I received an advertisement from DinoLingo today announcing their new foreign language ebook library subscription service, DinoBooks.
Just in case anyone else is interested, they are doing a "launch special" and offering the yearly subscription for 35% off their normal annual subscription cost of $99.95. The special offer expires Friday, April 22.
http://dinolingo.com/books

There is a seven day refund period.
I haven't tried it yet, so I don't know if it is any good or not.

Yes, thanks so much for sharing your review of Preschool Prodigies. I had not heard of it before.
I was wondering, are you familiar with Kindermusik? In particular their "Young Child" program, which teaches children music theory and how to play the glockenspiel in the first year?
I am wondering how the two curriculums compare?
Thank you!

Anyone have further thoughts or reviews about the app/program?
Educents is having a half-off sale on the yearly subscription right now (ends in a day), and I was wondering if it was worth it.
Thanks!

Educent link: http://www.educents.com/farfaria-ios-and-android-app.html

How do I know if I am getting the updated curriculum on my iPad? When I go to "restore", it shows the date of the curriculum as being in November 2012.

I remember getting the BabyCenter email with link to speech milestones a few weeks ago, looking at it, and thinking, "yeah, whatever."
I think there is a wide range, and it depends a lot on the home environment, how parents interact with the child, and the child's personality/interests.

DS is 16 months now, but we stopped counting a long time ago. First words were shortly before 12 months. By 13 months, there were at least 20. At this point, DS can repeat most sounds, so I can ask him to say "ah", and he'll try to repeat (some sounds are more successful than others). He has at least 30 words that he says frequently (multiple times in a day) on his own initiative. They center around animals (many are animal sounds, that he uses to identify animals), vehicles, and food and also include things like mama/papa, bye-bye, good night, wet, cold/hot, moon, star, egg, bath, bubble, circle, blue, wow, uh-oh, ow. There's another set of words that he will use to answer us with, if we ask him a question, but he doesn't initiate those words on his own, like bathroom/pee/poo (Do you need to pee now? Do you want to go to the bathroom?). They also include harder to pronounce words like squirrel.

His vocabulary (words that he understands), though, is much greater than that. I'd put it at around 200 words. He knows most of the 100 words and 100 animals books that we have. He will spend hours asking us to do books with him. Most of the books are vocabulary books (pictures of objects). He's clearly trying to learn vocabulary. When doing books or various apps, we often do them in "where is x?" mode and he points out the object. That's how we know what he understands. We also do emotion and action flashcards (as well as other topics) through the free Bitsboard app (using iPad). He understands most of those as well, but doesn't say any of the words yet.

He can definitely pick up several new words in a day, if given the opportunity (exposure to new things that he finds interesting). At this point, he's being slowed down by his parents, who don't have the time to bring in new stuff, so we mostly repeat using things we have used with him before.

As far as EL goes, I think we do very little compared to most people here. We did Little Reader for a few months, then summer vacation rolled around and then daycare started, and we never got back into it again. I've tried the last few weeks to do Little Reader again, a few times a week. We don't own/watch any DVDs. We have a small collection of books, maybe around 20 now (only 8 or so get used regularly), plus 3 sets of baby words board books (2 sets of 10 books (Green Start Book Towers - I'm not wild about these) and 1 set of 6 books (Chinese/English collection - good if you ignore the occasional mistranslated English)). I think what Little Reader did for DS was to teach him that a word represents a concept that can have many incarnations (real-life picture, cartoon representation, sound, etc). Since he understands that words represents things or concepts (wet/cold/wow), he wants to learn words. He's pretty self-motivated to learn.

On the other hand, my niece at 21 months had about 3 spoken words. I don't think there is any EL and not much interest in books in that household. So, there is quite a range. When we went to visit (DS was 14 months at the time/niece was 21 months), I asked to go to the zoo. We did go, and afterwards, my brother/wife commented that they didn't understand why I wanted to go to the zoo, but understood once we were there, since DS knew so many animals. I did not realize until I was at the zoo that it was not the best suggestion for my niece, since she didn't know any animals. So, I think what kids are exposed to at home makes a bit of difference.

