Hello,

We're in South Oxfordshire - I'm British, but bilingual French/English and trying (sometimes failing) to bring my girls (2 and 4) up the same. It's lovely to hear from members in the UK - are there really so few??? And it seems like there are almost none of us who were educated in Britain - can anyone think of a reason?

Vick xx

aust..footpath  US..sidewalk

UK .. pavement. A footpath here is a little track only accessible on foot, usually not surfaced with tarmac, and often with weeds growing along the edges. They are used by ramblers and so forth who are walking for pleasure, or by pedestrians who are using the footpath as a shortcut. The tarmac or stone area for pedestrians at the side of a road used by cars is definitely a pavement.

I wouldn't worry about accent - if you live and continue to live in the US, your son and subsequent children will be surrounded by "correct" American accents - in shops, at activities and on the telly. It's pretty unlikely that they'd end up with anything but a perfect American accent.

But I might be tempted to stick to Polish only for as long as your son will put up with it. Remember a lot of education is about concepts, so once you understand something, all you have to do is learn a bit of vocab to talk about it in another language. So essentially, especially when little, I don't think it matters which language you learn about something in. I agree that as they get older, children are more likely to want to speak the language of the country they are in - but for me that makes it more important to get as much of the "foreign" language in before that time as possible. We live in the UK, and already my four-year-old tells me to "stop saying those silly French words, Mummy".

Also remember there will be "language creep" - you plan to stick to Polish except in school hours, but consider what will happen when you're talking about something you did that day - especially if your husband speaks English too. Dinner times when you're telling Daddy about what you did today might become English time too. And more.

Necessity seems to me to be the major part of learning a language. If children have a reason to learn - like next door's kids only speak English - they learn. Or all the teachers at pre-school only speak Spanish - they learn Spanish. But if you remove their reason to learn to speak Polish - ie Mummy speaks English with them at least 30-odd hours a week - you might find they don't learn Polish.

I wish you all the best with everything and I hope it works out really well for you. I have no doubt that you *could* home-school in English - there are plenty of excellent resources to support you out there (you might find your knowledge of English grammar is better than most native speaker by the way). For me, the question is more whether you *should* - at least to start with.

We still use real flashcards for the jumping game (who can jump on the word "pig" first, etc). I scatter the cards over the floor and the girls jump on them and pick them up. It's great for those days when they don't want to sit still, but you'd still like to get a little bit of reading in! It breaks things up a bit, and it's also great practice for reading words in any orientation. It amuses them, anyway, and it reminds me of when my dad used to play the same game with me.

all my life I "saw" the grammar words in a different colour,

  Can you explain this to me.  I am having trouble understanding what you mean.

Hello kmum!

It's kind of hard to explain, but I sort of imagine the words that have a grammatical function, but don't actually signify a thing, action or description, in a different colour in the text. Things like what, when, how etc and to, from, into etc. They sort of separate themselves from the rest of the text, and I skip over them faster. I think it might be because when those words are first introduced in the Doman method, he has them in a different colour.

I don't know if that makes it any clearer. It must be very hard to imagine if you don't do it. And it's hard for me to imagine not doing it! I didn't really realise until my parents lent me Doman's book and kit and I started browsing through. Suddenly I read the section about introducing the who, what, etc words and things fell into place!

Do ask again if I need to have another try at explaining! 

Vicks

I lost loads and loads after each baby - to the point where my husband jokes that we can't have another because he can't stand all the hair all over the place! It took ages to lose it all, too - maybe 3-6 months? I don't really remember.

It does grow back though - don't worry. I got one lot of regrowth about 6-9 months after the last baby, and now that she is nearly 2 I seem to be getting another lot (which is nice, because I was worried that my hair was going to be permanently thinner - there's only 2 years between my two, so at this point last time, I was about to have another!).

Hope all goes well!

Vicks

Yes - it definitely works! And I think it brings extra benefits on top of "just" learning to read. It's hard to say, because I've never (knowingly) met anyone else (apart from my sisters) who learned to read this way, so it might just be to do with the way we think, but I think it also instils a rudimentary understanding of grammar: all my life I "saw" the grammar words in a different colour, and I thought it was just the way my brain compartmentalised words - it wasn't til I read the book that I realised! Plus I read just as easily and almost as fluently upside-down (very handy!!), so I'll definitely be printing some cards out as we progress to chuck on the floor for jumping on (like my parents did!). Last but not least, it's also very good for spelling (I think) - because I see each word as a shape, all I have to do is find the letters that fit in the shape, rather than remember each one. I only ever really confuse e and a!!

Thanks for all your replies and welcomes - I'm looking forward to joining in!

Vicks

Hello everyone,

I'm really excited to have found LR - I've just downloaded LR lite. My eldest is 3-and-a-half and I've been slacking a bit - my parents taught me to read using Glen Doman's book and kit when I was not-quite-3. They even gave me the kit, but I haven't started with it yet. LR will hopefully help me to get moving - especially as dd1 is about to be subjected to the full gamut of phonics at playschool!

Really looking forward to "meeting" some new friends here too - I'd love to hear from you all!

See you soon,

Vicks