Thank you very much for the suggestions.  I have been so busy with everything that I had to stop doing research for EL for a little bit.  This term on top of Shichida and Suzuki cello (she had her first recital last week yeah! and that was fun) I enrolled her into French and Mandarin for after school.  We finally finished LR English and almost finished LR Chinese since we started about a couple of years ago.  She was reading for a while but I just want to finish the course.  I am not sure how much she got from LR Chinese so I wanted to see if it would help to enrol her into the course with a live teacher.  We have been on the go in the last few months and I don't even have time to do any reading / learning with her at home.  I guess I was trying to determine if it is better for me to teach her in-house or let someone else teach her.  I think I will try to do more with her myself going forward because that will just save quite a bit of time and it will be much cheaper that way.

She is turning 5 next week and will be going to a full-day Montessori kindergarten and elementary school in the fall.   In Shichida's point of view I have about a year before she turns 6 to maximize her right brain learning.  I am planning to let her continue with Shichida (may drop that in a few months'  time) and Suzuki cello and add soroban while she goes to Montessori kindergarten.  I think that will be a good combination as far as right brain learning goes.  If I have more time / energy I will want her to continue with softmozart which we stopped about a year ago.  We'll see how it goes.

Hi all,

I would like to have some advice for my daughter who will turn 5 next month.  We started EL after she turned 3.5 so we did not get her little Math.  I am wondering what I should use to start teaching her math.  I called Jones Geniuses and it seemed like it's a good program but it takes about an hour each day to work on it and it seems like a long time (as compared with Shichida math which takes only a few minutes a day for infant / toddlers and still get amazing results).  She is going to Shichida school but she does not seem to be interested in the dots or the math part.  I have read about saxon math or singapore math and those seem quite popular too.  Where should I start?  She is going to kindergarten in the fall but I probably will end up teaching her after school in various subjects myself.

In addition, we tried to get her to French immersion kindergarten but we did not get in through the lucky draw / lottery system.  I ended up getting Rosetta Stone for her.  Supposedly one can finish all 5 levels in a few months' time. Has anyone used that for little kids?  How did that turn out?

I would appreciate any advice on the above. Thanks.

Hi,

1. I am planning to send my daughter to French Immersion kindergarten when she turns 5. Currently we are doing LR and Little Chinese.  She started EL just a few months ago and we have not finished semester 2 for either programs.  I am not sure how much she can really read right now.  Is it too early to introduce a third language?  If so, what is a good way to do it so she does not get too confused?  Is it more important to just have more exposure at this age?

2. Has anyone tried sparkabilities app 1-6?  Is it a good program?  If my daughter is turning 4 soon, should she start from the first one still?  Is the app as good as the DVD?

3. How is Sparkabilities compared with TW?  Is TW more comprehensive? 

I would appreciate any recommendations on this.

Thanks and best regards,

Marrtai

Thank you so much!  Being able to use the same icon is great.  We will do semester 1 and 2 again with the new icons.

Thanks for the recommendation.  How do I link the soft mozart icons to Little Musician please?  I think that is a great idea that I should have done long time ago!

Regards,

Marrtai

I just finished showing my daughter 3.5 year old daughter with LM semester 1 and 2.  I wonder what I should do next.  Is there going to be semester 3 and 4 coming out soon?  Should I start semester 1 and 2 all over again?  I usually used LM in between little reader and little Chinese so I did not get to play all the extra resources while I was doing that.  I usually play 2 lessons a day and 2-3 times a week.  In addition, she was excited in the beginning and would sing along but after about 60 days into the program she was not as keen as before.  She would not respond or sing along anymore. I am not sure how much she actually got it.  I think the chords that are shown later may be a bit hard for her. 

I am doing soft mozart with her and we had some ups and downs. Recently I seem to be hitting a wall across the board when it comes to early learning. 

Any recommendations? 

Thanks.

Marrtai

Thank you Manda for your suggestion.  Yeah I am leaning towards Shicida too at least to try it out.  I may still try to fit her in part-time Montessori preschool for a few months to a year before kindergarten so that she will be somewhat prepared for full-time kindergarten life.

Does anyone have Tweedle Wink programs?  Is it a program to have?  I am considering getting some DVDs too from that program in Math and the one that teaches different languages, and maybe the 12 DVDs down the road.  One thing I am concerned is the screen time allowed per day.  5-10 minutes per program each time each day... If I have 5-6 programs, she will be watching the screen for an hour or two each day just for the educational ones plus other programs on top when I am doing chores.  That seems a lot to me.

I have some friends who send their kids to kumon class when they are 3 years old for reading and math.  One girl seems to do well and she can read by kindergarten and now she is in French immersion in kindergarten.  Has anyone tried that method too?  It seems they are doing a lot of workbook drills like a book a day.  Any reviews on that method?

There are just so many programs out there and it can be really overwhelming.  I don't want to do too much at a time but since we started late so I want to get her to expose to more while I can. 

She does reading bear and starfall here and there too.  She will look at the icon pictures of reading bear and determine what she wants to see.  That means she want to read something new every time before she is familiar with the old concept!   Starfall is nice too but she seems to like to do the same ones over and over again. 

Thanks again for any suggestions!

Marrtai 

Thank you everyone for your suggestion.  We stopped the programs during X'mas and New Year break since we were so busy doing everything else.  We are trying to slowly working on our routine as before.

The Magic school bus set are awesome!  I just love it.  I will let her watch it while I do other chores.  It's definitely much better than many other programs or TV shows out there.  We had the leap frog series and the baby art / music / poetry series. They are all very good.

