Greetings from South Africa

Hello Everybody

I’m very keen to introduce my little 3 month old girl to the wonderful world of reading and maths. My Mom taught me to read when I was young and I would love to give my baby the same opportunity to love learning!

I’ve ordered my Deluxe Little Reader and Little Math from the UK and can’t wait to receive it.

Welcome to the forum!

Welcome to our community! It is so neat that your mom introduced you to early learning. I am so glad that we can have now additional tools to do so, like LR and LM. Being as busy as we are sometime I wonder if I would have had enough opportunities and patience to pursue early learning without tools that make it easier on us parents :slight_smile: Keep us posted on your progress, and don’t hesitate to ask questions from other fellow parents!

Hello Scruff,

I’m South African too, we live in Alberton, pleased to meet you.

I’ve only just started LR and LM too, we’re at lessons #27 today for both and I’ve started translating the LR course into Afrikaans wich I plan on starting to teach my 1 year old in 2 months time. I also plan on teaching Zulu (aiming to start that in about 5 months, so there will be 3 months gap between each of the 3 languages), my maid agreed to help me translate, would you be interested in such translations or will you only be doing the UK English version with your baby.

You’re lucky to start so early, I’ll bet your baby will be reading in no time. In only one month’s time my Afrikaans speaking (not that he speaks much yet) little lad already recognizes over 40 reading words in english and he knows what they are (he will point to pictures or words when you ask him where they are, or point to things in the house/on his body etc, but I only do 1 or 2 words at a time and try and keep it very playful, so he doesn’t feel tested.)

Good luck and enjoy it!

Thanks for the welcome ladies!

@MamaOfWill

I’m just going to start with LR (UK English) and LM for now. Did you buy online or have anything shipped to you?
My husband speaks Afrikaans to our little girl, so hopefully she will be bilingual. He won’t really have time to do LR with her & I don’t want her to learn Afrikaans with an English accent from me :wink: So, I’ll just stick to English for now. Maybe once she is talking, I’ll introduce reading in Afrikaans too.
I am quite keen to try the LR Chinese to teach her Chinese if at all possible, not having any Chinese spoken to her. I’ve researched that it is important to try introduce them to the sounds at a young age. If I do Zulu as well, I think it would be a bit much. I did Zulu until Matric and it is quite an easy language to learn but one needs to practice it.

Looking forward to receiving my shipment :slight_smile: I’ve done some of the trial lessons with her and she watches the Maths and Word and Picture flash well. She gets distracted with the multi-sensory for now but she is still little.

Will look how to personlise etc once I get the software. Do you manage two sessions of each every day?

Hello Skylark
I was searchinig for some “learn to speak Chinese” information and saw that you had researched a bit in 2009. Have you managed to teach your little one Chinese and at what age did you start? Do you know of many others who have no exposure to Chinese who have managed to teach their children anything?
I am really keen for my daughter to learn because there is a lot of business in Africa that will have a need for Chinese speaking people in the future.
I don’t want to overdo it but will try teach her now while she is young because I need to go back to work when she is 8 months old. Hopefully my Mom can continue to teach her when I am back at work on the days that I’m not around.
Thanks!

Hello NadiaD

What languages have you exposed your little ones to?

Hi NadiaD

I just watched your little daughter reading on your blog! What a little star! You must be so proud of her!

I’m looking forward to the day that my little one can read like that but I’ll definitely be patient! I don’t want her to grow up too quickly! Although she surprises me each day with how much she can do already at 3 months old!

Hi Scruff,

I don’t know about other people but for me, once I started doing one session a day for about a week, I felt like I could do more, then after doing 2 sessions per day for a couple of days, I felt like I can work in an extra one, now I’m doing 3 sessions a day (the LR and LM curriculums’ and extra EK things I’ve made myself and downloaded from the LR library) that’s a total of about 15 to 20 minutes a day (spread out in 3 sessions that is) and I still feel like there’s space for more (so I’ll be introducing Afrikaans and Zulu reading later on, I feel we can make time for those, but I’ll maybe only do the reading and no EK sets) And then I’m waiting for Little Music to come out, I don’t know how much time that’s going to take up but after the success I’ve had in just one month of LR, I’ll deffinately be doing LMs!

Go for the Chinese! Just think how cool it would have been if you could read/write Chinese. And I’d say, talk or read or sing to your baby in Afrikaans, even if it’s just a little bit, don’t worry about your accent, any exposure to language is good exposure. My husband is English, when my 1 year old is with him, he calls me Mommy, and says things like “dat one” “dere”, then when he’s with me, “dat one” turns to “daai ene”, “dere” becomes “daar” and he calls me “Mamma.” So even at this young age, he knows the difference, and you’ll probably notice the same with your little one once she’s older. You can even hear the difference when they babble, with his Dad it sounds English, with me Afrikaans and with our maid, he makes babbeling sounds with clicks in them “q”, “c” and “x”.

I didn’t order the software to be posted to me cause I figured it will probably get stolen hahaha, I just downloaded it, it didn’t take too long.