I also think things might have been different if DS had been in daycare earlier. I don't think his daycare does much to stimulate vocabulary learning, but it does allow him the opportunity to play with a wide variety of toys (good, since we live in a small house and refuse to buy most toys). Although they read books in daycare, they don't do it in the same way that we do at home. Some of their book reading is waving the picture book at the kids while listening to a CD sing the book. It's probably fun, but doesn't provide the same kind of educational experience.

So, I think many of the cited references are probably true for a large number of kids, but probably also low for a large number of kids that grow up in richer learning environments, and that the personality of the child (whether the child wants to vocalize or not) and how parents respond and encourage a child to talk play a role as well. I've read a number of "encourage your kids to talk" books (recently, after the fact) and found that I was already doing many of the suggestions (like make reading a book a "fill in the word" experience). I think things like that really help, but not everyone knows to do that.

I recently came across the following website which sells an ebook about how to do Montessori activities at home for 3-6 year olds:
http://www.montessoriathomebook.com/

because something I was reading referred to the author's earlier work: Help Your Preschooler Build a Better Brain: Early Learning Activities for 2-6 Year Old Children
http://www.amazon.com/Help-Preschooler-Build-Better-Brain/dp/0615455530/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1383847037

I have not read either one yet. Does anyone have any experience with them?

Thanks

I think it's probably too early to be concerned. 40 signs and being able to communicate is pretty good. Given that your child can do so many signs, he probably does not feel the need to vocalize quite yet, as he has another way to communicate with you. He's probably thinking of the sounds in his head and making sure that they are right before doing the vocalization (this is common in many kids).

Children are so different. My niece, at 19 months, is not saying anything but dada. It looks to me that most of my son's day care class (mostly 19 month olds, with a 16 and an 18 month old) are not really saying anything, either.

On the other hand, my son, who has failed the hearing tests since birth due to fluid in the ears (and we refused ear tubes), has been speaking many words since around 12 months (now almost 15 months). The specialists said that one ear is pretty compromised and the other is somewhat compromised, but it got a little better over the summer.
Both my partner and I are quiet people and do not speak much, so I did not think he would be an early talker. I think what got him talking was that we happened to have a set of books that reinforced each other and we had read those books over and over again when he was 10-12 months old (since he liked them). They were books about farm/zoo animals and we would go through and make animal sounds (so we would not necessarily read the text in the book). So, his early set of "words" consisted of many animal sounds. Animal sounds are something that kids like to make. We would reinforce that we understood him when he made an animal sound. He would say "woof" and we would say, "yes, that's a dog. it says 'woof'".  Or we would point to a picture and ask him what it was and if he made the correct animal sound, we would say "yes, that's right, it's a dog!" (for example). Being understood was motivation for him to move into non-animal sound words. We don't spend time "correcting" his pronunciation at this point, and just praise him for identifying things that he knows and saying them.

As for 'mama' and 'dada', I think this is again based on need and ease. In my opinion, 'dada' is a more difficult word. I was using a foreign language, so we used 'baba' for daddy, which was much easier for my child to pick up. Now, we can say Daddy in English or baba in the other language, and he knows it means the same person, but he only says 'baba'. My child would say 'baba' a bit because I would use it through the day, saying things like "Daddy is not here", "Daddy will be coming home", "Daddy is at work", "Let's go find Daddy" in the other language, so he would call for Dad when Dad was at home. On the other hand, Dad rarely ever referred to me, and I was with my child all day, so he never had a need to call me specifically. If he wanted something, he could just cry or scream, etc, and I would be there. So, "mama" was not necessary. It's only recently that he has started to use "mama", mostly with strangers/babysitters/daycare and in public places. So, I think these two words will happen when he feels there is a need to use them.

I have two books, The Talking Baby, and Let's Talk Together. I've only skimmed them and never implemented anything in either book. The books suggest different activities for getting your child to make specific sounds leading to words. If you want to try one of the books, I would suggest Let's Talk Together, as it has more substance. A lot of what is in The Talking Baby is common sense or general parenting advice.

