Little Reader is really meant for smaller children. at 4.5 year your daughter is ready to begin with a traditional reading curriculum. Have you looked at the free reading-websites such as Reading Bear, Star Fall, and Progressive Phonics. You can also buy a single volume manual such as The Reading Lesson, The Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading or Phonics Pathways.

People argue about this even in the US, and while m + at is popular in some areas, I have used both with different groups and I think that ma+t works better because it is more logical and consistent. English is written and read left to right, so it makes no sense to teach kids to start to the right (back part) of a word only to go BACK and read  what's on the left (the front part).

***I*** Learned to read around 4 or 5 using the m+at method so its not like doing m+at is HORRIBLY! TERRIBLY Wrong and no one can ever possibly learn to read that way. Thousands of kids learned to read that way, but for those that struggle with longer and longer words the m+at way can cause problems. When you start teaching reading, you can not know if the child will struggle in a few months when the m+at way won't work on longer, multi-syllable words.

The m+at (left to right) method of breaking down words will work on every syllable, every single time.
You can read "the" "mat" and "cap" using the left to right method and you can read "en-cy-clo-pe-d-ia" "dic-tion-a-ry" "diff-I-cul-ty" "hard-ship" and "bo-tan-ic-al" using the exact same left to right method. So I, when I teach, prefer and teach the left to right method.


The right to left or m+at rose to popularity when people began doing half-backed phonics methods where the students were taught "word families" mat, cat, sat, fat, etc...but it breaks down fairly quickly and can lead to word guessing and reading problems with many kids. With very, very young kids I like to be as consistent as possible.

Thank you so much for sharing your story and experience.

Now that you have found her learning style and her level in maths, I bet that you will begin to see solid and steady progress! Woohoo! Good job mama for not giving up too early or too soon.

You mention that he can do Mandarin Nursery and switch to English for K and elementary.
Is there an opportunity to do Mandarin in K and elementary?

I think that maybe you should spend the time before elementary building as strong of foundation in Bahasa and English as possible. You want to be sure and give your toddler a full language to communicate with the world around him in. I think its most important that he have a chance to fully strengthen and develop his current languages.

Yes, you can teach your toddler to write. You will want to think about the fundamental skills that go into writing: hand-eye coordination, pencil grip, finger strength, dexterity, coordination, etc. I would separate letter formation from those basic pre-writing skills. I would keep reading lessons/practice seperate from writing all together.

You can form letters in a tray of sand/corn meal/shaving cream/etc with the tip of your finger while working on building hand strength through games and activities. A lot of folks like dry erase markers + page protectors and use things like Kumon Mazes and beginning writing books for those early writing skills. You don't have to stick to Kumon books, you can find many tracing, mazes and pre-writing pages onlines and in other workbooks.

Get imaginative and find joyful and no-pressure ways to present the lessons to your daughter.

You can focus on drawing simple lines, curves, connections, and shapes for a few weeks to work on her letter formation without making it about letters or reading if you are worried that writing practice might make reading a drag.  Once she is easily and effortlessly executing strokes and forming shapes, then begin teaching the letters and numerals just a few a day, as she gets good at 1 or 2, teach a new letter or 3--find a way to make it fun and engaging, keep the lessons short and always teach when you and your daughter are in a good mood and of course stop while she is having fun.

Good luck and happy teaching!

Aww thanks, we think she's beautiful too. I'd love if you'd post a list of the other early learning blogs you follow. I look at dad dudes, poker cub, domanmom, professional parenting from parents on this forum, but I always appreciate more inspiration.

Sorry for the delay in replying. Some of these blogs are "dead", not having been updated in 1 year or more, but all of them should have at least a few years worth of posts and updates.
Of course, each blog contains links to other blogs so check the links to anything that looks interesting.

Raising Kids in Non-Native languages
http://babybilingual.blogspot.com/
https://germanintheafternoon.wordpress.com/
http://nonnativebilingualism.blogspot.com/

Raising Kids in 2+ Languages
http://www.trilingualmama.com/
http://trilingual.livejournal.com/
http://multitonguekids.blogspot.com/

PreK and Kindergarten Education
http://earlylearningathome.com/
http://www.pinayhomeschooler.com/
http://www.letteroftheweek.com/

Homeschooling
http://www.halfahundredacrewood.com/
http://www.mommymaestra.com/
http://www.satorissmiles.com

EL Specific
http://www.domaninspiredparenting.blogspot.com
http://www.acceleratededucation.blogspot.com
http://www.teachingmytoddlers.blogspot.com
http://www.domanmom.com
http://www.earlylearningmom.com

Okay. Thanks for clearing that up.

