Just a heads up - some of you might have experienced our Forum or website being slow, or completely down, over the past few days.

Well, we're in the process of migrating our server to a much faster one, and this will be done in steps over the next few days in next week.

During this time, you may continue to occasionally experience the Forum not loading or responding slowly.

SO SORRY ABOUT THIS!

But hopefully after we get this done, you'll find our website and Forum to be much zippier!

Thanks for your attention.

KL

Hi all,

Here's something which I've been wanting to share with you all for some time.  Those of you who are familiar with alternative health remedies might have already come across it in relation to curing a whole range of illnesses, including cancer and AIDS.  Others who rely on mainstream media for your news will almost certainly not have heard of it. (Not going to get into why that's so! )

It's a substance called MMS, which stands for Master Mineral Solution.  It's essentially a chlorine dioxide (NOT chlorine!) solution that seems highly effective in killing all sorts of pathogens, including cancerous cells.

I too have used it before to quickly get rid of colds (thankfully I've not had anything more serious to get rid of).

More recently, I was referred by the founder Jim Humble to the works being done by Kerri Riviera using MMS (and other substances) to, apparently, cure autism!  I was intrigued and wrote to Kerri. She was busy writing a book about it so I figured I would wait till she was ready to go public with it before telling you all. Here's the email she wrote to me:

===
My book is my protocol that I used to recover 21 children in 16 months. This piece is very important. MMS is very good at healing autism because autism is
Virus
Bacteria
Candida
Parasites
Heavy metals
Inflammation
Food allergies
MMS kills
Virus
Bacteria
Candida
Parasites
MMS neutralizes heavy metals
MMS reduces inflammation by neutralizing the pH
MMS helps with allergies by boosting the immune system and killing pathogens in the gut that cause the dysbiosis there and 60 to 70% of the immune system is there.
MMS is a low potency oxidizer. It is incapable of damaging healthy cells. It is similar to oxygen and ozone, they are all 3 oxidizers. But MMS is the least powerful yet it is able to go deeper into the tissue which is important to us in autism.
Yes, you can send me people. And I can answer questions. I just can't write a book and do the stats to convince people to try to cure their kids with mms. Plus, my protocol is MMS with other things like diet, magnetic clay, gaba, theralac, L-carnitine, omega 3 6 9 vegan, diatomaceous earth, digestive enzymes, hyperbarics...things like that. MMS alone doesn't cure autism. We need to do a few other steps. Autism is complicated yet we do understand what it is that we need to do. Smaller children recover quicker than older children.
Best wishes,
Kerri
======

By now, around 40 kids have apparently recovered from or made huge improvements with autism.  She started to come out with the info and as expected, there was immediate controversy.

If you're interested in this area, please read up about it. Here are some links to get you started.

MMS and AUTISM:
http://www.mmsautism.com/
Recent controversy:
http://genesis2forum.org/index.php?option=com_kunena&func=view&catid=31&id=18957&Itemid=66

About MMS in general:
http://jimhumble.biz/
http://mmsnews.org/
http://genesis2church.org/
(btw, Jim Humble's "church" is a non-religious church. I believe he had to set it up as a way to avoid legal liability.)

And lastly, a personal request from me.  MMS has also recently been under attack by the FDA, pursuing a MMS maker and seller, Daniel Smith.
Thankfully, due to the support of the MMS community, it caught the attention of the US Observer who responded:
http://www.usobserver.com/archive/june-12/daniel-worldwide-call.htm
http://usobserver.com/archive/june-12/fda-targets-family-man.htm

Here's their take on MMS:
http://usobserver.com/archive/june-12/mms-myth-or-miracle.htm

However, they are still under attack and require funds to defend.  If you feel so inclined, please help the cause and make a donation.

Thanks!

KL

Having read up extensively the background behind the possible connection between MMR and autism, I was shocked to discover some details about the orignator of the link (Dr Andrew Wakefield, a UK paediatrician).