Good luck!

That's great that the French Curriculum is now available on the iPad. Thank you!
Is there any ETA for when we would be able to play a modified version on the iPad (i.e., a version with le/la throughout)?
My understanding is that the iAccess can only play courses from BrillKids as is without any changes, but please let me know if I am wrong.

Just wanted to put in a vote for being able to customize the games in LR Touch, or at least select from a few preset options. For very young children, I think more than 2-3 choices is too many, particularly if you believe in what Doman wrote about minimum font size for little children. Also, for LR Touch, I think when there are 2 word options, they should be top and bottom, not side-to-side, so that the font of the word can be bigger (better for little kids). I also think the feedback in LR is better than the feedback in LR Touch for indicating when one gets the right answer. The exploding stars are just too subtle for me.

Overall, though, LR Touch has been getting a lot of use since the new updates/upgrades. Thanks for that!

Hi,

I've visited the LEX America office in the USA twice now. The first time was about a year ago, when I was pregnant. I went to see what a Hippo Club meeting was like and attended the Saturday club meeting. I found the energy level fairly low because the attendance was not very good that day. There were 4 staff people (2 staff and 2 interns), a family (1 dad and 2 middle-school aged children), and another lady. Basically, they played a number of selections from their CDs and people would try to imitate the CD together. Participants could request specific languages. They usually have a set of motions that they do with the children's songs (that's why the set is called "Sing Along! Dance Along!"). They only teach them at the club meetings, but they say that the important thing isn't the specific motion, but that you get up and "dance"/move with the music. Some of it is fingerplay like stuff, and some of it is like the youtube video that was linked in the attachment to the original post. They also played some language games. One was focused on colors, where there were multiple squares of various colors scattered on the floor. We went around the circle and each person called out a color in the language of their choice and everyone else would try to grab a square in that color.

I went to visit again last week. I had wanted to see what their Tuesday morning meeting is like, since they said that is the one with their best attendance and lots of children. Unfortunately, DS usually naps at that time, so we didn't arrive until the end of the meeting. It was definitely better attended (maybe about 15 parents/kids) and had a number of little kids (toddler-preschool). I showed up just as they were doing their goodbye song, so I didn't get to see what the meeting was like, but I could tell that it was more energetic. Afterwards, I met one club member who was a mother with a son a few days younger than mine (he was there, too). While I was purchasing the starter set, another mother showed up with a 7 month old baby asking to restart her membership.

Yes, I was surprised by the number of songs in some languages (being fewer than I expected). However, I think that is partially because of demand and partially because their goal is one of getting people familiar with the sound of the language (so you can identify which language is which) and basic mimicking of the language. You'd need supplemental material for true fluency/understanding (this is my opinion).

I don't know yet whether it was worth the money (ask me again in 5 years!). I am planning to participate in the language club in the fall (when DS should be napping only once a day so the club meeting times won't interfere with his naps) and wanted to get a head start on being familiar with the materials. So, it was kind of a necessary purchase sooner or later. The mother I met had been a club member before having her first child. I asked her what she listens to with her child, and she does the "Hippo Goes Overseas" series, since she is interested in learning the languages herself and has been working with that series for some time. So, her child just listens to that as well. She says that they spend 30 minutes a day listening to the series and working on mimicing sounds together.

Overall, I think you can do better by assembling your own set of materials, especially if you have particular languages you want to learn. For example, I'm not that interested in the languages on CDs 6&7, but am paying for them anyways.

I don't know if their club in Japan has more songs. To them, Japanese would not be a foreign language, so I think they would not include many Japanese songs for that reason (and English would be language they want to learn, thus the heavy set of English songs).

I did some searching on the internet for Japanese language learning resources (since I was curious as to what is available). I've found the following. Perhaps you know of them, but if not, you can try them out. In the past, I've searched for Chinese language resources (which are easier to find) and used Google Translate (http://translate.google.com/ ) to translate web pages that I can't read. By doing so, you can get around a lot of websites (but not the ones that are heavy on image navigation).

