More thanks to Korrale4kq  and Mandabplus3. I am loving Marshmallow Math.

Also just ordered Saxon 5/4.

Big thanks to Korrale4kq  and Mandabplus3 for the Stuart Murphy recommendations. They are exactly what I had been looking for. Excellent books for teaching math concepts. We are loving them. Thank you, thank you.

Thank you TeachingMyToddlers for the message (and apologies for the delayed response--we moved over the weekend and were without Internet). I really appreciate the warm welcome I've received here. And I've already checked out and purchased dozens of books that I've come across here.

Hello AnotherBookWorm. I am so happy to hear that you enjoyed the book. And I hope you enjoy the book recommendations as much as we did. Regarding the 5-10 minutes/day question, I probably wasn't very clear. Each morning at breakfast, we worked on YBCR (for the first three months, starting at 2.5). We typically only worked on YBCR for about 5-10 minutes. We would also do flash cards on my iPhone before nap and bedtime (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pa8zBzYEjnU&list=UURnqruy5po4_w3MEzBaVpag). Here is the app we used: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/sight-words-list-learn-to/id445708245?mt=8.

After 3 months of YBCR, we then transitioned to Hooked on Phonics. For the next 8 months, we did HOP every morning during breakfast for about 5 minutes (and also did iPhone flash cards for a few minutes before nap and bedtime). So the bulk of the formal training primarily consisted of the 5 minutes of practice during breakfast each day. But this "5 minutes per day" does not include any of the reading we did, as we read together for 30-45 minutes every day (3-4 books at each of breakfast/lunch/dinner/naptime/bedtime). And when we traveled, we always showed LeapFrog Letter Factory DVD's and Meet the Sight Words DVD's. We also listened to books on tape when we traveled as well.

I hope that clears up any confusion, but please let me know if you have any more questions.

All the best,

Nate

Hello LDSMom, I am so happy to hear that you enjoyed Little Miss. And I'm also thrilled that you would lend it to someone else. I hope your friend enjoys it as well.

And a big thanks for all of the wonderful information on dual immersion programs here in UT. I discussed your email with my wife last night and looked into all of the programs. I had not even considered dual immersion programs and now I think we are going to try to get our daughter into a Spanish one:) I would love for our daughter to learn Chinese, but it looks like the Salt Lake District (we live in Sugar House) doesn't offer Chinese programs. But I speak spanish, so it would be fun to speak spanish to my daughter.

I really appreciate you taking the time to do some research for me and send me those links.

Lastly, I would absolutely LOVE to hear more about your experience with your child entering kindergarten already able to read. I am so curious to see how my daughter will respond to kindergarten.

Thanks LDSMom.

Best,

Nate

Thanks Oasis for the Read and Find Science books recommendation. I had not heard of these and I just reserved a handful from the library. Can't wait to start reading these. My daughter hasn't enjoyed many nonfiction books and I hope these will help us transition to a few more.

Thank you Korrale4kq for all of the recommendations. I just wrote all of them down and we'll start working our way through these. Can't wait to get going on these.

Thanks Korrale4kq for sharing your story. Reading your post got me excited about additional methods that I did not use. Thanks to you, I just downloaded the ABC Magic App and I believe my son will love it. I also just reserved the preschool prep letter videos. And my daughter Kyla loved the Bob Books apps. We also own a few "Meet the Sight Words" DVD's, and I used those with Kyla. I just reserved a few "We Both Read" books and I've also just become aware of the Usborne books (and reserved a few of those as well). Thank you for sharing your story. And yes, you and I think the same thing about picture books. Picture books still make up the majority of our reading. We are gradually transitioning to longer books, but I don't want to completely go away from picture books for a long time. Regarding chapter books, we've had excellent success with the following two:
Holes (then watched the movie)
The Invention of Hugo Cabret (then watched the movie)

Our daughter also really enjoyed the following books (and subsequent movies), though not as much as Holes and Hugo Cabret:
The BFG, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Fantastic Mr. Fox, and The Tale of Despereaux (she enjoyed the movie more than the book). We've had a lot of fun introducing a book to Kyla and then telling her we can watch the movie after the book.

Mandabplus3, thank you for the info on living books. I just looked up Charlotte Mason, as I had not heard of her. I really look forward to digging into living books. And I am so excited to start spending more time on math. My wife was just a few credits shy of a math major (she did civil engineering), and I think she will be as excited about the math as I am. I am already blown away at all of the wonderful resources here--thank you for guiding me:)

Hi LDSMom,

I love hearing from people all over the world in this forum. It is also nice to hear from people from the same county (basically:). I really hope you enjoy Little Miss. I would love to hear your thoughts if/when you read it. Regarding an immersion program, I have not done any research on immersion programs, but would love to learn more--especially about Chinese immersion programs. If you have any info you could share with me, I would love to read it.

