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EARLY LEARNING / Teaching Your Child - Other Topics / Re: Teaching Infant Swimming with Neck Floats/Neck Rings
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on: August 11, 2012, 08:48:36 AM
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TmT, I took the easy way out when it came to teaching Ella to swim.  I enrolled her in a swim school that uses the Total Immersion Method. Babies as young as 3 months are brought (not thrown) into the pool without any flotation devices, and through a sequence of systematic water play and exercises, all of them learn to swim and float after 3-4 months. After three months of once-a-week lessons, Ella can now swim straight across the length of a standard-sized pool without assistance. The best part of it is the confidence she has in the water. We recently brought her snorkeling and kayaking in the middle of the ocean, and she was as comfortable and nimble in the water as a fish!  |
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EARLY LEARNING / Teaching Your Child Math / Re: Math supplement for advanced 3-year-old (almost 4)?
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on: August 08, 2012, 07:46:34 AM
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Talk about an awesome supplement, and what a gift! CALCULUS for and by young people! Really! Recommended for ages 7 and up, and that is for kids not doing EL. I just ordered this set as it is so highly recommended. No real algebra or calculus knowledge needed, but teaches kids to understand the ideas of calculus intuitively. Really cool. Hubby took a couple of vidEo clips because he is constantly asked (whined at!) " Why do we need this? When will we ever use it!" Take a look, and I will post a more thorough review of requirements when it arrives. But I honestly think it could show even littles how to understand the basic ideas... Calculus For and By Young People: http://www.mathman.biz/Kerileanne, I first heard about this program from annisis (back on page 4), but would love to hear your review on it as well! The exciting thing about this is Don Cohen's math workshop will actually be accessible from where we will be living when we move back to the States, so we will definitely be looking into getting Ella into his program to work with him! Which set did you order and what does it contain? Thanks! |
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EARLY LEARNING / Teaching Your Child - Other Topics / Re: Has anyone tried AMIQ/BambinoLUK?
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on: August 05, 2012, 02:45:21 AM
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My experience is a little different from yours, Manda. I bought a set of 3 books and frame with six picture tiles (not from Bambino but it has a similar concept) for Ella's 2nd birthday. I showed her how to use it twice, supervised her for maybe the next 15 minutes, then she played with it pretty much independently from then on. However, she was also a toddler with quite advanced fine motor skills and longer-than-usual attention span. She could turn the individual pages of regular books (not board books) by herself and do 36-piece puzzles by herself at that age (24-26 months). The toy was such a success that she started asking for more books when she had finished the 3 that came with the set. So for Christmas that year, I got her a more advanced set from Grolier with 16 tiles and 10 books called FunThinkers (English levels 1-3, Math levels 1-3, and Thinking Skills levels 1-4. The Thinking Skills books are really right brain exercises). http://www.grolier-asia.com/products/funthinkers/ The tiles on this set were numbered instead of having pictures on them, and since this was also around the time she was doing Jones Geniuses numbers 1-20, she was able to easily learn to use this set as well. She has been playing with the FunThinkers books since then. Last year, I got her two more sets from Grolier called Logico Piccolo and Logico Maximo. The Piccolo toy is for ages 5-9 years old and the Maximo one is for ages 9 and above. After playing with Piccolo for almost a year, she is able to do most of the cards now and has now started to tackle Maximo. Most of the cards in Maximo are still quite advanced for her so I expect the set to be able to grow with her for another couple of years at least. I agree that you could easily teach the concepts in the books yourself, but I don't use it for that. I teach her the concepts and use the toys as a sort of workbook for her to review and practice and check her skills. This breaks up the monotony of lots of handwriting required for regular workbooks, and you don't get stared at as much when you bring one out in a restaurant while waiting for your meal as opposed to bringing out a workbook (which my daughter has been known to do!)  All that being said, the toys are not a necessity in early learning. If you have extra funds, then sure go for it. But if funds are budgeted, then I would choose to buy books and curricula over these any day! Plus, the Bambino ones are terribly overpriced at $900?!?!   I would never even consider them at that price.  |
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EARLY LEARNING / Teaching Your Child - Signing, Speaking, Languages / Re: French success! :)
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on: August 03, 2012, 12:47:30 AM
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I forgot to mention that the Martine books are also available as interactive Ipad books, in French, English, and Dutch. You can choose to have the book read to you, or touch each word to have it pronounced, or you can read it by yourself. There are interactive definitions and explanations of difficult vocab words, and games at the end of each book. Quite lovely and one of Ella's fave apps.
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EARLY LEARNING / Teaching Your Child - Signing, Speaking, Languages / Re: French success! :)
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on: August 01, 2012, 11:37:46 AM
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Well done Ella.
Aangeles,which material are you using to teach Ella. I would like to teach my 10 month old languages:Chinese, Spanish and French. I don't speak any of these languages.I am looking for CDs ,DVDs and audio books.
thank you very much in advance for your help.