Does anyone know if I can use his violin/piano lessons as music on his IHIP, and swimming/sport classes for PE? I would like to, but I'm not sure if I can.

In general yes. Taking music lessons counts as "Music" the same as educational, physical activities count as "Physical Education". You can also count time spent running around at the park as PE--after all that is what most schools do for  PE--put kids on the playground and have them run around.

Linzy the new blog looks great! I do hope you're able to document your EL journey with the Little Lady--you know how much I enjoy watching your kids progress and studying your techniques along with many others. I've favorited the blog and will add it to my list of interesting child-rearing blogs that I follow.

PS: I'm sure you've noticed already but I'd like to point out that your little girl is beautiful, by the way. Enjoy that little one.

Hi! You definitely want to check out Doman Mom-- the authors name is Liz and I've been following her site for several years now. I think that her site is great and she's got one of the most "complete" Infant Education type blogs out there. She has pretty much everything you could need for the infant stage available on her website and she is truly cool. You can read through her archives and see how her technique has been refined over about 8 years and 3 kids.

DomanMom isn't active on this site as much but she replies to comments on her blog and the archives on the BK forum are a wealth of information.
Infact none of the veterans are as active on this site as they were when their kids were young, but what you want to do is dig through the archives of certain users posts--aiangeles, Linzy, daddude, waterdreamer, PokerDad, Marta and TeachingMyToddlers(she changed her name a few times so that could be wrong) they are some of the most prolific users from the BK "golden age" (2009-2013). When this site was constantly abuzz with activity. You can read their journeys more closely by going to their profile and working through their archive of posts. There are several others too--probably the best thing that you can do is read through the archives of this site and take notes. You'll want to get your library card in good order because there are some EL authors that you'll want to read and you'll find them mentioned in this. Glenn Doman is only the tip of the ice berg.

Anyway, sorry for that tangent. You can begin teaching your baby the most essential skills by supporting language every way you can--speaking, signing, speaking, reading, speaking and speaking some more. If she can appreciate and understand words then half the battle is already won. You'll want to talk to and show the baby things--all sorts of things. Everything from flashcards to houseplants to photographs etc. And always, always, always talk to baby. Domans "How Smart is Your Baby" book is a wonderful starting point and again, www.DomanMom.com will help you tremendously with that program.

Welcome to you and your little one and I hope that you'll enjoy the ride


PS--Linzy, wow! Congratulations to your family on your newest baby! (Boy or girl?)
Its so exciting to hear about Blaise and Masons status--I'm sure lots of the BK readers would appreciate an in-depth update on them, I know I would, but then again I'm an education and EL junky so maybe I'm just jonsing for a "fix" ! Its great to "see" you online again.

Bravo PokerDad and PokerCub! Glad to see an update and its always fantastic to hear that someone is being rewarded for persevering through the "slogs"!

I was doing my usual "click through" of EL, parenting and multilingual family blogs and was sad to see that no one from the EL circuit had updated in a long time (and some blogs have even been taken down) so I'm double excited to read your update.

I hope that your plans for the next year go well, it sounds like you have some exciting ambitions in place.

[They may be at your library, but if not you can feel confident getting a 2nd hand copy since the books aren't written in by the student or teacher.]

Thank you for such a great wealth of information. I have heard many great things about FLL Levels 1 and 2. I like that they are completely oral, so I think I'll be using those.
They may be at your library, but if not you can feel confident getting a 2nd hand copy since the books aren't written in by the student or teacher.
For math, I am thinking about using Singapore Math. I am also very interested in Soroban/Abacus math and would love to find a class for him nearby.
Singapore is a solid choice, its a favorite of many in the home school and education community, if you aren't familiar with the method then you should consider getting the Home Instructors Guide to help you teach the Singapore Method as you can apply the Singaporean method to ANY series of text or workbook but doing Singaporeans textbooks/workbooks without using the method isn't as good or realiable, or so I've been told.

As for Soroban/Abacus I'm not sure where you live but there aren't always classes available but there are also workbooks you can buy to learn and practice at home if you're interested in Soroban but don't live in New York or Hawaii or one of the few states that is known to have an Abacus/Soroban presence.
I really like the science website you provided. I looked through the first grade textbook and activity book, and I really like them. I also like that it's free!
I'm glad you like it, I downloaded the whole series a long time ago and I still love them. There is also Science AZ, as a supplemental/helpful "Extra" for a big reader. You can sign up for a trial and browse their tons of topical readers and lessons plans and then you can judge if it would be helpful to you as an annual subscription.
I really like the SheppardsSoftware website. I looked through it today, and the U.S. Map Puzzle gained my son's attention. It's definitely something I am interested in using. I also plan to buy the Evan Moor workbooks.

