Thanks a lot for the great article and the further comments. I have a child who’s 5, he knows 3 languages fluent, greek, armenian, english. I’m trying to teach him russian now, he knows some things, sentences and names for things/animals. I too made a plan a few months ago teaching him one language once a week, but i find it quite challenging now. I started my 2nd university recently, bch’s psychology and i’m also learning turkish. He speaks greek to his dad and armenian with me. Also goes to english classes twice a week. Do you think it would be a good idea to start teaching him turkish once i’m learning it myslef, or shall i first learn it well and then pass it to him and instead concentrate on russian. Thanks a lot. Keep up the good work. I really admire the parents that teach their children foreign languages at a small age.

I wrote such a long answer to all your questions that I separated it into an article. See it on the site!
A.

No testing – this is a peculiar topic. Doman has entire chapters in his books dedicated to No Testing rule. Yet, all the parents want is testing – some kind of proof that all of their efforts are not in vain. I am no exception to that rule. So, I really liked the suggestions in the book: I did not explicitly point and ask “What is it?”. I didn’t let grandmothers terrorize the kids with the usual well-meaning questions: “Who is this? What is this? How does it do?” I am doing my best to stay away from these questions myself. Yet, there are ways how you should know and it is far easier, then 6th sense: if your kid is watching, paying attention, that’s all that matters. She is learning. Something. Not necessarily what you want, but it is definitely productive, so keep doing what you are doing! If your doughter is losing interest, time to start “jumping through the hula hoops”: is the font too small? Is it the card? Are you showing cards too slowly (often the culprit, since there is no real “too fast” – the faster, the better)? Is there something distracting around her? There are loads of questions and ways to solve it… The most important rule – don’t bore your child (by showing it too slowly, too often, for too long…)

Yet occasionally I like to offer them the opportunity to show what they know: I hold two cards and say: “Hm, where is banana?” Always offering choices somehow takes the edge off pressure. Sometimes I hang cards on the fridge and say: “Can you bring me the word apple? Oh, thank you for bringing me the word pear! I am glad you found it! Can I have the world apple now?” Success with every try – seems to be imperative.

So, just watch your daughter’s reaction and you’ll be able to find out if cards, computers, dry erase boards, doodles, easels, work better for you.

Same goes for images: by no means I am advocating images. Neither I am advocating computers at the early age. It was sort of desperate measures. It looks like neither of my kids are visual learners, and words by itself were not stimulating enough: both of my boys are too energetic to stay still even for 5 seconds. My second one, smiles, was a little better at that, even now he occasionally enjoys flipping through the cards without ever looking at any pictures… yet for consistent program I needed something else. After a myriad of things that we did (watching it in the car, vacuum cleaning it, jumping over it, hanging it all over the place), the computer just turned out the easiest: they both love it. Preparing materials, fitting it into our schedule also somehow became easier, so images, sounds, special effects became part of our learning to read process. It is a lot harder to update

My older one still loves to flip through simple small cards by A.P.P., that are arranged phonetically. Despite all the challenges, he was surprising me how well he was reading the familiar words, how he figured out lots of sounds… so it is working.

Have fun!