Hi LM, I get asked this question a lot, so here is my updated list of resources for the following languages. Chinese:1) Baby's First Words in Chinese CD - http://www.amazon.com/Babys-First-Words-Chinese-Erika/dp/14000236452) Music CDs and audiobooks in Chinese http://www.childbook.com/Set-of-4-Books-and-CD-160-Songs-Traditional-p/cda2b4.htm http://www.childbook.com/Easy-Intro-to-Chinese-Poetry-for-Kids-p/b0115.htm http://www.childbook.com/Complete-Set-of-24-Story-Books-with-CD-s-p/cda199.htm 3) Baby Learns Chinese DVDs 4) Wink to Learn Chinese DVDs and Sing to Learn CDs 5) Little Reader Chinese 6) Four Golden Princess music videos on Youtube (these have simplified chinese subtitles but good for getting her familiar with chinese nursery songs and rhymes) 7) Smart Tiger DVDs - http://www.ipandabook.com/smarttiger-c-16.html8 ) Taoshu and Shapes books with CDs - http://www.learnchinesebooks.com/category/books9) Miscellaneous audiobooks - http://www.asianparent.com/chinese-books-with-cd.aspxFor product reviews and comparison of the Chinese learning DVDs mentioned above, please see my old post here: http://forum.brillkids.com/teaching-your-child-signing-speaking-foreign-languages/product-comparison-for-chinese-learning/msg69956/#msg69956Will post my list of French and Spanish resources soon! Hope this helps!  |
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EARLY LEARNING / Teaching Your Child - Other Topics / Re: Teaching my eldest dd to write! and a review of excellence in writing program
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on: July 30, 2012, 07:05:02 AM
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TmT, Ella's handwriting is developed enough for us not to get too bogged down with the mechanics of it while doing spelling. That being said, I still separate out spelling from hwriting because I don't like her to get tired of it and start hating hwriting practice. As it is, she already needs to write for a lot of subjects that we do - Writing with Ease, HWT/Kumon, Soroban, Singapore math/MEP, Chinese Character Writing, and miscellaneous geography, history, critical thinking workbooks that she likes to do. So, as much as possible, I minimize the amount of writing she needs to do each day. I had used number and alphabet stamps with her when she was just starting out with workbooks and worksheets (I think she was barely 2 at that time and we were doing Jones Geniuses), but she quickly transitioned herself to using a pencil and writing because she didn't like the mess that inadvertently would end up on her hands. The All About Spelling package comes with laminated letter tiles for 2 sets of the alphabet and 1 set of consonant blends/digraphs and vowel teams that you cut out and attach little magnets (also included) to and that is what they recommend using with their program. It is easy enough to use, but I found an even easier way! We have an app called Montessori Crossword and you can select "Movable Alphabet" from the main menu to let the child do freeplay spelling exercises. The letters never get used up, and it is so easy to delete the word after she's spelled it to go to the next word. You can even toggle easily between caps and small letters to teach capitalization rules. You can choose to arrange the letters alphabetically (what AAS recommends initially) or in QWERTY to develop typing skills. This is what we use each time we do our dictation for spelling exercises. I just got tired of having to lay out and then clean up all those magnetic letters and letter tiles after a while. P.S. I don't know how to post a link to the Montessori Crossword app in the Appstore, but it is developed by L'Escapadou and here is a video of what it looks like:
<![CDATA[<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/qJZKBYvuLBw&rel=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/qJZKBYvuLBw&rel=1</a>]]> |
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EARLY LEARNING / Teaching Your Child - Other Topics / Re: Teaching my eldest dd to write! and a review of excellence in writing program
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on: July 30, 2012, 05:30:06 AM
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I am all ears, too!!! We have recently started some new programs, and everything is working out great so far, but I keep reading wonderful things about IEW, and, as usual, I over-think and over-analyze these things and want to make sure I am using the best curriculum. We are currently using: Literature and reading - Five in a Row (These are very easy readings for her, but she enjoys it very much and begs for it everyday.) Spelling - All About Spelling Grammar - First Language Lessons Writing - Writing with Ease Vocabulary - Wordly Wise 3000 Handwriting - HWT manuscript (review) and Kumon cursive I think we have grammar, spelling, and handwriting well-covered, so I am mostly interested in writing programs as she is showing very keen interest in making up and writing her own stories. I have heard that IEW is generally difficult to adapt for younger children and is more suited for grades 3 and up. So I would love to hear how you go about doing the lessons with her, what a lesson entails, how long it takes, and how much teacher/parent preparation is needed. Also, can you just do the writing and composition part without the reading and spelling? Thanks! |
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BrillKids Software / Little Musician - General Discussion / Re: Little Musician Progress Reports & Testimonials! Add Yours Here.
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on: July 29, 2012, 10:32:51 AM
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UPDATE:Well, it is starting to look like Ella can do her best work when it is late at night.  After her recent late-nighter finishing half of her Singapore math workbook, she did it again, this time with music. Last night, I thought she was drifting off to sleep when she suddenly sat bolt upright, and told me, "Mama, you know, the first notes of 'Puff the Magic Dragon' is D D D D. I need to try it out on my violin. NOW." So she went and grabbed her violin and proceeded to play the entire song by ear in the key of D. Then she asked for a piece of paper because she just "needed" to write it all down. She also wrote the title by herself with only 1 spelling mistake (see picture 1), I didn't even know she can spell words with consonant blends like 'dr' already! Next, she wanted to try the song out on the piano. That was where I drew the line and told her to go to sleep.  This morning, she was up really early and the first thing she did was go to the piano and play the entire song, this time transposing it to the key of C!!! Then she got the blank staff paper that was lying on top of the piano and wrote out the notes again, this time using note-heads in the LMs colors. (see picture 2) And that was how I found her when I came down to breakfast.  On and off throughout the rest of the day, she was writing down the rest of the pieces she had figured out on her violin - like The Nutcracker March, Morning Mood, Arrietty's Song, etc - in the new music notebook I gave her, in both note names and notes on the staff paper. She says her next "project" is going to be writing her own story (she is also very into making up stories and creative writing these days) and writing her own music to accompany it. I just hope she doesn't decide to do it all in the middle of the night again! P.S. The music in the pictures are all in the key of D major. I haven't taught her how to write key signatures yet.
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Also, if you could do a review of the third book that covers composition when you start using it, I would greatly appreciate it. 