I have never heard of blobbing before, but it's definitely something I would love for my son to do. I just need to figure out how to get him started with that!
Here are some links that helped me to get a good idea of blobbing and how its done.
The idea of blobbing/world map
http://www.teachingstars.com/2013/06/29/beware-of-the-blob-a-video-guide-to-getting-started-with-geography-blobs/
Some EXTREMELY helpful templates to help you get started blobbing the worlds continents
http://www.halfahundredacrewood.com/2013/03/continental-blob-maps.html
A mom who is using the above templates to help her kid blob/draw the map
http://www.andherewegomama.com/2013/06/beginning-map-drawing.html
The idea of blobbing/US map only--in case you want to do both, maybe start with the world map in the first semester of K and in the 2nd semester focus on N.America or just the US.
http://www.solagratiamom.com/2014/07/how-to-start-young-kids-drawing-us.html

Again, thanks for all of your suggestions. They are all very helpful and I will be using a lot, if not most, of them!
Have fun teaching. K is a fun year so don't wear yourselves out. I would make this a content-centric year and do a lot of reading and discussing with in the "content subjects".

[a ton]

Well for a child who can read fluently, I would let K be a year of reading to learn. There are thousands of educational, nonfiction childrens books available in a variety of subjects so my recommendation would be to dust off the library cards and to get some shelving in the home ready for a lot of library traffic.

Do you have an eReader that you're willing to stock with materials for him to read?
Are you equipped to print a lot of papers (text or worksheets) off of the internet?

If you want to purchase some programs for him then you need to first decide what you want to cover and whether its worth it to buy or borrow the materials. Check your libraries collection and check into inter library loan also because you can preview a ton of home school materials that way, then you can order the ones that you like the best.

Some different programs that I like for English: First Language Lessons For the Well-TrainedMind level 1
Levels 1 and 2 are completely oral and can be done in K if you compact the program by doing a lesson each day and skipping when necessary instead of 2-3x a week. The value in this program is learning and memorizing a lot of core grammar points and learning to ID them in oral, written and aural language. There is no writing required and it can literally be done in 3-10 minutes a day, the program is very gentle and repetitive, but you can skip some things as needed.

To go along with FLL 1 and 2 I would get books from the
Brian P. Cleary (Words are CATegorical series of about 26 books, check your library for them)
Robin Pulliver (Punctuation takes a Vacation, Silent Letters Loud and Clear, Nouns and Verbs have a Field Day, Happy Endings: A book about Suffixes, The Case of Incapacitated Capitals). That would be enough grammar for a Ker, just go through FLL and read a few of Clearies books on each part of speech, then just ID nouns and such in your reading time and viola, an excellent and easy grammar curriculum for a Ker.

For math, you can take a similar approach, find a math program that you like and read as many living math books as you want to go with it.
Mathematics Enhancement Program is free for the cost of printing. You can compact Reception (K) and Year 1 for an advanced K student. If you don't want to have to print then there are many other options and many publishers offer placement tests so that you can place your son at the appropriate level in their scope and sequence.
Check out LivingMath.net for booklists and ideas about how to enrich a math curriculum with picture books.

Science: If you have a PDF capable eReader than I strongly suggest you visit this site. You can download PDF versions Science textbooks for 1st-6th grade and since your son is already reading so well, I'd just read through the textbooks together, discussing as you went along. Each book has grade level life science topics so you can read through the 1st grade book, then read about each topic at a higher level in the 2nd grade book, then read about the same topics at a higher level in the 3rd grade book. You can also download and print workbooks to go with the texts, but they aren't necessary but you will be able to pick and choose which pages your son might enjoy rather than printing the whole book. You can still supplement and enhance your sons science studies with projects if you want to (or not) or with library books, but reading and discussing from a series of texts can be a wonderful way to gain a large amount of background knowledge.

Geography: Get a good atlas and spend several minutes with it each day, play geography games on SheppardsSoftwares geography section. Evan Moor makes good geography workbooks that are easy to implement. You can also google "blobbing" to see if that is something you might be interested in.

There are only a very few "wrong" ways to do Kindergarten-2nd grade. So long as the student is learning to read, write and developing mathematically these should be very low pressure years for you and for him. Your son can already read so K should be the year that he learns knowledge by reading, drawing and playing his way through the school day.

