Hi There,

We heard a lot of very positive feedback about Jones Geniuses Matrix Math program.

This program was developed by Dr. Miles Jones for 2-6yr olds.

However, when we recently tried to find more information about this program or purchase it, the website (http://www.jonesgeniuses.com ) seems to be offline. We emailed Dr. Jones and the email bounced.

Does anyone know if this program is still being sold?

Thanks in advance!

LG's Parents

[1.]

Hi all!

You'll be glad to know that we are in the process of releasing a lot more content (Categories) for LR.  We should also be releasing a major upgrade of LR early next year which will allow you to create your own curriculum with whatever Categories you choose to put into it.  Will be releasing more details soon!

KL,

That's fantastic news!

Three follow up questions then:

1. Is there a tentative timeline for releasing new Categories of content for Little Reader?

2. Will these Categories include more advanced content, specifically continuation of Semester 2. What we are really looking for is additional "Simple Sentences" content. Our little one loves these little stories, and we feel that it's a great way to progress in reading.

3. Given the tentative timeline and expected new categories, do you think we should still hire someone ourselves to develop new content? We were considering hiring someone through oDesk to create may be 50-100 new "Simple Sentences" modules. The idea would be to follow Semester 2 format (minus videos to keep things simple). Once these are created, we would of course share them with the community for free.

Thanks again to your team for all the hard work on this product. Little Reader truly is a life changing learning tool.

Cheers,
Little LG's Parents

[Have you tried books by "Brand New Readers" (see http://www.amazon.com/Wow-Its-Worm-Watches-Readers/dp/0763611530/ref=pd_sim_b_2 and they have more)?]

Sonya,

Thanks again for your great suggestions. We have not tried Bob books because we found illustrations in them to be too plain. Our little one really loves pictures. I think this is one reason why Little Reader is so amazingly effective.

Have you tried books by "Brand New Readers" (see http://www.amazon.com/Wow-Its-Worm-Watches-Readers/dp/0763611530/ref=pd_sim_b_2 and they have more)? We found these to be the best so far. These books have colorful illustrations, sentences are simple, and they clearly separate pictures from words.

We have also attended several kids book fairs. We found it to be amazing that despite the sheer number children book authors and publishers, very few understand the mechanics of teaching small children how to read. Most books use words that are too complex, break sentences in wrong places, mix inconsistent capitalization or use fonts that are not ideal for learning how to read.

In this regard, Little Reader is just amazing and a step above anything else out there. In fact, we have done a simple test. We took Kumon Jr. flash cards and then converted them into a Little Reader program. Exact same content but a different form factor. Our little one was so much more engaged using Little Reader, it was day and night difference.

Now, if we can only find someone to help us develop more quality content for Little Reader...

Cheers!

Little LG's Parents

Hi there!

How old is your little one?

(We are not experts so please take our advise as such) Here is one trick that worked for us consistently-- we would schedule Little Reader over breakfast. We would pick special food that our little one really like (in our case, it was a small bowl of granola with fruit) and we would sit down with a laptop right next to him. After every other word, we would give him a spoon of granola.

This little trick built positive associations with Little Reader and got us through a period when he was not really interested.

Little LG's Parents

[Thanks again for your response!]

Sonya,

Thank you for your very insightful comments!

I think you are 100% correct-- one should consider other methods that have a greater emphasis on phonics instructions (vs. word patterns).

What we love so much about Little Reader is how effortless it is. We have an established routine with our little one-- 10 minutes of Little Reader over breakfast and 10 minutes at night. It's super easy to follow if there is a continuous supply of lessons. We breezed through both semesters in about 8 months.

Our little one absolutely loves Little Reader and even now as we temporarily stopped doing Little Reader (we ran out of content!), whenever he sees one of us get on our laptops, he says "What do you want to do? Little Reader?"

I will note the following--- we are doing other things such as sounding letters when we read as well as following lessons from Siegfried Engelmann's "Teach Your Child To Read in 100 Easy Steps" (it's a classic on this subject!). Plus, our little one just started Junior Kumon, which is also great.

We have also started with Larry's http://www.readingbear.org, which is great of course and free for those who can't afford Little Reader.

However, none of these methods come close to Little Reader in terms of ease of use and immediate results. Hence, we are really hoping we can find some folks who could help us develop new content for Little Reader ("Semester 3").

We were hoping we would find interested folks here but perhaps we may have to also post on Craigslist or oDesks ads for this. We have gotten some responses but not enough. As I mentioned, we will pay for each lesson developed and once new content is created, we will share it back to the community for free.

Thanks again for your response!

Little LG's parents

[It's by far the best way to teach your baby to read. And, trust us, we looked and evaluated a lot of different programs, tools, books, and methods.]

Little Reader is absolutely FANTASTIC!!! It's by far the best way to teach your baby to read. And, trust us, we looked and evaluated a lot of different programs, tools, books, and methods.

Our little one absolutely loved it! What amazed us is that even though Little Reader program presents essentially the same content as can be found in books or flash cards, babies react completely differently and are much more engaged by the program.