Yes, that IS interesting, isn't it? Certainly thickens the plot...

Thing is, though, there apparently have been numerous other studies that support the Wakefield findings. This was mentioned in the article I linked to, and detailed here:
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/04/10/wakefield-interview.aspx


My advice is not to jump to conclusions either way from just having heard one side of the story, but make sure you do your own research, on BOTH sides!  Cos there are consequences either way you choose!

For me personally, fortunately or unfortunately, it was never a consideration not to get Felicity vaccinated, because we didn't really have a choice, since the school admission required them. Mind you, I didn't quite realize the extent of the controversy then though...
 

[The Cultural Shift in Baby/Toddler Reading]

Great piece on baby/toddler reading by our new blog contributor - Dr. Richard Gentry!


====================
The Cultural Shift in Baby/Toddler Reading
Technology is changing how we teach babies and toddlers to read.

Cultural shifts in society usually happen over decades. Then along comes new technology and everything changes overnight. That’s exactly what seems to be happening in the world of baby/toddler reading. Lap reading alone is “out,” and software-driven reading lessons are “in.”

Good parenting skills include instilling babies and toddlers with a life-long sense of curiosity and exploration. What about a life-long sense of curiosity and exploration of words and reading? Wouldn’t it be nice if more kids loved reading from the beginning? Many new parents who are pressed for time and who embrace technology themselves are welcoming babies and toddlers into a new world for experiencing words and language in addition to the tried and true comfortable world of lap reading.

I bumped head-on into the world of baby/toddler reading technology myself mostly after the publication of my book for parents and caregivers, Raising Confident Readers: How to Teach Your Child to Read and Write—From Baby to Age 7 . (The book made me a “go to” person for baby/toddler reading products such as Your Baby Can Read, Little Reader, WatchKnow and others.) Now, only two years after the book’s publication, I get tons of questions from parents and caregivers about baby/toddler readers and new technology. Here are five most frequently asked questions with answers.

1) Can babies really read and is it natural?

Most parents and even some educators don’t understand that the young child’s brain is hard-wired for early reading, but advances in brain imaging are changing that misconception. Scientist Patricia Kuhl, co-director of the University of Washington Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences, and her colleagues have shown images of white matter in the 9-month-old brain connecting areas used for talking, grammar, reading, and social interaction with areas for listening and understanding. Dr. Kuhl reports that the track that connects areas of the brain used for reading is present in infants before 12 months of age.1 The first stage in baby/toddler reading is learning to read words without knowledge of letters and sounds. Many toddlers can read by decoding new words by 2 or 3 years of age. Four-year olds can read chapter books. A change in the culture in schools is already needed to accommodate early readers.

Baby/toddler reading is as natural as language learning. These early readers aren’t just geniuses with special capacities; every child’s brain appears to be wired for early reading, just as it’s wired for learning language. The window of opportunity for acquiring languages is understood to be between 0 and 7, when virtually any language you put in front of a child can be acquired with great skill. In fact, babies and toddlers can learn languages better and more easily than adults. Beyond age 7, the language-learning skill diminishes. While a new language can be learned after age 7—just as one can learn to read later in life—it’s learned differently and not automatically or with the same ease of production. When a parent or caregiver stimulates the reading brain through social interaction, babies and toddlers who crack the reading code likely use special brain-based computational skills similar to the way they crack the speech code and build concepts and vocabulary.2

2) What’s wrong with learning to read in school?

Waiting until age 6 to learn to read presents problems, especially in America where 88% of poor readers in first grade will be poor readers in fourth grade.3 The root of the problem is that one third of the kids entering kindergarten aren’t ready for success with reading. They haven’t reached a pivotal benchmark for beginning reading: They can’t write their names, clap out syllables, name some letters, recognize even a few words in print, or tell about a favorite book that has been read to them over and over.4 This year in America, 33% or about 1.5 million children entered kindergarten without these preschool skills. Why? Because nobody taught them. Sadly, many kindergarten and first grade teachers are not well prepared to teach beginning reading and in poor communities they often have too many students who come to them underprepared.