I'm sure that you already have quite a collection of educational toys such as blocks, puzzles, games, but you might go through and see about purging unused games and puzzles and replacing them with more educational versions such as geopuzzles or getting more detailed wall maps/globes just so that you have those tools on hand.

My understanding is that most children in Spanish speaking schools learn the vowel sounds and then the syllabary, NOT the individual consonant sounds.
I would not use English phonic practices with the Spanish language. I would teach Spanish phonics the Spanish way by teaching vowels and then syllables as "chunks" just like in English the digraphs "th" "sh" "ch" "wh" are taught as one,  I would teach "ma, me, mi, mo, mu" etc.

There are some really helpful videos on Youtube about the alphabet and the syllabary . These videos are about 2-3 minutes each so you can watch them like you would a clip of any other tot friendly educational show.

You can also look into getting the Nacho Libro Inicial Lectura or a similar reader series that was written in Spanish, for Spanish speakers by Spanish speakers (i.e Coquito or La Pata Pita). Also, there is a website "ReadingA-Z.com" that has thousands of leveled readers available in English and many of them have been translated into Spanish and French. You can download many of them for free if you sign up for the free trial (no credit card required). There are also several English readers translated into Spanish (French and German to) for free on HubbardsCupboard.org

Also, get an ISSUU account and you can read or download PDFs of Mexicos Board of Education curriculum for PreK-6th grade. They have things like Reading, Mathematics, History, Geography etc. After Nacho and ReadingA-Z those materials will give plenty of reading practice for a child.

[still]

Hi Flyer, I am sorry to make you feel attacked. I certainly don't want to scare anyone away from these very useful EL forums. And I'm sorry that I implied you were a phantom-account made by that company. I saw that you only had a posts on this forum and I missed that this thread was CREATED in Dec. 2014. In March and April of 2015 I saw a posts about this program on a few different educational/mom sites so that is when I noticed this thread on this site I mentioned that it seemed shady to me because of that occurrence.

I still do not feel comfortable with this company. There are plenty of well known and transparent products our there and more than enough resources to teach your child to read all the way up to a collegiate level for free. There are full phonics programs available online for free that you can use as an eBook or that you can print at your leisure.

This company doesn't have a good presentation in my opinion. For one, their website isn't well designed (its the one-continuous page website that a lot of scams use.) They don't clearly state what the product is. They never show what the product is--it seems like they have cobbled together a bunch of phonics resources and are charging parents for it. Essentially all I can tell from this website and the videos (And yes, I have seen ALL of their videos in full) is that this company is saying "Use phonics" but instead of being upright and forth coming aobut it, they make it seem like they are doing something wonderful and mysterious to get the kids reading and oh--if you give them $50 they will tell you how you can do it too!


However NONE of that companies short comings is your fault. I didn't mean to make you feel unwelcome. Now, since you have had a few months , can you tell us if you have used this program? If so, then perhaps you can shed some light on it because while I have not used the program, their company/videos/shadiness make me not trust them enough to want to use the program. If someone can provide a review and tell about their experience with the EasyToTeachReading program, then it can put a lot of minds at ease.

[I prefer the Reading Lesson]

Well, do you have a printer at home or a Print Shop (Target Copy, Kinkos, UPS Store, Office Max, Office Depot etc) in your area? You can use a PDF curriculum  if you just print it out. Many libraries have free printing for registered patrons though there may be a limit to how much you can print daily.

I have the eBook version of The Reading Lesson (TRL) but rarely use it on-screen. I just print out one chapter at a time and use it with the kid that I'm working with. This is helpful because a kid is not faced with 200+ pages all at once and it helps some kids focus on only the page in front of them.

I have used both The Reading Lesson and Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy lessons (100EZ), they are both solid but I prefer the Reading Lesson personally for a bunch of reasons if you want to hear them.

But, Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons is a good program and you can probably find it at a library near you its such a staple in home reading programs so you can try before you buy it. Even if you don't want to use 100EZ, I think that if you have never taught reading before then there is value in just reading through the intro and first several lessons of 100EZ.

100EZ teaches you exactly how to teach blending--its not developmental that only a child of age N can do it.
Blending is a skill and it can be explicitly taught via appropriate instruction consisting of demonstrations, modeling, scaffolding. Some kids will learn to do it easily and effortlessly, others will fumble a bit but still I believe that pretty much any typical kid can be TAUGHT to blend, but what the process can't be is rushed. 100EZ has excellent instruction and lessons on blending, its good to read through, even if you don't want to use the book with your kid.

Larry Sangers essay on Baby Reading addresses this slightly, he says that he just sounded out words for his son and gradually his son learned to sound out words for himself.