We highly recommend Little Reader to everyone. You will be amazed how fast you child will learn to read and you will be bragging to your friends in no time. Believe us when we say that we cannot stop talking about Little Reader to all our friends or any new parents we meet.

Lastly, we started Little Reader when our little one was about 20 months, which may be considered late by some. We actually thought it was a good time to start because he was mature enough to concentrate and progressed very quickly. We finished two semesters in under a year with just 10 minutes a day. So to anyone who is starting late, it's definitely not too late!

[http://forum.brillkids.com/teaching-your-child-to-read/is-there-anyone-who-can-help-us-create-more-lr-content-we'll-pay!!/msg77393/]

Hello Everyone!

We already posted to another forum, please see:
http://forum.brillkids.com/teaching-your-child-to-read/is-there-anyone-who-can-help-us-create-more-lr-content-we'll-pay!!/msg77393/

We received some responses but really not enough so we we thought we should post here, to Little Reader-specific forum.

We are looking for folks who may be interested in developing new content for Little Reader. We can provide specific requirements and guidelines but the overall objective is create something like "Semester 3" which will consist of high quality lessons focusing on sentences and phrases.

We will pay either per lesson or per batch of lessons created. All content that is created will be published to the community for free.

If you are interested in earning extra money while having fun creating new content and doing a great service for this community, please send us a PM.

Thanks!
Little LG's parents

["Semester 3: Simple Sentences"]

Iwini-- Thanks! We will definitely contact you.

Is anyone else interested in helping us develop new content for Reader? Specifically, we are looking to develop a set of new Simple Sentences.

We will pay for content development and, of course, we will post the end product to the community so everyone can benefit from this work.

Ideally, it would be great to have something like a "Semester 3: Simple Sentences" that continues to build on Semester 2 but focuses on reading sentences.

If you are interested, please post here or send us a PM.

Thanks everyone!
Little LG's Parents

In our case, our son was not never very interested in flash cards but it was completely different when it came to the Little Reader program. We never had a problem.

So if your daughter is not interested in flashcards, I would definitely suggest trying out the Little Reader program. There is a free trial available on this website.

Welcome to the Little Reader community!

Is 17 months too late? Absolutely not. We started our little one when he was about 20 months old. We actually felt that it was the ideal time to start. We breezed through LR in under a year. Our son has completely mastered every single lesson in Little Reader. Our only problem now is we don't have anything beyond the second semester of Little Reader to teach him.

So, no, it's definitely not too late!

[What we are looking for is to hire someone to develop a continuation of LR semester 2 with emphasis on Simple Sentences]

Hi there!

First, we want to say that Little Reader (LR) is an absolutely fantastic teaching tool! We have been amazed at how fast our two year old son went from barely being able to sound out a few letters to now being able to read complete sentences. All thanks to LR!

In fact, we literally can't stop talking about how great LR is. Whenever we meet other parents with young children, the first thing we say "You just have to get Little Reader! It will change your child's future!"

Now to our question. We just finished LR (semesters 1 and 2) with our two year old. To be precise, our son is 2 yrs and 7 months old. We started LR when he was about 20 months and we finished both semesters in just under one year.

We would love to be able to continue reading sessions with our son using LR. The problem is that we are simply too busy to create our own content on LR platform. We browsed through and downloaded user created content under http://forum.brillkids.com/downloads/?cat=63 but we found that the quality of this content to be inconsistent. By "consistent," we mean things like: usage of primarily simple words, certain sentence structure, visuals that are clear and simple.

For example, the following sentences from LR semester 2 are great:

"I like to clap when mommy dances"

"A green frog can jump so high"

"Here are my two shoulders"

These are simple, easy to visualize sentences that use common words. The problem with user generated content is that it does not have the same consistency/quality ( There were a couple of downloads that were really, really good, e.g. "Transportation Sentences" under "Transportation" but certainly not enough).

What we are looking for is to hire someone to develop a continuation of LR semester 2 with emphasis on Simple Sentences. We would like for all stories to follow the same general pattern (similar to LR). Ideally, it would be nice if each sentence had a video/animation but probably pictures will be sufficient.

We are willing to pay per story or a set of stories developed and, of course, all of this content will be available to the entire community.

If there is anyone who is currently doing this (developing quality content for LR) or who may be interested in this project, we would love to hear from you.  We can pay on a per story basis or for multiple stories (e.g. a set of 20-30). What's important to us is that all new content adheres to a set of predefined guidelines much like LR content does. We can discuss these in advance.

Feel free to reply to this message or PM us if you may be interested.

Thanks in advance!

Cheers!
LG's Parents

Hi,

We have been using LR for over 6 months (absolutely love it!) and would love to participate in LM Beta program!

About us:
-- Strong music background/experience: Played in amateur jazz and concert bands.
-- Play or have played a music instrument: Played trombone, clarinet and baritone horn for over 10 years.
-- Can read notes: Yes.
-- Have an idea what you're looking for in a music program for children: Looking for a program that's truly engaging and teaches the little ones the basics: how to recognize octaves, scales, how to distinguish instrument sounds and how to repeat a melody.

In addition, we have a lot of experience in formal software testing (including black box/UI/usability testing), and we would love to use our experience for this exciting project.

Thanks!