3) Why not just lap read?

Reading aloud and talking to preschoolers is fundamental, but lap reading or bedtime stories may not be sufficient to enable young children to pick up reading. Longitudinal results from a recent study show that drawing attention to print in explicit ways during book reading to preschoolers enhanced the child’s reading, comprehension, and spelling scores two years later.5 The point of the study was that during lap reading, the child’s attention had to be drawn to how words work.

So the lap reading question becomes “Where are your baby’s eyes looking?” It’s well established that children don’t learn to read by looking at the pictures or at Mommy’s or Daddy’s face during lap reading.6 Some of the new soft-ware driven reading tools use overt means to evoke the child’s visual and verbal attention to the printed word, making this important quality of first good teaching easy for parents because attention to word properties is built directly into word games. For example, the programs use subtle and informal introduction of letter-sound correspondence and left-to-right directionality of spelling. Parents make sure the child’s eyes are in the right spot for reading simply by pointing to a curser that tracks a word’s spelling from left to right on the computer screen in concert with vocal presentation of the word.

4) What about phonics?

Some software driven programs order word presentation and sequence easy-books so that the reader can “pick up” knowledge of phonics patterns. How toddlers do this is not well understood, but it likely involves capacities for pattern recognition and inductive learning. It does not involve the deductive memorization of phonics rules and applications associated with formal instruction. That’s much too hard for toddlers.

This ordered presentation helps kids learn chunks of letter-sound correspondence just as they inductively learn the rules of grammar when learning to speak in phrases and sentences. That is to say, they learn to apply phonics rules by experiencing printed language in use, rather than by having the rules explained or by consciously deducing the rules. Along with the word games, engaging illustrated little stories contrasting words and patterns such as pink pig, pig wig, two pigs, and two wigs enable kids to intuit letter-sound correspondences for letters such a p, w, the ending s sound, and the –ig and –ink chunk. By 2 or 3 years of age, many early readers astonish their parents as they begin to use pattern phonics to unlock words they have never seen.

5) Is it safe?

Teaching early reading requires intimate physical contact, such as snuggling with a book or cuddling with the baby or toddler at the computer. Perhaps the best thing about either lap reading or cuddling at the computer with word games is that the activities build positive parent-child social interactions and expand opportunity for the parent and the child to talk and have fun with books, concepts, and words. The big question is how is the baby/toddler responding? Is the child having fun while learning? If the technology makes it easy for parents to customize reading “lessons” and present them in a brief game-type format that a child enjoys, it’s safe. If your 2-year old can read the word grandpa on a cell phone ap along with a pic of grandpa waving, you have found your mojo as a reading teacher. If you are using the DVD as a baby sitter, it’s harmful. Babies don’t learn language or reading by watching TV alone, they are people persons.

Full blog post:
http://blog.brillkids.com/?p=230

Hi all,

Just read this which I"m sure many of you will find interesting, if not controversial. This is just FYI - just add it to your data bank and make up your own mind:

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/06/25/mmr-vaccine-caused-autism.aspx?e_cid=20120625_DNL_artNew_1

A short excerpt of the case:

Valentino Bocca was given an MMR shot in 2004, at the age of 15 months. According to his parents, the change in his behavior was immediate. That same night he refused to eat, and he developed diarrhea during the night. It quickly went downhill from there. Within days he was no longer able to put a spoon to his mouth, and he spent nights crying in pain. His parents immediately suspected the vaccination, but were told this was "impossible." Valentino progressively regressed, and received the diagnosis of autism a year later.

In the final analysis, the Italian Health Ministry disagreed with the initial conclusion of the pediatrician, conceding that the vaccine was at fault.