Music/Songs
http://www.mamalisa.com/?p=528&t=ec&c=85 has a list of songs with Japanese and transliteration (romanji) as well as English translation and the music
http://www3.u-toyama.ac.jp/niho/song_e.html has more songs, sorted by level
http://www.tofugu.com/2010/08/02/using-kid%E2%80%99s-songs-to-learn-japanese/ has six youtube video songs

Online Learning
http://www.erin.ne.jp/ video series geared towards kids (with navigation in a number of other languages)
http://web-japan.org/kidsweb/language/ has basic language lessons as well as a games section

DVD
http://dinolingo.com/ a DVD program - somewhat expensive (no idea if it is any good or not, just putting it here since I had not heard of it before)

Books/Materials from Japan
http://shop.whiterabbitjapan.com/ has graded readers (e.g., they sell this set http://www.nihongo-ask.jp/tadoku/index.html , which does not include any English, but does include audio) in Japanese as well as a service that will ship you anything from Japan. I think the best source is probably stuff from Japan itself. You might ask if they can also help you find what you are looking for, or you can navigate Japanese bookstores with the help of a website translator (like Google Translate).

http://stores.ebay.com/Pacific-Planet/Childrens-Books-Eng-other-/_i.html?_fsub=14472393&_sid=35814357&_trksid=p4634.c0.m322 this eBay seller carries a number of Japanese children's books (there are probably other eBay sellers, too)

http://forum.koohii.com/viewtopic.php?id=8295 scroll down to see a list of kids websites and stories (may need Google Translate for many of the sites). Attached to this post is a copy of the book that is available at http://p.booklog.jp/book/29948 (listed on the koohii page). I did OCR it using Adobe Acrobat so that the text would be copyable.

Online stores that specialize in books in other languages
http://www.internationalchildbook.com/category/21940499 has a few books in English/Japanese
http://multilingualbooks.com/bilingual-japanese.html also has a few books in English/Japanese

Other
http://www.jbby.org/en/ lists good children's books in Japanese. Could ask the White Rabbit service above to get some of these for you.

Hope this helps!

I've acquired a few LEX language learning materials, so I am just writing to share more information about them for those of you who are interested.

Their website is http://www.lexlrf.org . Some of the interesting links on their website include the PDFs from the speaker series they ran a few years ago http://www.lexlrf.org/Arlington%20Lecture%20Series/Lecture%20Schedule.htm and their ideas for how to use language learning materials http://www.lexlrf.org/Our%20CDs%20&%20Books/Files%20for%20Languages/Listening%20To%20LEX%20Audio%20Materials.pdf . A sample of their material can be found at http://www.lexlrf.org/Our%20CDs%20&%20Books/Listen%20Languages.htm

I purchased the Family Mini Set, which is more geared towards children than their other offerings. Once one has purchased a starter set, that qualifies you to buy additional materials at a discount when they have sales. My understanding is that sales occur a couple of times a year (there seems to be one in September and they were discussing maybe having one earlier as well) and represent a significant savings (up to 40%) off the "list price".

The family mini set includes their "Sing Along! Dance Along!" (SADA) series of songs. This is an 8 CD collection of songs. The first 5 CDs contain a mix of songs in Mandarin Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Russian, and Spanish. The 6th and 7th CDs contain songs in Arabic, Cantonese, Hindi, Indonesian, Malay, Portuguese, and Thai. The 8th CD has additional songs, mostly in English (12), with 1 song each in French, German, Korean, and Mandarin Chinese.
The total distribution of languages of the 123 songs is as follows:
English 34
French 11
German 11
Mandarin Chinese 10
Spanish 9
Korean 8
Portuguese 5
Arabic 4
Cantonese 4
Indonesian 4
Italian 4
Japanese 4
Malay 4
Russian 4
Hindi 3
Thai 3
Mixed languages (English, Spanish, Mandarin, Korean, French) 1

8 of the songs (6 English, 2 Japanese) are marked as being original to the Hippo Language Club (what their language clubs are called in Japan).

