Awesome!

 
I've tried many things for sight words- what worked best for us is Preschool prep DVD's and their sight word flash cards. I have their easy readers too- so he feels good when he sees familiar words :-)

You maybe able to create files for those words on LR and reinforce it.

I have realized that as a child grows and understands things, pictures and colors make words come alive and easier to remember. My 5 cents.

Since he is very active, I even bought Heidisongs DVDs but my son lost interest in that very soon. I think this is best suited for classroom environment.

He gets them all right when I ask him to say the word on the card and then jump over the card...go figure ...

Awesome website! Thanks Krista

Hi everyone,

Just thought of starting this new thread:

I asked Ms. Hiner to consider giving discounts to parents of children with special needs. I did this for my wonderful friends in this forum from whom I have learnt so much and who have inspired me 

She has asked interested parents (children with special needs) to email her on [email protected].

You may be able to work something out with her 

Take care,

Shaman

Hi everyone,

I informed Ms. Hiner of your concerns about the pricing etc- in order for you to get discounts, brillkids and her may have to work out something.......

However, I did ask her to consider giving discounts to parents with special needs children. I did this for my wonderful friends in this forum from whom I have learnt so much and who have inspired me  This question was also prompted by my medical background because I believe music definitely helps children.

She has asked interested parents (children with special needs) to email her on [email protected].

You may be able to work something out with her. 

Also, for the other parents using soft mozart, check out the forum and network on the new website. It is like a 'music school' where if you have a doubt/question as to whether your child is doing something correctly, you can post those vidoes and someone will tell you if what they are doing is right or wrong!

Take care,
Shaman

Hi all,

any updates or more recommendations for iPad apps? We just got one.

Thanks for all the earlier recommendations.

-Shaman

Hi all,

My son is now at a physical age of 3 years and advanced mentally.....I am having a tough time getting him to focus on a particular task/subject. He enjoys doing a variety of things and was much better before (I think).

I have been following the ' stop before the child loses interest' and ' let the child decide what he wants to do' rules as much as possible, but am now beginning to think if I should 'make' him sit and do certain things with him so his focus ability will increase?
 
I think I have read in earlier posts about having to sit down with a 4 year old and ask him to do a certain task, should we be doing the same for 3 year olds who may be mentally at age 4? I dont want to do anything that will make him not want to do all these things with me anymore. He is enjoying what we do but due to lack of attention span I am not able to do all that we were doing earlier. I feel like he knows that I wont force him to do anything, so he is doing whatever he wants (obviously, only the things I let him do).

What do you think?

Does anyone have any suggestions to increase a childs ability to focus/ increase attention span?

Thanks in advance,
Shaman

Thanks Maquenzie 

Macquenzie,

Thanks for the ideas.
How to you keep up with all this? I know some other moms manage curricula well too.
 do you do all the subjects daily? My son goes to Montessori too and I teach him some at home, but I have not been able to come up with a good 'schedule' to do the subjects etc. I guess, I should go step wise instead of time wise (just thinking aloud).

Any ideas to keep up with 'what you are teaching and what to teach next' would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Shaman

Hi lzp11,

I was in the asme situation until a couple of days ago, when suddenly my son, in an attempt to show off in front of his dad    started reading CVC words  I was surprized because for the past many many months (he knew his letter sounds when he was 26 months) I was trying to teach him blending etc.

Here's what I did:
I realized I was getting worked up, just like you, and decided to take a break. I read up about other methods and decided to give some basic things a try, not knowing that these would be so important!

1. I started with the difference between 'letters' and 'words
2. asked him to count 'letters' in a 'word'- he loves counting, so he loved this part
3. difference between letter name and sound- so i would pretend to be named 'letter a'  and say the sound
4. when reading, before each word i said 'tell me the sound, not the name'
5. started with 'baby words'- 'ca, da, fa.....
6. then the words grew big ...cat, fat.....i had to build a story around it
7. showed him different types of 'a'

Try these things- maybe they will help.
take care

Just an addendum to the earlier post- I was the one that told him (generally) that Charles Perrault wrote fairy tales and he picked it up that way- I am probably going to have to correct myself soon- I think Palgrave wrote Jack and the Beanstalk, have to confirm.

I was recently told by my son's teacher and principal that he is ready for pre-primary but when she checked his age, she was surprized to see that he was less than 3 yrs and told me that unfortunately she won't be able to promote him to the next class due to his age. He will unfortunately have to stay in the same class for the next 5 months!  He is lucky to have a teacher who appreciates what he knows and is constantly trying to give him more challenging activities. Some of the teachers were surprized to hear this and started questioning how I teach him all this. It doesnt help that my son loves to talk and  discusses planets and how he is going to be an astronaut, can tell that Charles Perault wrote Jack and the Beanstalk etc.  .....At first, I just tell them 'children are like sponges, he surprizes me with how much he grasps too!' ...they dont say anything after I say this. If they ask, what we do at home, I tell them we do 'purposeful play' just count while we jump etc.....if I give them details of how much he knows, they will quiz him to find out if I am telling them the truth  so I don't give out those details.

I have realized it the hard way....after multiple conversations with people, that it is best to give info about early educational techniques to those who seem interested and will apply it; not to people who sometimes want to compare their children with ours and get jealous.  There are some moms that will make you feel like you are robbing them off their childhood!  Every child is different. My son begs me to do puzzles with him, counting with manipulatives etc because we have so much fun with it. My husband has only recently joined us in our early ed journey and he is enjoying it too!

If I find some mom that even seems 1% interested in early ed- I give her all the info she needs to get started and help her along the way (as much as my experience has taught me).

So, my theory is, as long as you are enjoying doing things with him- do it and try to keep your conversations short with people that are very judgemental.

I forgot to add- I have also put a blank card on each column so I can hide a letter in that column and practice ga-, ca-, ka-, la- etc or -an, -at, -ot.

Once we are done with the 3 letter words, I plan to make more cards with blends...

I made the phonics flip cards- like the one available with the LR deluxe. Got the idea from here:

http://quirkymomma.com/2010/phonic-flip-chart/

It works well and you can teach both, the c-at or the c-ca-cat method. My son love something different all the time and was getting bored with me going over just the -at words or -an words etc. This gives us the opportunity to make about 150 CVC words (that make sense) and many others (just because...). It is easy to make- I got colored index cards from a teaching store (100 cards for $2), color coded them, punched holes and stuck them in a 3-ring binder. I did not even laminate the cards and they are holding up well.

The three columns i used are ' blue (for the starting sound), pink (vowels) and yellow( ending sound). Seeing the cards this way is somehow helping him recognize the starting and ending sounds of the words (I just have to remind him 'which is the sound on the blue card?' etc)

Hope that helps.

I had read about all these things when I was pregnant. A baby is already exposed to loud sounds in utero- mothers heartbeat, breathing, peristalsis etc. Not surprisingly, the best auditory stimulation for a baby is the mothers voice. Music is good, but a mother's singing is best. Plus with the headphones on the belly, the music may be too soft or way too loud- I don't think conducted sound measurements have been done. The sounds are also muffled (amniotic fluid and mom's skin- muscle- connective tissue layer)

In fact, some studies have shown that occupational noise exposure may cause fetal hearing loss:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3788986

But this one, says no:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17684657

There are a lot of studies done on vibro-accoustic stimulation on kids in-utero. I have always found studies contradicting each other.

That is why, when I was pregnant....after reading many articles....we decided to stick with something we knew was safe- mom's voice and singing