As a result, a court in Rimini, Italy recently awarded the Bocca family a 15-year annuity totaling 174,000 Euros (just under $220,000), plus reimbursement for court costs, ruling that Valentino "has been damaged by irreversible complications due to vaccination (prophylaxis trivalent MMR)i." According to a featured article in the UK newspaper, The Independentii, about 100 similar cases are now being examined by Italian lawyers, and more cases may be brought to court.

=====

Update: July 2013
2 court cases in the US confirming autism caused by vaccination, and a new independent study confirming the same thing:

http://www.whiteoutpress.com/timeless/courts-quietly-confirm-mmr-vaccine-causes-autism/

http://www.thelibertybeacon.com/2013/06/21/new-published-study-verifies-andrew-wakefields-research-on-autism-again-mmr-vaccine-causes-autism/

Now all that we are waiting for is the Little Musician on the Ipad, KL ;-)) When is that planned for more or less?

It's already available!
http://forum.brillkids.com/little-reader/little-reader-available-on-the-ipad-today!/



As for a dedicated "Little Musician Touch" app, I don't see it coming out anytime this year. Hopefully some time next year.

Hi all,

Just came across this article about how toddlers can find it difficult to name colors:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=why-johnny-name-colors

This was a bit puzzling to me because I seem to remember Felicity could name her colors very early on without any problems (before one, I think, but can't be sure).

Do you remember when your child could name colors?

In the Override Settings, under the NOTES main tab, click on the "Additional" button, and you'll find the AutoForward Slides toggle. . Turn it on (green) and check it. Then make sure your main Override switch is ON.

FYI, in the new build which we're releasing this coming week, this field will be found on the bottom left corner of the Override panel (much more obvious).

This topic has been moved to Little Musician - General Discussion.

http://forum.brillkids.com/index.php?topic=14270.0

References to "English (US)" have nothing really to do with the music side of the content.  It's just in case we ever release a British version of it where we make sure all words are written with UK spelling (color vs colour, for example).

Regarding the rhythm names differences (whole note vs semibreve), like Eliana said, we put both labels on the titles, and they're meant for parents, cos it's not really highlighted in the lessons. ie., we're teaching them "ta-ah-ah-ah" (the essence of the note) instead of whote note or semibreve (the names of the note).

Eliana, thanks for pointing out the "12 vs 1/2" problem. Will get it fixed. Actually, I'm thinking of removing it altogether. We removed it from the Course lessons already since we already have title slides, so these slides are now redundant.
It's almost impossible to join the sounds to make them sustained, given the nature of the program.  We basically have 1 sound to cater to all sorts of duration lengths (virtually infinite!).  It's the same thing with solfege notes. This would be the disadvantage of computer programs which can generate infinite lessons on the fly, vs DVD programs which are custom-tailored and perfect, but with limited and fixed lessons.

The conductor in Music Appreciation (long) doesn't move, is it supposed to be waving its hand?

No, it's just a picture there to encourage you to help your child 'conduct' the music. You could do that, or dance, move or clap to the music, or even skip it and watch the full video instead in the Resources section. Up to you.

Hi, have you sent out the email on the 5% discount coupon for participants on beta survey ? I have participated in the survey and I did not receive the discount code. I hope to purchase during this promo period.

To make sure we respond to this, can you please email us about this at support(at)brillkids(dot)com.  but before that, can you please check your SPAM folder? You'll probably find it there if you haven't already looked.

It'd be best to write into Support with tech support questions, but in the meantime, can you tell us whether this happens with the pre-installed categories that come with the app too, or only the course lessons?

Can you write in to support(at)brillkids.com with details of that? Please be clear as to which page is coming up blank when you write in. Thanks!

Thanks for that, Eliana. I'm sorry I didn't spot your comment during beta testing!   

We'll look into it and get it fixed asap and you'll be able to update it when done.

I hope you enjoy all other parts of the program though. In the meantime, if it is a very big deal for you, please skip the 4 days in which this piece will appear in the curriculum.

We will have them available later, but it would be some time after the promotional offer ends, which we're not sure when that will be yet.