we are trying to teach muse (2) three languages
English, Spanish and French
we use the teach your baby french and teach your baby Spanish cds
(very cheap on amazon.com)
they are 30 minutes each and teach colors, numbers up to ten, animals and basic words and phrases 
she loves listening to them and is learning a lot
we also sing to her in french and spanish
and are now making little reader categories in the three languages 
my question is both me and my husbands first language is english
so that is what she hears most of the day
i want her to hear more conversational spanish and french
does anyone know of any good dvds or cds for kids to help teach other languages?
or what other methods are people using to teach?
i would love to have more input for her
thanks
tatianna

“Children learn to smile from their parents.”
- S. Suzuki

Domanmom, first off thanks for the direction to that site, I will definitely check it out.  You raise some good points in your post.  Now, I am not an expert, though I feel simply reading his really short book “Nurtured By Love,” gives a great grounding in Suzuki’s philosophy.  I believe Suzuki would applaud what you have done so far with your son, especially developing in him perfect pitch.  He often mentions that parents can actually teach their children to have poor pitch!  Second, Glenn Doman was an early supporter of Suzuki’s methods, went to Japan numerous times to visit him, and indeed based much of his own techniques on Suzuki’s philosophies.  You can even find videos of Suzuki in America, brought here by Doman to conduct seminars.
To address your concerns about is it more important to get your son established in the reading and music recognition before actually playing an instrument – it might be kind of a non-issue.  True, Suzuki discovered his method through the epiphany that even the youngest, least ‘intelligent’ child is able to acquire language skills (For example, Finnish children have no trouble learning that difficult language, any more than British children can learn their own language), but this only served to encourage him to introduce children to complex concepts at a much younger age than ‘conventional society’ thought possible.  (Reflected in Doman’s work as well.)
Now obviously young kids have physical limitations that might prevent them from starting to play as early as we eager parents would dream, my own daughter is still at least six months from starting the violin.  However, this is no different than a one year old who recognizes words, but is still a few years away from writing essays.  At the same time, Doman says that one reason young children don’t read sooner is because the text in most books is too small, and Suzuki would say the same idea applies to musical instruments.  To that end, Suzuki, and now Suzuki societies, have developed tiny violins and cellos, and have created special seating and pedal accommodations for young piano players.  Sure, your son might not have that octave-and-a-half hand span yet, but he might just be able to tackle variations on “Twinkle Twinkle.”
Finally, the prevailing thought in ‘conventional’ musical pedagogy is to wait until a child is “developmentally ready” to begin playing – seven or eight or later – apparently they have forgotten a fellow named WA Mozart.  Anyway, there is nothing to stop an earlier beginning; indeed, physical dexterity comes the same way as any other skill, through practice.  In “Nurtured by Love” there is a touching story of a physically disabled girl who bravely conquered her affliction through practicing her violin.  
Ultimately, you, as parent and coach, will decide what’s the best track for your child.  As Doman would counsel, you’re the expert on your own child, you will know in your heart the best time to start.  So, at the risk of putting myself on the same plain with these two great teachers, I would say to listen to your heart and honor the greatness you are unleashing in your son.

we bought the cd for $6 on amazon.com
the one we got was call David Nadien Performs Suzuki Violin School vol 1
it has 17 songs and then the piano accompaniment

here is a little bit more about his method
hope this helps 

The central belief of Suzuki, based on his theories of universal language acquisition, is that all people can (and will) learn from their environment. Thus, the essential components of the method spring from the desire to create the "right environment" for learning music (he believed that this positive environment would also help to foster excellent character in every student). These components include:

    * Saturation in the musical community, including attendance at local concerts of classical music, exposure to and friendship with other music students, and listening to music performed by "artists" (professional classical musicians of high caliber) in the home every day (starting before birth if possible).
    * Deliberate avoidance of musical aptitude tests or "auditions" to study music (Suzuki firmly believed that teachers who test for musical aptitude, or teachers who look only for "talented" students, are limiting themselves to people who have already started their music education. Just as every child is expected to learn their native language, Suzuki expected every child to be able to learn to play music well when they were surrounded with a musical environment from infancy..
    * Emphasis on playing from a very young age, sometimes beginning formal instruction between the ages of 3 and 5 years old.   
     *In the beginning, learning music by ear is emphasized over reading musical notation. This follows Suzuki's theory of language acquisition, where a child learns to speak before learning to read. Related to this, memorization of all solo repertoire is expected, even after a student begins to use sheet music as a tool to learn new pieces.
      *Frequent public performance, so that performing is natural and enjoyable.
         
      * Tonalization is a term coined by Suzuki, and is deliberately similar to the word "vocalization" (as it is used by singers when they talk about warming up their voices). Tonalization is defined as the student's ability to produce and recognize a beautiful, ringing tone quality on their instrument. While initially developed for violin education, the tonalization technique has been applied to other instruments such as the piano. Suzuki believed that a student must learn tonalization in order to properly reproduce and perform music

    * Using sound recordings is another technique common to all the musical instruments taught in the Suzuki method. Records, tapes, and CDs are used to help students learn notes, phrasing, dynamics, rhythm, and beautiful tone quality by ear. Suzuki pointed out that great artists (such as Mozart) were surrounded with excellent performances from birth, and that the advent of recording technology made this aspect of their environment possible to achieve for large numbers of "ordinary" people whose parents were not themselves great musicians & music teachers like Mozart's father was.

to the poster who put up the original question i want to talk about the things beyond the crawl track -
as excellent an idea as the crawl track is, it is only the first part of the program. the book takes you from birth to six years old. so even if your baby is too old for the crawl track there is still so much you can do. i started the program with my daughter when she was six months old. now at almost two she has physically reached the level of a three year old -- this is the result of following his recommended programs, walking every day (basically throwing away the stroller as soon as possible  ) especially on different terrain, jumping, and our favorite - brachiating - basically monkey bars - but way before she was even old enough to go to the park we would let her hang from our thumbs - this was around seven months and even then she could hold herself up for ten seconds - now she is past a half a minute - finally beyond all this i would really recommend reading the book because besides the practice of it, the charts there really pull all his programs together and gives you useful benchmarks for charting the total evelopment of your child

i have a 23 month old girl
we are doing the Suzuki method with her
she listens to the violin school one cd everyday
in 6 months we will start proper lessons twice a week
we are really happy with the program
very easy and no pressure
you can learn about it in dr suzuki's book Nurtured by Love

“    I want to make good citizens. If a child hears fine music from the day of his birth and learns to play it himself, he develops sensitivity, discipline and endurance. He gets a beautiful heart.    ”

—Shin'ichi Suzuki

Hello Everyone
This program is a dream come true for me, as I have already spent 100s of hours making learning bit cards, cutting out pictures, researching where Chopin was born, etc etc.  Once I get the hang of using it, I hope I can be a valuable member of this awesome community.

Ciao for now!
TatiAnna

no problem downloading net framework
but and thing to do with little reader is very slow
the web site is the worse
it takes me twice as long to post then on any other site
is the normal?

does anyone know more about Makoto Shichida and what his method is?