The set comes with individual books for each CD 1-7 (6&7 are combined in one book) that has the lyrics in the original language for each song on a double-page spread with an illustration. The lyrics for the Extra CD (the 8th one) are printed on a glossy sheet of paper that was included in the CD case). There is also a separate pamphlet in English that lists all the songs and provides a short description of the topic of the song. No other translations are provided.

For those who are interested, I've attached the list of songs in English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish that are included in the collection. This list does not include the songs that are original to the Hippo Language Club or the songs in other languages since I am not familiar with typing in those other languages (e.g., the Arabic songs are provided with Arabic titles and Arabic lyrics).

The Family Mini Set also includes Book 1 in their Kabajin series. The Kabajin series has stories that are more geared towards younger children. Book 1 is titled "What am I?" and the main character (Kabajin) is a hippopotamus that is trying to figure out what he is and he goes around and meets other kinds of animals. At the end of the story is a song. Included are two books. One book is the story in comic book style in English. The other book is a transcript of the story in all seven languages. Each line of the story is presented in German, Korean, English, Mandarin Chinese, French, Japanese, and Spanish. One line is printed in those languages (in that order), and then the next line of the story is printed in those languages in the same order. The lyrics of the song are then printed in each of the languages. There are no pictures in the transcript book.

There are six CDs for Kabajin Book 1. Each CD has two tracks. Tracks are about 18-22 minutes long. The first track is the English/focus language track. The second track is another language with the focus language track. The specific language pairs are listed in the table below. Each track reads each line of the story in the first language listed and then the second language listed. The idea is that you can use a new language that you have learned to bridge your learning with yet another language.

CD	Track 1	Track 2
Japanese	Japanese-English	Japanese-Korean
French	English-French	French-German
Spanish	English-Spanish	Spanish-French
German	English-German	Japanese-German
Chinese	English-Chinese	Japanese-Chinese
Korean	English-Korean	Korean-Chinese

The Kabajin Series includes 3 other books/stories in the same format, but these are not included in the Family Mini Set, so they would be an additional purchase.

LEX also offers two story series that are topically geared more towards high school/adult level language learners. These are the "Hippo Goes Overseas" and the "Multilingual Friends Around the World" series. Both are offered as "Transnational Editions" in the starter sets with the option to purchase individual language versions once one has acquired any of the starter sets. In the Transnational versions, there are 7 CDs. Each track of the CD represents a chapter in the story. Within a CD, the tracks include a mix of languages (e.g., Track/Chapter 1 may be English and Track/Chapter 2 may be Spanish and Track/Chapter 3 may be Chinese). If you rip all 7 CDs, you can reassemble the complete story in each of the 7 languages as well as make your own mixed-language playlists. Transcripts are provided in the accompanying book(s).

I have a single language version of the Hippo Goes Overseas story. The playing time is close to an hour. What I noticed is that the language is not an exact translation, one-for-one from the English version of the story. Instead, they do customize the language to match what phrases would typically be used in the culture that uses that language. I think that is a good thing. When you buy a single language version, you only get the transcript book for that language and not any translations to another language.

Overall, the audio quality seems to be very good/clear, and the speakers enunciate words clearly and have proper accents. They do sound like professionally recorded works. For all the stories, they have different speakers for each of the characters. So, the child characters sound like children, the male characters sound like males, etc.

Hope this helps, and I'll try to answer any additional questions that people might have.

For EC books, I checked out from my library and read The Diaper-Free Baby while I was still pregnant. It was fine. While I liked reading the testimonials, I decided it was not a book that I would keep and refer to long-time. I think if you can check it out, it's a fast and easy read, but not something I would recommend spending $$ on (unless you have extra $$ to spend).

I purchased EC Simplified (which has a new website http://www.godiaperfree.com -- do not buy from her old website, which is now run by her ex-business partner and does not have the most current version of her book) using the coupon code available from http://www.diaperfreebaby.org/ . I figured I was contributing to a good cause and would have the support of a forum, if necessary. It turns out, I have never sought the help of the forum, but it's good to know that it is there. The author advocates EC'ing from birth, but includes information on how to start later as well. She has lots of pictures and her website for readers has videos as well. There's a lot of detail and how-to in the book. A lot of the suggestions include how to EC in public, like on the side of the road, in public bathrooms, etc. I just EC at home (since I haven't left the house for more than a few hours at a time so far), so I haven't made use of a lot of the suggestions. The author keeps revising her book, and as she is expecting again, she will revise it again with whatever she learns from EC'ing her new baby. Once you purchase the book, you continue to get all the updates.

