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.
My 6 year old did not enjoy Rosetta Stone. The speaking part was too difficult because the accent has to be perfect and she got frustrated. My then 8 year old had no problems. I personally found it confusing but taking it on faith and working through I did learn some vocabulary. We only stopped using it because we have a laptop shortage in this house. We can’t do softmozart and Rosetta at the same time. Rosetta lost the draw. We are time poor. Try it out. If her accent is good she will have no trouble. Little reader French is a great place to begin as a way to get the accent and basics going before tackling Rosetta if she needs more time.
Have you read through the math threads on the forum? There are some really long ones. teach your toddler math is one of them and it covers a lot of ground.
In it we recomended many different things from books ( kitchen table mah, marshmallow math) to games (rightstartca rd games) to entire programs. Singapore and rightstart seemed to be the winners from this age bracket. Those of us that love Saxon don’t usually start it until kids are ready for the 5/4 book. So around grade 3/4 math level for EL kids. You need something to use before then. You could use the early Saxon books if you wanted too but they seem to be a lot of work too me doing things in a lesson kids quite naturally learn through play. Their calender work is Genius though! :yes: Yes there are Plenty of options. :biggrin: try to pick something that is a complete curriculum with manipulatives and work through daily and systematically. Math is more easily learnt with regular practice.
At five years old I am not surprised she isn’t interested in the dots at Shichida. I do believe they do help solidify quantity in older kids but she is unlikely to get subitisation from them. You will need more.
I love Jump Math as it’s a Canadian curriculum. I am using it with my 5 years old. I like the detailed teacher guides. You can download them for free from Jumpmath.org. You can buy Jump Math from Amazon. There are Jump At Home, Jump Math AP1.1, Jump Math AP1.2. If you want to give it a try, please chose the AP1.1 and 1.2. The he Jump at Home for Grade 1 is just the copy of the AP1.1 book.
I also enrolled my son in a soroban abacus course at UCMAS. I am pretty sure they have centers in BC. ^^
I can’t really help you much with second language as we have fallen off the wagon countless time. :ph34r:
Oh I forgot to mention that we have decided to give up on French Immersion. He was accepted into 2 French Immersion schools but my son loves the Catholic school he is attending so much that we decided to keep him where he is the happiest. We never have any problems about him not wanting to go to school. He can’t wait to go and don’t want to come home. lol
Not sure if this is the right decision but I believe my kid learns best when he’s happy.
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.
Yes math is difficult and we need a good math tutor for that. I would like to suggest you if you can follow any online math tutor who will be able to help you all the time so it will be very helpful for you. You can also get advice from tutor and teach accordingly to your child.