I don’t have a lot of money to spend on the 3 brill kids programs but I want to have a better plan of what to do with my 2 year old. I was thinking of using reading bear, the slide presentations on here, daddude’s slides and flashcards with her for reading. For math I do have the tweedlewink math dvd and I want to get the book marshmallow math but haven’t yet. I feel like I need more for math. I just got magic school bus dvd series and Peter Weatherall dvds and I have the whole Preschool prep series. I don’t feel like I have a good plan on about how long I should spend each day and what sequence I should do things in and if I should add anything into what I have. What free or cheap resources do you use? What does your day look like with EL? I also work with my 4 and 6 year old and have their school schedule and homework and it seems I never get done what I want to in a day.
I don’t have much to spare as well, but preparing home activities takes so much time, that it costs me more. Invest in your children and you’ll receive so much more!
It sounds like you already have a good system in place. Don’t forget Starfall. There are also a lot of great power-point presentations of childandme.com. My kids are doing very well learning Spanish from Salsa as well. There’s the free demo of TimezAttack from BigBrainz that my 5-year-old-son LOVES. www.multiplication.com. HoodaMath, although some of the games are more addicting than educational. Then of course there is the local library- that’s the elephant in the room, we learn so much just by checking out a lot of different books every week and trying to read them all.
I understand trying to do EL on a budget. That’s what I did with my oldest- I made a lot of bit cards with my printer and my laminator, I made homemade books and flashcards, and things like that. It was really time consuming, but I figured if I did it while I only had one kid it would be worth it when I had more kids. Well, I do still use a lot of the materials, but most of them are collecting dust. I have a lot less time now with 4 little ones- I don’t make bread very often anymore, and I use disposable diapers a lot more often. That, and we invested in BrillKids. Granted, this forum is a little biased, but I was a BrillKids member for 3 years before I finally purchased. Why? Because I could see that this is where people were getting the best results. I really haven’t regretted it, these programs are really great.
Here’s something else to think about. BrillKids has an AWESOME affiliate program. A couple of years ago I became an affiliate and put a random link on my blog. This summer I checked it and low and behold I had actually made a little money. So I read the fine print and looked at how it worked. I realized that as an affiliate, I could earn enough money to make the programs pay for themselves, but to do that I would need to make the initial investment so I could rant and rave about how wonderful the program is. (which really is my honest opinion). If you haven’t purchased LR, you have to make a certain level of sales before you can earn a commission, but if you buy LR, you become an automatic level 1 affiliate. That’s pretty sweet. My favorite part of BrillKids program as that people get a 10% off coupon code if they use your link. That makes the sales pitch a lot easier- instead of “please buy through my link so I make a commission”, it’s “you can get 10% off if you use this code”. Not only that, they are more likely to remember you and look up your code if there is something in it for them. I haven’t made enough money as an affiliate to put food on the table by any means, but that was never my goal and I haven’t put that kind of work into it. But I have made almost enough now (since August) to pay for the 3 BK programs, (thank you Christmas sale!) and anything I make after that will pay for other educational supplies. My marketing strategy has been to continue blogging, and open up on facebook about what we are doing. I guess my point in bringing the affiliate program up is that when you want to buy something and money is tight, there are three things you can do. You can either not buy it, buy it and not buy something else, or you can find a may to make more money. The BK affiliate program is just one way to do that, and it helped my husband see the value in making the investment. It’s one of the best investments we have ever made!
Consider how much college textbooks cost. I wish every child could have EL, but the reality is that most children don’t have that opportunity. My husband and I don’t have enough money to make a college savings account for our kids, nor were we every planning on it because we both benefited from having to pay our own way through college with scholarships and work. Well, EL will give our kids an edge and we are hoping that the scholarship opportunities they will have a few years down the road will more than compensate for the money we invest in their education now. I have every reason to believe that this will be the case.
What does my typical EL day look like? Oh boy, it’s chaos right now. I’m going to hunker down and “start school” next Monday and get cracking. There are so many things to learn, and only 24 hours in a day! My husband is a computer geek and really likes a website called Life Hackers. They do things like putting bookcases in the dead space of your walls and things like that to make life more efficient. Well, I’ve been thinking about that and have decided that my education style is an education hacker. I try to find the easiest, most efficient way to learn something and try to go with that, one subject and one day at a time. Wow, just think how much more I could get done if I was actually organized! lol
Good luck!