Thanks for the message. Talk to you soon.

All the best,

Nate

Thank you Korrale4kq for the wonderful resources. I just bookmarked the living math website. It is exactly what I had been looking (admittedly I probably didn't look as hard as I should have, though I have done a dozen or so "math" Google searches and never really came up with much).  But you've nailed exactly what I was looking for--a way to teach math through books. Thank you (and as you can tell by now, I had not heard of living math:). I cannot wait to start reading all of these books.

I am also excited to read the books you specifically mentioned. I just reserved a bunch of Stuart Murphy, Sir Cumference, and Theoni Pappas books. I had not heard of any of these and again, they are exactly what I had been looking for as well. And I found it interesting that on the Living Math website, the author encourages parents to use the local library. This is always my advice as well. We go through about 50 books every two weeks--there is no way could buy or store that many books. But so long as we have new, good books coming in, our kids (and me and my wife), all love to read. The moment the books get stale or too repetitive, none of us want to read.

I am already loving this forum. Thank you Korrale4kq for your thoughtfulness and help. You read my last post and picked up on exactly what I was looking for, without me even mentioning it specifically.

All the best,

Nate

Mandabplus3, I am thrilled that you read/finished/enjoyed my book, Little Miss. We've had such a wonderful experience with our daughter and hope that others will similarly enjoy the book and benefit from it. And I would LOVE for the book to become a default book for baby showers (and book clubs:)--so many parents do not know the research on the benefits of reading to children and I hope to inspire parents everywhere (especially fathers) to take advantage of the opportunity with their toddlers (and children of all ages). And of course, a small advantage early in life often leads to a large advantage later.

Regarding your questions: Initially my wife had more concerns about early reading than I did and also felt too busy to head up a reading program so I was happy to take the lead. But we soon realized that it didn't take much effort on our part (5 minutes/day at breakfast doing reading drills). And when we started the early reading lessons (YBCR and later Hooked on Phonics--because I was unaware of BrillKids at the time:) we simultaneously came across the research on the benefits of reading to children--so we upped our reading from ~1 book per day to ~10-15 books per day. But we never really felt like reading 10-15 books per day took a lot of effort because we found, and read, excellent books (here was my first, favorite book list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geisel_Award). Moreover, we did the majority of our reading at meal times (2-3 books at each breakfast/lunch/dinner/naptime/bedtime), and reading 2-3 excellent books in one setting didn't ever feel overwhelming. We quickly found that all of the books we were reading enhanced our relationship with our daughter (while simultaneously boosting her vocabulary and decoding ability). So yeah, in hindsight, my wife is 100% on board with what we did and we will be doing the same thing with our son (who is 2.5), adapting of course where we need to. In fact, we just moved out of our apartment last week, are staying with in-laws until our new apt is ready, and as soon as we get stabilized again (hopefully next week), we are going to start doing everything with our son. We can't wait to see how our son responds. And we are especially excited now because we have more resources available to us that we weren't aware of when we taught our daughter (e.g., BrillKids, ReadingBear, etc.).

To give you an idea of how Kyla progressed, here is a video trailer I made that summarizes our experience: https://vimeo.com/107099654. Kyla is now 5, but she just missed the kindergarten cutoff date so she is not in school yet. We live in Salt Lake City, Utah, and plan to enroll her in an accelerated kindergarten program (it's a public program through our school district). Our plan is to try it out this first year to see how she responds. My wife and I will probably talk monthly about whether we think we should homeschool.

Regarding other subjects, we have tried to teach math but have had less success. We found that whenever we taught reading, Kyla received the added benefit of hearing a story that entertained her, whereas math has been more abstract. That said, we did work through a Singapore math book during breakfasts and we try to talk numbers as much as possible throughout the day (e.g., How many carrots do you have left? How many will you have left after you eat two?). Kyla has a pretty good grasp of addition and subtraction, but is not as advanced in math as she is in reading.

Regarding music, we have done nothing formal, but actually just came across some great music resources that we plan to get started on when we move into our new apartment in a week (thank you Mandabplus3 and others here:).

Thank you again Mandabplus3 for the recommendation and the kind words. I am so excited to start participating in this community--I have largely been isolated while going through this process with my daughter and can't wait to learn from others who have been through/are going through similar experiences. And please, if you or any one else has any other questions, please let me know. I thoroughly enjoy talking about early education.

All the best,

Nate

In my view, whether she has children or not is irrelevant so long as the advice is good. And in this case, I think the advice is good. Additionally, she isn't saying how she raises kids. She's saying how her dad raised her.

I tend to be a little more skeptical of parenting advice coming from people w/o children, so I see where you are coming from. But I also think it's more important to evaluate the advice than the person.