I took her to two schools last week. One is Shicida and the other one is a regular preschool.  I like the right brain education idea and she seemed to be ok with it.  The next day we went to a preschool.  It is not Montessori but it is in a good location, the room well lit, teachers are experienced and nice, and she seemed to fit right in with the other kids.  I had been to other preschools including Montessori but we just did not like those or had good feelings about them.  As much as we like this preschool, we probably will be on a waiting list for next year as the existing 3-year-old students will have higher priority getting into the 4-year-old program.  On the other hand, I think the right brain method / Shicida may be better off in the long run in terms of how it trains and connects the right and left brain.

There are a few considerations:-

1. The regular preschool is a fun place for her. She has not been to any daycares before.  She gets to play with other kids.  In terms of learning, I do not expect too much from a regular preschool.  In any event, I can always do after-schooling with LR, Little Chinese and Little Musician, together with Soft Mozart.

2. I also consider the Montessori preschools.  It is more expensive and it is not necessarily easy to find a good fit.

3. When I tell other people that my 3.5 year old daughter is not in school yet, from their reaction I can almost sense that they think this is not a good way to raise kids and that they are about to give us a long lecture on parenting.  Not that I care too much about what the other people think but that does bother me some time. Well, not going to school does not mean not learning.  I like the home schooling approach but that is definitely not the main stream approach here.

3. Shicida or other right brain education method will be good for brain development during this golden learning age.  It seems that she could "learn" more in one hour per week in Shicida than a whole week's time in regular preschool.

4. I wonder how Shicida method is as compared with the Tweedle Wink program.  It is a nice idea to have a teacher and the teacher to student ratio is low (they said as long as there is room available it is possible to be the only student in the classroom so my daughter can get full attention).  It does get expensive over time and I am wondering if it is a good idea to just purchase the 12 Tweedle wink dvdd and the language and math dvd and just do everything in-house. 

Those are just some of my thoughts recently.  Any suggestions / recommendations would be really appreciated.

Thanks and best regards,

Marrtai

Thanks for the suggestion.  It seems that things are getting better in the last few days.  Hope that will continue.

I just wonder for the older children, do they usually repeat the words that are shown on the screen?  Mine does not.  I was hoping she would do that in order to absorb the materials better.

Thanks!

By the way, I have not started any math or EK programs yet. Should I wait?  I look at the sparkabilities DVDs link and it seems interesting.  I am not sure if I should get the whole program or I should skip the first few since she is 3.5 already.  I am ordering magical school bus and I hope she will like it.

Thanks!

I hope I had started the early learning with my daughter when she was younger.  I came across this site when she turned 3 and we got LR, LR Chinese and LM.  Due to my schedule, we can only do 3-4 times a week, and twice a day for the 3 programs back-to-back if we are lucky.  She liked it in the beginning as we did it during our cuddle time in the morning and before bed.  I find it is getting harder and harder for her to sit still, especially with LR Chinese.  I know that I am supposed to stop when she seems not interested.  But if that is the case, I don't know how I can keep the programs going.  I recently started to import different interesting things within LR to keep her interest and she likes it so maybe I will show her different ones between the programs.  In the beginning she would repeat the words when she heard the new ones but now she would not do that but just bounce around the room.  I don't know if she actually absorbs anything or not.

Does anyone start the LR program when the child is a bit older?  Any recommendations? 

Thanks!

Hi,

I was trying to import a few files from the library in the last few days.  I did it before with no problem.  When I tried in the last few days with different files, I could play the words and images but there was no sound.  What should I do?  Please advise.

Also, I have LR and LR Chinese and Little Musician.  From time to time, there is no sound for a particular word or notes for all those 3 programs.  Does it happen from time to time or is there anything I can do to improve that?

Thanks very much in advance.

Aangele,

Thank you for the info.  Your daughter has always been an inspiration since I started to join this forum a few months ago.  My daughter is just over 3 and I speak Cantonese to her at home and I just started LR Mandarin (traditional) about 2 months ago. She prefers speaking in English since everyone else around her does.  I am going to send her to a mixed-age Mandarin class for once a week (play based) with Daddy and hopefully she will be more interested in learning Chinese.  I saw your recommendation for Qiao Hu (Taiwan).  I tried to e-mail them earlier and had no response.  Could you PM me for more information on pricing and how it works?  Since she just started learning Chinese, do you think I should subscribe the 2-3 year-old edition?  Would you recommend me to use wink to learn in addition to LR?

Thanks so much in advance.

Thanks for the great advise.  I just got the LR today. Can't wait to start the program with my little one.

Hello,

Greetings from Canada!  I came across this forum earlier this month and it totally changed my view on early childhood education in just a few weeks' time.  It is amazing to find what the other parents are doing and I find it really inspirational.  My daughter is turning 3 soon and I hope it is not too late to start this now.

I am ready to start but would like some advise on this.  I speak Chinese to her at home and my husband and everyone else speak English to her.  Her Chinese was good in the beginning and now she prefers to use English most of the time. My daughter watched Baby signing time since she was 1 and she really liked it. She also watched Leap frog letter factory and word factory and she knows the sound of the letters for some time already.  I would like to start little English now.  Do you think it is a bit late?  Would she benefit much from it?  It seems most parents here started when the baby is 2 or under.  Should I just use program like the reading bear instead? 

If I understand it correctly, I think I still need to get Little English since I will need the platform to learn how to read other languages.  If I get it, should I get the basic or deluxe at this point?  I am planning to start Little Chinese with her in a month or so after I start the little English program and perhaps some other languages down the road.

Sorry if I repeat some questions that is already posted in other threads.  There is so much to read and at times it is overwhelming.

Thanks and best regards,

Marrtai