Keep in mind that the author is a stay-at-home mom trying to support herself and her family by selling the book and through the affiliate links in her ebook/website. So, the book is mostly the author explaining and sharing her experiences (but in an objective kind of way, not like a journal). This is not a research based book. There is also a section of product endorsements (which is also found on her website). While the section was interesting, it doesn't necessarily represent everything available that might be useful, and you really don't *need* any of the items. I don't know if there are any product endorsements in the book for products that would not give the author a commission.

Overall, I think once you understand the gist of EC (from reading on the Internet about it), you don't really need to purchase any books. It seems like a lot of the EC resources recommend the top hat potty to start with. I could never get it to work (but maybe I didn't try hard enough). So, don't think you really need a lot of stuff to EC with. You can use your existing sink/toilet, a change pad, or a simple potty to start.

As PokerDad has shown, the road may not be smooth. My kid, which is a few weeks younger than PokerCub, also has gone on a potty strike at about the same time that he learned how to crawl (the last two weeks or so). We're still catching poos 100% (and have been since 8 months without any problems). It's just that he's refusing to pee sitting in the potty during the daytime, unless he really needs to. So, if he's already wet his diaper, he refuses to sit on the potty to try to pee some more. I just bought a urinal, since I've been able to get him to go standing up, but it's not that ergonomic for him to stand over his potty. I'm hoping the urinal will help with the potty strike. We'll see. On the other hand, we've been able to keep a mostly dry diaper overnight for a few weeks now. He seems to be able to hold it until he wakes up (twice a night) and then happily pees in the potty then. He's also gone on a diaper strike since becoming more mobile. I think the cloth diapers (we are using bamboo flats) are a bit constraining/bulky, so I've been using underwear with inserts when I can and have been trying out other alternatives as well.

Good luck, and congratulations.

I would hope that by the time the child is ready for calculus, he/she could either self-study the subject or take an online course. That is, the parents would not need to learn the subject first.

If your child might be a math whiz, I would recommend looking into the Art of Problem Solving Curriculum, http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/
My understanding is that they go deeper into problem solving/building the child's mathematical intuition than your typical math texts (many of which are rote-based).

If you want to learn calculus yourself, why not try an offering from http://www.coursera.org? It's free. You can download all the videos for viewing later. There is a discussion forum where you can ask questions and get answers if you are confused about something. And, if you have the time, you can do the homeworks/quizzes/exams to help you master the subject. But, there's no commitment, so if you are busy, you can just drop it and not stress about it! And, even if you don't have time for this one, you can join the course and just archive the videos for viewing later. I've found their lecturers to be pretty good and understandable.

There is a calculus course going on right now (it just started a few days ago, so you can join it still): https://www.coursera.org/course/calcsing
It seems like they will offer calculus a couple of times a year from different universities, so if you don't catch this offering, you can catch the next one.
You can also take calculus from a number of different professors to solidify your understanding of the subject.

I recommend the "Cancer Survivor's Guide" book http://www.pcrm.org/shop/byNealBarnard/cancer-survivors-guide
You can download the PDF for free from this page or order the hardcopy book from them or another store (like Amazon).

You might want to research the macrobiotic diet. They also teach what Krista G said above, that "sugar feeds cancer" among other principles.

The Kushi Institute ( http://www.kushiinstitute.org/ ) offers week long programs "Way to Health" that introduce people to the macrobiotic diet and way of living.
Most of the people who attend do so in pairs of a person with cancer and their support person (e.g., partner, relative, friend). You can also find macrobiotic counselors around the world to consult with (though they are not cheap generally).