Oh yes it is often a tradeoff between time and money! :ohmy:
To teach reading cheaply or free won’t be too hard. Using reading bear is a great idea and daddudes words will cover everything. BEFORE those two options I would suggest you spend time playing with starfall.com to learn the basic phonics sounds. Starfall is free and has letter sounds, phonics books and enticing animations to keep kids looking over and over. All three of my kids liked it.
Fr math it looks like what you want is some structure on what to teach. For this with a zero budget I would recommend IXL math. If you look for their grade level lists, starting from preschool and work through teaching your child everything on the list using free resources found at home you will have a very solid math education. An example…one of the options could be learning to recognize numerals 1-5 using a chalkboard this will be free. To teach capacity play with water and measuring cups in the bath, to teach subitizing start with a dice. IXL will guide you in WHAT to teach but not in how to teach it. Most of the early stuff is easy to figure out HOW to teach and if you get stuck you can post a question here. IXL allows a few free questions each day to give you an idea of what each concept is but you really only need the free curriculum list.
Marshmellow math is a great book. It will help you by showing you how to include math in your everyday activities and their ideas are great. It will probably give you the confidence you are looking for. Kitchen table math is also good and perhaps more detailed. I am not sure which one to recommend more. You won’t be dissapointed with Marshmellow math for ideas.
There really is no better option for teaching music than little musician, so if you want your children to learn music I highly recommend you save up for it. It will be adored by all three of your kids and you will learn from it also. Worth every cent!
You have covered science well with your choices of magic school bus and Peter weatherall. To supplement this get some books on the subjects from the library to deepen the knowledge and expand on topics they find interesting. we have had great success linking our magic school bus series to activities around the home like a water wheel ( ferris wheel substitute) and baking bread. We even went visiting bats in a cave!
If you want to follow a scripted curriculum for Maths, then MEP is great - it starts at Reception (K) level so you will need to do some other pre-K work before you start, but they go on through high school and it is absolutely free (well, minus printing costs 
)
I get a lot of ideas and resource links by following a few EL and Montessori blogs and checking out the Montessori Monday linky for new ideas. I also use some of the activities from here: http://lapbooksbycarisa.homestead.com/ForTots.html
Check out charity shops for educational board games/puzzles/books - I have got a lot of stuff really cheap this way.
Sign up to homeschool freebie of the day - and resist the temptation to download everything!
I have worked on letter sounds with her with meet the phonics. I feel like what I am doing with reading is good but math I am more unsure of. If I get one of the brillkids I was thinking of getting the math one since I don’t know how to do that and there is less out there for math. I used to have more starfall for math but it has since expired. I like the idea of doing music but I am not sure. She is already 2 years 3 months and I am not sure if there will be more kids or not so that also plays into it. I don’t really post on my blog anymore. I have facebook but I don’t post that often and I wouldn’t want to seem like a spammer. A lot of my friends don’t even have kids so buying one and then having a advertising link to earn money towards more products won’t work either. I had a swagsbuck link but got 1 referral after a long time. I’m not a very good sales person. lol
I will be doing MEP with my older kids. I got cuisanare rods for my son and need to watch the education unboxed videos but would actually rather have an open and go program to go with that. Right start is expensive and I heard miquon isn’t open and go. I also have a plan for reading for both of them so they aren’t the ones I will be doing brillkids with. What is the brill kids math like? Is it mostly dot math or does it do other stuff too? I don’t want to do the free trial because I always forget to cancel and end up paying when I do a free trial. If I get it I rather just get it.
I am glad to see I am not the only one who has no plan and there just isn’t enough time in the day to do what you want to. Sometimes I think I spend to much time with my kids with learning stuff and sometimes I feel like I don’t spend enough time but I never cover everything I want to. I also wonder the balance of letting them have lots of play and outdoor time too which they do but sometimes I feel like maybe they should have more.
