If you already have maps on the wall, what if you just get/make little tabs/pins/stickers with the name of the myth she's currently interested in, and she can put them in the correct place for that culture after reading?

Something I think is kind of funny about how we're all sort of trained to brag/"brag" about our kids, in our culture, is that we often talk about how early and how quickly/easily a kid hit a benchmark, which I think is often handled as a proxy for smartness. But emerging evidence seems to show that intelligence is actually much less critical for life outcomes than we think it is (so long as you're above a certain level), whereas grit and effort are very, very important. So it's interesting to me that people don't talk/"brag" more about things like "My daughter has taken two years to learn to read fluently, and she stuck it out, reading to me every night, even when she didn't feel like it." I guess that strikes me as much more "brag-worthy" in that that is a really valuable life skill, and a really valuable thing to know intimately about yourself, that you have the ability to keep going when the going is tough. But especally in American culture, I definitely see a thing where we all agree that it's more impressive if your kid hits a benchmark very early in the range, even if it came extremely easily to the child - in fact, especially if it came very easily! (No judgment: I have this demon whispering away in my head, myself.) My particular child has some mild asynchronous development happening, which is excellently humbling, and really good at making a person understand that she has much, much less control than she would like to believe! Insofar as I have any control at all, for the above-mentioned reasons of grit and persistence, I try not to ever say things in his hearing that basically come down to "he's so smart". I mean, first of all, he's four. What do I know about who he will ultimately be? And second, I don't care that much if he's smart. But I care a lot that he learns that true mastery comes with effort, not from innate talent. So if I praise him within his hearing, I try to only ever say things about how he tried and tried again until he got something the way he wanted. When I first came to this board, I felt a lot of low-grade anxiety about how I needed to provide a certain kind of academic backdrop for my kid or unspecified horribles might happen. Now, I am finding myself turning more and more into a "better late than early" person, somewhat to my surprise, but I have zero opinion about other people doing academic work with their young children. (Unless they insist that whatever is working for them is objectively best for all children, everywhere, of course.)

I don't know what your family's general philosophical style is, but I got a lot out of How to Talk So Kids Will Listen... http://www.amazon.com/How-Talk-Kids-Will-Listen-ebook/dp/B005GG0MXI/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1388019234&sr=8-1&keywords=how+to+talk+so+kids+will+listen+%26+listen+so+kids+will+talk This general style of communication has also (I am a fellow conflict-avoider!) helped me feel much more comfortable with conflict. My kid is also 4, and I have to be honest, you are not going to get all the results the book talks about with a kid this young. You just aren't, at least not all the time. But I think it's so valuable both for the kid and for preserving maternal sanity that it is worth continuing even when the results are patchy at first. The only caveat is that the book presents a family worldview that is relatively egalitarian. Of course the parents have the ultimate say-so, but this isn't a style of communication that would, I am guessing, work very well for folks who are more top-down/authoritarian disciplinarians. But it does work well if you have a kid who is pretty verbal and able to cooperate in collective problem-solving.

Great stuff, everyone! Thanks so much.

What are your favorite (or least favorite, for that matter) books from the Let's Read and Find Out series? I've found the individual titles to be kind of inconsistent. Any you particularly recommend, or recommend avoiding? Here are the lists of titles: Stage 1: http://www.harpercollinschildrens.com/Kids/SeriesDetail.aspx?PSId=223 Stage 2: http://www.harpercollinschildrens.com/Kids/SeriesDetail.aspx?PSId=224 (My apologies if this is a repeat question! I couldn't find anything similar by searching, but...)

We watched the mitosis video, and yesterday my kid kept singing "prophase, prometaphase...":

Great suggestions! I love this board. Thanks, all.

Our 3.10 year old is very interested in body systems right now, particularly in the immune system. I'm running into problems finding the right books for him on this topic, and hoping the WTM will have some ideas. I'm noticing that books geared toward kids his age frequently lack the deeper information he really wants (ie the book will explain that viruses trick cells into making more copies of the virus, but gloss over the how), but books for slightly older kids, while they do have more information, often take the approach of turning the information into an exciting adventure story (Magic Schoolbus, Human Body Detectives), which, to his literal little brain, seems (I think) kind of confusing. Any ideas? I've just ordered a Bill Nye book and a Read and Find Out book on this topic, but I'm looking for more. Thank you!

