karma to you Mary and a big hug to Megan

Btw if you have videos of your children, would you mind sharing them? My daughter is very responsive to seeing other children and often wants to imitate them :-)

Hi Kezia
It's getting worse :-( I uninstalled Little Musician a few days ago.

I can no longer open Little Maths (I have an error message saying 'Little Maths stopped working')
and when I click on "Support Tools" it says 'support tools stopped working" so I can't send the error report.

Little Reader still opens but crashes after a few minutes.

Should I uninstall Little Maths as well?
Thank you!

Great advice, i did find some full lenght episodes on Yoube. Any advice what to type in to find Chinese ones?

My daughter loves this series but I'm finding them too expensive to download on the Ipad.
I'm looking for cheap second hand dvds or I can swap: Cat in the hat, Elmo..
Looking for English, Spanish or Chinese if it exists, thanks :-)

Hi Kezia
Since I installed Little Musician, the following happens:

-Little Reader crashes in the middle of a story
-Whenever my computer starts, it tells me 'Little Maths did not shut down properly', even though I didn't use Little Math previously.

Should I uninstall Little Musician?
Thanks
Vanessa

[www.appshopper.com]

Just to let everyone know about two great websites

www.appshopper.com

Gives you free apps and price drops. You can chose the app you like and you'll get an email when they are free.

www.appmoinscheres.com

This one offers mainly free French apps.

I visit those websites daily!

I'm tempted to put some money in her savings account and just give a few small gifts (we are also having a birthday party for friends at nursery so she will get plenty of presents to open from there).

Am I being really mean and lacking imagination?!   I'm a bit tired having recently gone back to work after maternity leave so that may be part of the problem 

I would definitely put some money into her savings account! No later than yesterday, I was reading 'the automatic millionaire' and it showed that a person who invests some money for just 5 years when they are young, will end with more money than someone who invested for longer but started later on.

However, I have to say that the best gift ever for my daughter was an Ipad. We bought an ipad2 last year and it's been just great: fine motor skills with a pen, videos and animated books in foreign languages, educational games..with the ipad3 now out, you can grab a bargain on the ipad 2!

Well, most of his books are translated. And I know that his knowledge CDs are available in French as well.

Kimba, great job! even more so considering you have 2 children!

We're doing well too, my daughter is enjoying chapter books. I was surprised to find out that my old Noddy books had such a rich vocabulary.

Are you all reading much on the Ipad?

This summer, I'd love to go on holidays in a foreign country where my daughter could take part in activities and discover not just another language but another culture.
Ideally, my dream vacation would be a place where she could play with Chinese carers/teachers and children  her age. I'd like to stay for at least 2 weeks and have activities to do myself while she's taken care off.
I've been thinking of Singapore, mainland China, Taiwan...

I know there are 'clubs' (such as Club Med) which cater really well to children (especially with sports) but in the case of Club Med, it's French owned and French is my daughter's first language so that's not interesting for us.

Any suggestions?

[Kidspatterns]

We use the app Kidspatterns

I couldn't find many free pattern apps, so we focus on matching apps.
There are tons of ABA apps, such as Clean up, ABA what does not belong, matching jobs, vehicle matching.
From alligator apps: Touch and learn. This one is great for children learning English as a second language.

Speak and Read French (4 DVD set) & Baby Bit French have been sold.

Why not organizing a survey, such as:

Are you closer/willing to fly to:
1-Europe (Paris? London? Moscow?)
2-Asia (HK? Singapore? KL?)
3-North/South America (Canada? US? Lima?..)
4-Australia (Adelaide? Sydney?..)

Depending on the answers, you could organize more than one convention, or at least determine where the first one would be held.

Hi everyone
Thank you all so much for your replies!

Skylark, I'm sending you a virtual kiss for all those suggestions. I'm very busy right now but will start by saving the videos you have shared.
I'm dreaming about his puzzle you've mentionned. I've found one similar for 50 euros (!!) at the bookshop and am considering buying it. I'll start with a cheaper option and spin the globe as Dad dude suggests!

Maquenzie, this app looks amazing, I'll let you know how my daughter likes it.

I'm off to work, please keeps those ideas coming, I'll let you know what activities we've done this week-end.

So far I've shown my daughter countries on maps, shown her flags and I give her the name of capitals, but it's very formal and I'm not sure she really retains anything or whether it makes sense to her.
What do you use?
She loves to use the Ipad. I'm not aware of any apps except 'Stack the countries', I read the questions to her but she can't play on her own obviously.

Thanks!