Hello HayleyS,

I hear you, with everything we see other EL parents too and achieve and with all the endless learning materials there are out there for young children, it can be extremely overwhelming!  What I do to simplify things is, first set a specific goal we'll be working on, then organizing time when we'll be working on it and finally finding or creating resources to help us reach that goal.  I say this because I've many times in the past did exactly the opposite and have it end in disaster;  I'll find some awesome video series on youtube, download the lot, try to squeeze it into our already busy day and find myself realizing we don't really have time for watching the series and at retro respect I'm not too sure if it's really worth the time invested :-/

If my boy's not interested in something, there's no use trying to teach him.  I read a saying on Facebook the other day "learning happens when somebody wants to learn, not when somebody wants to teach," and I thought to myself, "oh boy, took me 4 years to figure that one out" -- but it's true.  What works for my boy to get him interested in things is to have him see it and hear it as part of his environment first.  For instance, I'll put posters or cards on the walls or doors, leave books open on a specific page on our coffee table, play audio playlists or simply read things out to him casually while he's playing, store educational toys and materials where they are in plain sight, or using educational apps myself where he can see me.  Might take months, but the very best time to start teaching is when he starts showing an interest or asking questions.  I'll admit, now that he's older I do sometimes insist on him practicing or reading things even when he doesn't want to, but I know that he learns 10x faster when he's the one initiating it.  Sometimes things aren't fun when you can't do it at all, or don't know anything about it.  A language becomes very enjoyable if you know enough words to follow stories or things that interest you, a musical instrument becomes more fun the more songs you can play on it etc.   You can get creative, be silly and fun, invent games or Taylor lessons to match your child's interest (like, if princesses is her "thing", teach her to read princess names or elements that come from specific favorite fairy tails, for example) but remember that this sort of thing tires you (the teaching mommy) out in the long run, since you have to put a lot of energy into creating special materials or coming up with new ways to make it fun.  Learning itself can be fun too, so my main goal is always to awaken a desire to learn, so that the drive comes from him and not from me.

Most people I know who taught their kids to read early used both whole word and phonics approaches simultaneously.  Personally, my boy did learn to recognize some words very early on, but lost interest and soon could not recognize those words anymore.  We started phonics when he was 2, it felt like he learned super fast (we used letterland phonics) and within a couple of days was sounding out 3 letter words, but then lost interest (again!) and didn't really read again until he was 4 years old.  But, the things I tried in the early years wasn't in vain, his reading ability grew fast and now at 5 years old, he's reading at a 5th grade level, and absolutely loves reading.  (We used LittleReader, Readeez, Letterland, Alphablocks, TweadleWink, and both my husband and I read to him lots.) 

Every journey is very unique, so it's hard to try and give advice, I can only really share my personal views and experiences, but it sounds like you're off to a fantastic start and you'll be amazed with the results!  All the best!

P.S -- I'm from Johannesburg

That's fantastic progress Liselott!!  She's doing lovely!

Hi Liselott,

Keep in mind that language doesn't always follow logical rules, and learning to read, especially at a young age, is not a logical process.  Forming couplets out of two known words is a great way of starting to demonstrate to a child how written language works, your daughter will now be introduced to this concept through the English couplets and see many other examples of this throughout her learning journey in both Dutch and English, even if translating these particular English couplets don't have the same effect in Dutch (seeing it in English will be enough, it's teaching a universal concept.)  I would still introduce the Dutch translations in any case as they will be focusing her attention on how the form of the word changes and she will still partially recognize the words from words you've introduced earlier, all aiding her in her language and literacy development.   

When it comes to phrases, the main idea is to have some of the phrase familiar, it doesn't really matter which part of the phrase is "new" (adding something in between, at the beginning or end, or all 3.)  I think the main focus should be to keep the phrase as short as possible, it need not be a full sentence, and initially try for consistent sentences (for instance the entire set starts with "I see a")    If I were you I would go through other sets and stories in the English categories, play around a bit with translations (which need not be exact translations as long as they still match the pictures) and introduce the simplest Dutch translation set first.

At the end of the day, all and any exposure helps your little one.  Most early learning kids I know of got to reading fluency through a rather random process, which makes me feel like Doman's systematic approach is almost pointless.    I'm not saying you should not have a program and that you should not introduce reading cards progressively, I'm just trying to say that it's not an exact science and you should not stress too much about the little technicalities.

Teaching two languages, reading and math at 16 months old, I'd say you guys are doing fantastic!  All the best and keep up the good work!

Hi SunilPriya, we've completed this course almost 2 years ago and you can now purchase it in the brillkids store. 

FFSAda, initially we thought that only people who work on the project will get a copy.  This was a good idea back then as we wanted all the help we could get, but we changed our minds right at the last minute.  The people who worked on it DID get free copies, but it's also now being sold for funds for the non-profit Early Education for Every Child Foundation and you can purchase it from the BrillKids store.  We unfortunately never did any more projects, although many plans were made,  and the original idea was that we would give the country course as a reward for people doing extra work on future projects, but our hopes and dreams weren't realized.