The free trial with Little Math doesn’t require a credit card. Simple equations start with lesson 46, things like 2+9=11. I’m only on lesson 51. While I do think that Little Math is a great program, it’s my least favorite of the three, for what it’s worth. I may change my tune when my 7-month old shows off something she’s learned from it, but I know that Doman’s math program is what has had the least success. Sometimes the results are spectacular, but most often it’s just a nice thing to do. Correct me if I’m wrong! I have enough faith in it that I bought it. I have been doing Miquon math. I did buy the lab book, and it has been very useful, but once you figure out what it’s all about, most of the worksheets are pretty intuitive. I really like it. But it is definetly not a grab it and go kind of thing. I learned quickly that it’s not a cover-to-cover kind of book. Everything is divided into categories, and in the subcategories it’s easy to hard. So it builds up to a very time-consuming writing exercise like counting up to 100, but 5 pages later there is a simple, basic assignment in something like adding 2+3. So I skip around and let my son pick out what page he wants to do. I don’t plan on doing it cover to cover, it’s just a nice supplement to our online stuff. I bought a pdf version, and I regret that. Buy the workbook, it’s so much easier, and there are enough pages to make it worth it. Miquon is pretty simple to use, actually. I’m not a math expert though. I focused mostly on reading and now that I feel like I know how to teach it I’m branching into other subjects.
The free trial with Little Math doesn't require a credit card. Simple equations start with lesson 46, things like 2+9=11. I'm only on lesson 51. While I do think that Little Math is a great program, it's my least favorite of the three, for what it's worth. I may change my tune when my 7-month old shows off something she's learned from it, but I know that Doman's math program is what has had the least success. Sometimes the results are spectacular, but most often it's just a nice thing to do. Correct me if I'm wrong! I have enough faith in it that I bought it.
I do have a tweedlewink math dvd since it was more affordable and that does have dot math and goes into equations. I was just wondering what about the brill kids version makes it a lot better. It is just a fun thing to do. If they get something from it great and if they don’t know biggie. I did just sign up for the associate program. I’m guessing I won’t get any referrals but I figure it was worth a shot. Maybe if I do end up getting just one I will do the music one. I guess I should try the trial since it won’t charge me afterwards if I don’t cancel and maybe I can save up for one of them. Thanks for your responses. They were helpful.
I absolutely recommend you try the trials! I think that will answer your questions. Little math is mostly dot math and I think you are looking for something more. You will not be charged anything and you will know which ones your love.
Have faith in your self early math is easy to teach once you know what to teach. All you need is a curriculum guide and an imagination. There are other posts on this forum about teaching math to toddlers and choosing just one program for math.
I highly recommend Little Musician if you were going to choose one. It is the best music program around. I searched high and low for something that did just what this program does. In fact it is the only 1 of the 3 that I have.
I didn’t purchase LR because of cost and because I was confident enough to be able to teach my son to read. I have taught several tots how to by developing my own programs.
However… I still think about getting LR. From what I understand (and others can support or refute this) LR is set up so that you can use it for many years to come to teach older kids things like countries, foreign phrases, , the periodic table and more. It is very customizable.
For math ideas, check out these previous math threads:
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Math curriculum for toddlers - http://forum.brillkids.com/teaching-your-child-math/math-curriculum-for-toddlers/
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What are you doing with your 2 year olds for math? - http://forum.brillkids.com/teaching-your-child-math/what-are-you-doing-with-your-2-year-olds-for-math/
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Pick just one program to teach toddler math - http://forum.brillkids.com/teaching-your-child-math/pick-just-1-program-to-teach-toddler-math/
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Math supplement for advanced 3 year old (almost 4) - http://forum.brillkids.com/teaching-your-child-math/math-supplement-for-advanced-3-year-old-(almost-4)/
I second the Little Musician recommendation :laugh: Of the three it probably has the best age-range (I’m learning a lot from it!) and I can imagine the whole family would enjoy it. The new LR is amazing, but if you already have reading plans in place then Little Musician would be my choice.
We got a cheap used copy of Saxon K for maths - the lessons are entirely scripted and start with super-simple patterns and one-to-one counting and build up really slowly. We started just after my son turned 3 and he had no trouble with the lessons. I think you could easily use it as a foundation for maths, or just something to build activities on. The manipulatives are simple - counters and linking blocks - so you probably already have bits you can use for that.
Another great option is simply getting a load of maths-themed books from the library (or buying them, but that would be expensive).
I found this site, but haven’t had a chance to look around yet - it is a free curriculum for preschool onwards: http://www.freeworldu.org/static/index.aspx