Thanks to all of you , your suggestions are very helpful. I  would just tell her what the correct spelling was and let her take the lead but it concerned me at times.
@Teaching my toddlers: thanks for the book, I will try to get hold of it .
@Bella: Mt dtr does go to montessori and that fact slipped out of my mind, thanks for reminding me about it.
@Mummy Roo, That was a very practical solution , I am going to try it.

Hello,
My dtr has been practicing writing and the only way to get her interested in this, is by making short sentences which she likes e.g . My wand is pink ( she is in the princess stage). But instead of wand , she phonetically spelled "wond" , instead of writing Sanju ( her dad's short name) she wrote " Sunjoo" .There are a few more words she is doing the same thing. We used LR and she actually is learning to read using LR and phonics which seems to work for us.
How should I correct her?
thanks in advance .

I have been lurking  a lot on this forum but I just had to comment on this topic.
I have studied Sanskrit in school and junior college. About 99 % of our prayers are in this language we say a few selected prayers everyday.
While I think this has a calming effect on all of the family members, I do not see how it would have the same effect for someone not familiar with the language. Saying "om" and saying the mantras are 2 different things , IMHO.  I used to listen to a special mixed CD called garbha Sanskar when I was expecting but that was again for the calming nature of the mantra's as well as baby development.
There are too many Cd's DVD's, studies on baby development/early education I would not stress about this if you are not familiar with the language. Just relax and enjoy methods which are easy for you to follow on a long term basis.

Just sharing my experience regarding this topic, When I learned about specific Doman learning methods, my DD was already 13-14 months old so initially I was too upset with myself and charted this whole agenda about things I would like to work with her in regards to reading/math/Ek /language . ( we already did ASL and other developmental activities) . It was easy to get carried away with my list and I had to draw the line or rather prioritize what I would like to start with her and then she gave me the leads especially on EK topics.
That being said , regards languages, We too speak Marathi at home and English at work . So it was obvious that she will be exposed to  both language. As a third language my immediate thought was French, as I llike how the language sounds and know it just a bit but reverted to Spanish as it would be more functional for her  and that is a language I amtrying to learn too. Reason for learning third language: ease of communication with native spanish speakers and hope that this experience will makeit easier for DD to learn other language if she chooses it.

Wow, hats off to you and your DD, It is very commendable that you are able to do so many things with your DD despite working full time.  Good work, very inspiring , BTW I loved your home made BIT cards. Wold you be willing to share your POis for composers with the forum? And i love Beethovens wig, I never really played it so much for my DD but I used to sing along with it while cooking, very funny lyrics.

Hi Ayesha,
this is a very emotional topic for  me as I am going through ups and downs with potty training. I missed the sensitive period for my DD as we were travelling but the cues were strong and i feel terrible about it. nevertheless now we are still pottytraining and I feel that we are so close and then something happens and we realpse back. to cut the long story short, if you are apprehensive about PT in one day , have you considered any other approach? I found this book: The potty training answer book by karen Deerwester and it has a summary of most plans and gave me a very practical solution . like I said we are still working but I found this to be a very self paced program.
Also stock up on potty books , our favorite is the potty book for girls by Aliisa Satin Capucilli, along with the video.  I was not in favour of potty books but tried it as a desperate attempt. It helped DD to get over her resistance for Potty. HTH, Good luck.

I agree to waterdreamer and Mother of faith, just keep it going and things will click, another way to try and build that association could be, by keeping a few of those objects close to you and as he picks the card, show him the object. As he already know what the word means , he just may put the 2 together. just a suggestion, i havent done it myself . But you are dong a great job and so is your DS.

Thank you so much, Hypatia, your suggestion is great, I actually started incorporating basic spanish counting during our circle time routine post nap, just a minute or two . I think clear;y telling her that we are going to talk in Spanish or English or Marathi will help her as she likes routines.
Mother of Faith, As usual you are so resourceful. I will look into all those sites , plus thanks for the Hooked on Spanish link. i will keep an eye on it at BigLots. Also can you tell me the name of the software you used?
Patreiche, I have a wonderful  elderly Hispanic couple living next door, I am sure they would love to help us in this.Thanks for those links onyou tube, we actually had  agreat bilingual story time at out library but the timings clash wiht my work hours...
 Also I found out my library has Little Pim in Spanish so thats great,
just an update, She wanted to have some tattoos on her hand and we counted upto 20 in Spanish to count the time(it takes 20 secs for those tattoos to transfer) and she loved it.

My child is bilingual for most basic things in English and Marathi (which is our native language), I had initially started with Little Pim french for her a few months ago but stopped that as our priorities shifted. Now my goal for myself is to be able to converse in Spanish for basic day to day activities for my profession. So I thought why not both me and my child learn this at the same time (different resources). But she seems to be very much against it, she yells out English words when I repeat spanish ones ,for e.g while reading a book. Can anyone suggest what I can do to improve her interest. I even let her watch Dora at times and tell her that Dora says so and so in Spanish. It works for about 1 word!!!

Wow, Ayesha, I have said this before but I would like to say it again. You are truly such an organized person. wow. Karma to you

Here is what I would do:
1) work hard on building routine early on
2) start early with infant stimulation and Lr/flashcards and LM. I started way too late.
3) Exposure to music

That was my query a few months ago and I have modified my EK method e.g using cards or LR for only those categories in which my child shows interest--so this is child -centered in some way.  For my child ,I have delineated between experiential learning /concept learning  (montessori way) and academic learning (Doman/LR ) I find both of them to be great. Doman learning makes it easier for them to grasp those concepts . For e.g: My child loves continents, she knows their names. She can randomly point them on the globe (not correctly all the time) She learnt these first through Doman method.  When she is begining to understand the Concept of globe , she can concentrate on that as she already nows the other parts on the globe. IMO , academic learning works together with conceptual learning.

 Montessori starts with self care (where the emphasis is on appropriate sized equipment, showing them how to do things, care of environment, care of objects which are being used ) , then it progresses to concepts: language,maths,geography, nature, senses, all of which is eventually academic in nature. Maria Montessori's preliminary work was with children aged 3-6 yrs . The later progression(beyond 6 yrs) , I think , was an extension of these concepts .

I am not a montessori trained teacher but this is what I gathered from a  few books which I read. Any true-Montessori followers , I apologize if I have said anything incorrect.

All the ideas by Mother of faith are great,  have done several of these in a slightly modified form and we are still working on correct grip , correcting as needed. Another thing which helped us is breaking crayons into small peices , 2 pieces of each regular crayon. that does not give them enough space for the fist hold and encourages tripod hold. Plus some clothespin activities will help.

have you tried the Letter Factory by leapfrog. my child loves it and she knew almost all the sounds before we saw this but this DVD reinforced them .

This is our fave video, it has been the number one for us since many months now! but my child still asks this over and over.


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