Sorry if this is somewhat disappointing.  I'm not too sure why you quoted me, but hope this answers any questions you might have had.

Indeed, LR is a very useful application.  My boy just turned 4, we've been using LR for 3 years and we're still using it every day!  

I was part of a team of BrillKids collaborators who created this community course:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vx7Udmyn-gk
Everybody involved got the course for free, but anybody else can still purchase it (in the form of a small donation towards the Early Learning Foundation) from the BrillKids store.  You will hear and see from the video that it's not quite BrillKids quality, but it is a lovely and very useful course in the end and shows the potential of what we can do with LR at home.   Once you have the course, you could easily adapt it for use with a baby or one could even extend it or have it run much faster for an older child.

How about we change the Pinyin categories to display Chinese characters instead (we might need help though, I just did a search on the net and I think this might be harder than it sounds at first)?  You might also want to add some  Chinese cartoons or other educational Chinese programs at the end of a lesson.  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8TioFHubWFvJ3ijWovmCYes-jKfgPqnn or https://www.youtube.com/user/KidsChineseLessons/playlists for examples.  

I worked with a friend and converted the English course categories into full sentences, so in this converted version the  text does not say "clap" it  says the picture audio instead "Can you clap your hands?" (both the text and audio) and then the picture only says "clap."  This is a useful conversion (I would imagine) for nonnative English parents who are teaching English as a foreign language.  It's also a good next step once your child is reading words, to move on to reading sentences.   I have been wanting to do this conversion to full sentences for other language courses too, including Chinese.

As far as I know, LMu and LM does not allow you to edit the courses themselves.  There are quite a bit of settings you can play with, but I must admit, I don't know my way around these apps as well as I know LR.

Hi Evelyn,

I totally understand your reasons for wanting this change to the course and you're in luck, it's very easy to do!

1.  Go to the "PLAY & EDIT" tab right at the top of your Little Reader app window.

2.  Click on the "Courses" button at the top of the left panel.

3.  Select the course you wish to edit (in this case "BrillKids Chinese (Simplified) Semester 1") from the display dropdownlist.

4.  Click on the "Edit" button under this dropdownlist.

5.  Notice how the courses are built out of sessions and each session consists of a list of lessons.  You can delete individual lessons by selecting it's session tab, then selecting the lesson itself, click on the double down arrow that appears on the lesson item once you've selected it and click on "Delete" on the drop down menu that pops up.  In your particular case, you might first delete the two lessons "Pinyin 1" and "Pinyin 2" under "Session 1" (lesson items look like buttons on the left of a session tab) then move on to the "Session 2" tab and do the same there.

6.  Remember to save then say yes when a prompt comes up asking if you would like to rebuild the course.  (You might want to take note of what day in the course you were on before you do this, because all days in the course will be reset to display as "not played" once you've rebuilt the course.)

I hope my instructions are clear, but feel free to ask more questions, I'll be happy to assist.

I just want to add, if she likes Preschool Prep, she might also enjoy Alphablocks - there's over 100 x4 minute episodes of Alphablocks on youtube.

Hi Pukynaka,

We completed this project and have not started on any others yet.  This Country course was split into 2 courses in the end and can now be purchased from the BK store.

Thank you for your interest in the project and sorry that you missed it.

Thank you Lyla!  Contributions like yours is what made the course in the end, so a big thank you to you and the other team members too!

Thank you very much Lappy!!

I only notice this change now that you mention it.  I think that the lessons have grown in length, now that they have the sight words, word split and games, later lessons also have stories, so I'll agree that the word split was taken out because other things were added.  Many kids dislike the word flash too, for another reason they might have taken it out.  I will agree that it's beneficial to have the word flash, if your child will sit for all the word flash in one session, (too much might make him resist the entire session.)

Remember that the courses are customize able,  you can easily change the picture flash in the beginning of the session to a word flash instead, or add a mirror lesson to your session, mirroring the picture flash set, but displaying it as a word flash.  If you're not familiar with it, many people don't even try to change the courses in fear of "breaking" it, but my suggestions can be done with a couple of clicks and you're done.

No, you are right, you cannot see the actual grid in LM (didn't realize that's what you meant  )

Since you've started this thread, I've been using LM again with my 3 year old and we've got it set to grid mode now and he's learning from it with great enthusiasm.  In the first place, when he saw it he must have been intrigued by this app that he's not seen for over a year and was very curious about it.  Secondly, he actually enjoys math now that he's older, making learning quantities in this way even more interesting.

Just a little side note here:  You can set LM to display in grid mode 

Thank you very much Tanikit, this is very valuable information!  I hope the law doesn't change to force us to register or conform to some external rule, one of my main motivations behind homeschooling is for the freedom of study times and curriculum.  Suppose we'll just have to wait and see...