The Kushi Institute has a page on cancer and macrobiotics: http://www.kushiinstitute.org/html/cancer___diet.html
They do acknowledge that the older macrobiotic books used too much salt/sodium, so if you follow recipes in older books, be sure to reduce the amount of salt/soy sauce that is called for. My understanding is that their current recommendations for cancer include a diet containing no oil or sugar and very little salt.

They also recommend chewing foods thoroughly (until it turns to liquid in the mouth) before swallowing it. Some people set a timer for 30-60 seconds for every bite. They believe this allows you to absorb more of the nutrients from every bite so that you can eat less food, and that eating less food requires less energy so that the body can use the "saved" energy for healing instead. One of their teachers is a cancer survivor that swears by this technique.

They also recommend a bit of light exercise everyday (a routine of simple stretches that gets the blood flowing to all parts of the body).

I recommend a lightly cooked "green" soup every day. This can be made pretty easily using a blender. Cook 2-4 cups of a green vegetable (e.g., kale, broccoli, watercress, arugula) in a little bit of water (1-2 cups) with vegetable broth powder and a tablespoon or two of raw cashews for about 10-15 minutes (depending on the vegetable). Then blend it in the blender (using very little of the stock initially and then diluting with the stock to the desired consistency) and season to taste (with a dash of white vinegar and pepper). It's an easy way to get the nutrients of leafy green vegetables without having to spend so much time chewing. The cashews give a creamy mouth feel to the soup. You'll want a good tasting stock powder. I like Seitenbacher. An immersion blender will not be able to grind the cashews into a cream (it should not be gritty tasting). You'll need a good quality blender to do the job.

Best wishes.

I think it is possible, but takes dedication and organization.

I think it would be easier (and perhaps just as valuable) to teach a child to understand and speak 10 languages from the beginning and to introduce reading at a later date (or stagger the introduction of reading, limiting to just a few languages initially, perhaps starting with some very different writing systems). You could still read books to the child in all the different languages, but just wouldn't "push/formalize" the reading aspect as much in all the languages at once.

The following websites include some ideas that you might want to try.

LEX America http://www.lexlrf.org/ (they have sites in other countries/languages as well)
Their premise is that anyone can learn multiple languages at the same time. They sell (expensive) CD/book sets and host "language clubs" where members gather together to practice different languages. Although their website advertises a tagline of "Anyone Can Speak 7 Languages", 7 is not really a limit in their method. I think they just say that for marketing reasons (for many people, 7 is plenty) and they package 7 languages together in the basic packages that they sell. They also have 11 and 19 language versions of their materials.
Anyways, I think the most useful thing to read on their site is their explanation of how to use their materials http://www.lexlrf.org/Our%20CDs%20&%20Books/Files%20for%20Languages/Listening%20To%20LEX%20Audio%20Materials.pdf
You can apply the same concepts to materials that you find yourself.

The following YouTube video recommends readings 5-7 books in each of 3 languages to the child each day.
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/Q7Njw1O2AYQ&rel=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/Q7Njw1O2AYQ&rel=1</a>
So, you'd rotate through the languages over the course of a week.

The person who made the YouTube video above (http://thepolyglotexperience.blogspot.com/) also refers to the following website in another video:
http://www.goethe-verlag.com/book2/index.htm
The site provides free audio lessons in a number of languages (start by clicking on your native language in the left column).
You could use the lessons on this website (or any other language resource materials you have access to) in conjunction with the principles described in the LEX document together to expose your child to many languages at once. I have no idea about the quality of the courses on this website since I just found it now.

I know there are lots of internet resources available that one can draw on, but just want to remind people to check out their local public library. Some libraries stock a number of children's book/audio sets in various languages. If not, you might be able to request that the library invest in a few.

My last comment is to try not to mix up the languages when introducing the child to them. I think the child will be able to sort out the different languages if each language is used consistently when it is used (like one language per sentence/song/book), but will have a much harder time if the languages are mixed (like you start a sentence in one language and end in another, or fill in words that you don't know in one language with words in another when trying to make a sentence).

But, take the above with a grain of salt, as I don't have any experience applying it myself yet!

Good luck!