What I do from time to time is go to the app store and search a category eg education and look through the different apps.

A useful app to get is kindle, with that you can buy ebooks from amazon for your 18year old, even for the younger ones. I believe there're free ebooks as well.

Also if you search past forums here, you'll find threads with useful iPad/iPhone apps people use for their kids.

Thanks all for the contributions. She seems to be able to tolerate things a bit better - still hates the vacuum cleaner though! I considered taking her to the doctors but I'm not sure anything will be done. It's not severe and it really doesn't affect her or our every day life. I'll see how it goes.

I bought the iwrite app yesterday morning after reading this post and I can't sing it's praises enough!! My daughter's coordination has improved so much in 2 days. When she 1st started, she couldn't really make a straight line - but in two days, she has mastered it and she draws her lines and curves really quickly.

Also for the 1st time today she could use the touch thing (sorry not sure what it's called) on the laptop to navigate the arrow to play a game. It seemed to have really improved her hand to eye coordination.

Thanks a lot ShenLi. Karma to you!

Thanks a lot.

Teachingmytoddlers, I'll be in Fremont most of the time but will be visiting Fresno as well.

Thanks.

Hi everyone, I live in the UK and would be visiting California for 2 weeks and I'm just wondering what shops I could find good educational materials for my 2 and nearly 8 year old kids.

Any suggestions please.

Thanks.

Thanks for sharing. Been looking for resources to teach my kids about the bible. This is perfect.

Ps, I'm visiting the US next week and I'm wondering where or how I can get the monkisee DVDs.

Well done! That's so lovely! She's so confident with her reading!

Thanks everyone for your replies. I'll wait and see if it's just a phase. Hopefully it is. If it gets any worse, I'll probably get her checked. It's not worrying at the moment, I'm just wondering why she does that. I'll wait and see.

The irony of it is that she's quite noisy herself!!!

Really great ideas. Thanks a lot. And great site shaman. She's really enjoying learning phonics and is getting the hang of it. We got lots of story books that have cvc words with a lot of the sight words she knows already knows so she's having lots of fun at the moment!

Thanks for sharing. That was really sweet. I've also been at different time, a mother at the swing!

My 31 month old daughter hates loud noise (except when she's making it!

She would cover her ears and RUN if I put on the vacuum cleaner or blender or if the tv comes on loud suddenly, dryers and anything like that, she can't stand.

I need to warn her before putting on the blender or vacuum cleaner. We went to a service station yesterday, she had said she needed to do a wee but she refused to go in because the dryers were on!

I'm not sure why this is. Her hearing is perfectly normal. Anyone has any idea why this could be? Hopefully she'll soon get over it.

Thanks.

She read her 1st book independently today!!!

I got her a set of story books today. I was getting her into bed and picked up one of the books. I read some of it to her while she was doing something else and then asked her if she wanted to read to her teddy. To my amazement, she read it from start to finish. It had sentences like 'I am top cat' 'I can go pop' ,...we've been doing sight words only and I just posted a question about teaching phonics as i had noclue how or when to start teaching blending and all, but obviously she figured it out herself! I screamed for my husband and older son to listen to her read.

Once again she has proven to me that even when it seems I'm wasting my time 'teaching'her stuff and she seems uninterested, she really is learning! She just shows what she can do whenever ready.

I hope this will encourage everyone who wonders if early education is worth it... It really is! I think the stimulation alone helps. My daughter never really took to LR and she doesn't read sight words half as well as other kids I see here and to be honest I get a bit discouraged sometimes. But tonight proved to me that it's not just a matter of knowing the words, it's the stimulation that matters. I'm amazed that she read a book that she had never seen before and was able to decode the words on her own.

I'm forever grateful I came across brillkids!!!

I used hooked on phonics for my kids and it was great.

My son learnt to read at age 4 before that we hadn't done any other form of teaching.I didn't know anything about early education then.  He knew his Alphabets but that was all. In a month, he was reading.

I started my daughter on pre K, and she learnt all her alphabets and most of her letter sounds in about 2 weeks,(at 24months)  Theyre mainly songs teaching the letters and sounds. So it was a lot of fun for her watching and singing along.

I think it's a great resource. I've ordered the new ones now that present the lessons in songs and stuff. There're clips on YouTube for you to see and you could check their website. Www.hop.com. You could download the alphabet sounds from iTunes free. That was what we used with my daughter.

Someone recommended starfall.com Its great too.

Thanks everyone for your replies.

I made flashcard- type words for her with words ending with 'at'. I made the 'at' in black, then the 1st letters in red i.e. Cat, Fat,mat etc. Hopefully she'll eventually see the relationship, and figure out that the letters in black sound the same and changing the letters in red alters the word.

Ive also be trying the c....a....t method.

Thanks for all your help.

does anyone teach their little ones using phonics yet?

I'm wondering when to start teaching my 31month old blending. She now knows alot of her letter sounds from watching hooked on phonics. I noticed she makes attempts at sounding out words. Also when I give her random words she's never seen and pronounce one of the words with emphasis on the 1st letter, she would pick the right word.

She learnt her sight words with pre-school prep and we've just gone back to ybcr, which by the way she seems to enjoy and learn much more than when we used it 18months ago.

Does anyone have experience with phonics for kids that age?

Thanks for reading.