I have a little bit of a book problem, but I try hard to keep it under control, mostly for space reasons (tiny urban living space), but also for cost reasons. I try to get most of our books from the library, but I also buy a reasonable number of kid books, generally books I consider to be high-quality, especially charming, or something I know or suspect will be referred to many times. I do try to buy intentionally, unless I'm just browsing at a book sale or something like that, so I have a huge Amazon wish list of books I'm on the lookout for. To keep costs down, I check paperbackswap.com and Amazon used books first when there's something specific I want for the kid, and only if I can't find it through those channels do I buy it new. Clearly I have spent way too much time coming up with my internal decision tree for book purchasing. :huh:

This thread is so illuminating, thanks! Randomly, does anyone know of a list (perhaps on Amazon?) that breaks down the different products you need to buy to do Singapore for different ages/abilities?

We have not yet talked about slavery, but we've talked quite a bit about what happened to Native Americans when Europeans arrived. My child is young, so the way we talk about it is not terribly sophisticated, but we do talk about it somewhat regularly. It's important to me that he have a better understanding of early US history than I did! It is particularly important to us that his sense of the agency of the peoples involved is accurate. I think the racism in a lot of texts about Westward expansion and slavery is not of the obvious type, but of the more pernicious type that casts Indians and Black folks as passive recipients of the hostile or helpful actions of white people. So I guess my approach, such as it is, is to do things like attempt to select picture books that show people of color who have agency in their own lives, are the star of the book, etc. More so than "Now let's read this book about civil rights". Sometimes this is pretty easy (there are lots of excellent, entertaining picture books that feature a Black protagonist.) And sometimes it feels impossible, like when I wanted to find some books that explained Thanksgiving, and everything I looked at that was appropriate for a little kid featured the same old set of canards about how the Indians were so nice and shared with the Pilgrims and everyone was the best of friends.

Is your kid possibly very talented? A lot of talented kids (and adults, for that matter) are very self-critical about their creative work and don't really trust the value of explicit praise. Have you tried the thing where instead of directly complimenting her work, you just describe what you notice, and then let her compliment herself? "I see that you used yellow and green over here to give the tree's shade color. That's interesting. What made you decide to paint it that way?" etc. Also, the "trick" where you praise effort instead of result is sometimes helpful. "You worked so hard on learning that piece. You practiced every day for almost an hour! You must feel really good about all the effort you put into this recital."

The California Science Center is free (for the main exhibits - there's a charge to see the Shuttle or the rotating IMAX films), and pretty fun. We really like the habitats exhibit, especially the ocean area. The Natural History Museum (next door to the Science Center, both are on the excellent new Expo light rail line) is not free, but is really, really good. The butterfly pavilion may be open for your visit! For large groups, I love to get dim sum (Chinatown for easy-to-get-to, San Gabriel Valley for more authentic). It's fast, nobody bats an eye if you show up with 12+ people, and it's really affordable.

Thanks so much - these are all great ideas. I've ordered MATH POWER and taken a look at AOPS. I am embarrassed to say that I think I need to do some fundamental work BEFORE I can tackle that! I took a look at some Alcumus practice problems and experienced intense math fail. Well, something to work toward! Letsplaymath, your blog is amazing! Thanks so much for the link. I'm going to obsess over your posts now. :)

Oh, this kind of worry is so unpleasant! For myself, I think part of that anxiety comes from the speed and intensity of modern American life, which often feels kind of winner-take-all. So if your kid isn't doing Korean and pre-algebra by 7, they might never get a job! (Says your panicked first-time-mama brain.) I've also observed that ladies tend to really take the performance of their children personally in a way that a lot of dads do not - I notice that my husband and his dad friends tell funny stories about their kids, whereas the moms have a lot of conversations with each other about how great their kids are and how they're in the advanced tumbling class or are "very advanced in art" or what have you. And I think this is compounded on the internet, where everyone is showing you a carefully-curated version of themselves. I have found a couple of things helpful in backing off my own perfectionist tendencies: *Ruth Beechick's book The Three R's. (She is very religiously-oriented, but that part is easy to skim if you want. And she has a lot of really helpful things to say about early childhood education. After reading this little book I totally quit any notions I had of formal reading instruction at this stage. I found especially useful her notion that you can either take up the young child's learning energy with learning to read, or with learning about science or the natural world or God or whatever you think is important.) *Reading about Finland's education system. It really pushes me toward the better-late-than-early camp (to a degree). I am not exactly unschooly, but I think that for a lot of kids, you just don't need to worry about formal academics until six or seven. (I get the impression that this used to be the norm in the US, but that cultural changes have pushed the start date of formal school back more and more, so now we think it's ordinary for five-year-olds to be learning to read, and if yours isn't, he's behind.) *Reading about Charlotte Mason, Waldorf, and various types of unschooling. None of these are necessarily my bag, but I find it helpful to read about worldviews that discourage very early academics and why. *Reading books like Nurtureshock and The Good School, which have convinced me pretty soundly that the big jump is between a child raised in a low-stimulus environment and a child raised in a medium-stimulus environment. My good-enough efforts are probably, well, good enough!