Thanks, Krista.    And thank you for the Grammar recommendation books everyone.
I am remembering now a game Sidney Ledson describes in his "Give your child genius IQ" book.  One player thinks of a nursery rhyme, and thinks of a couple of words to be substituted, and tells the other player, say, I need two nouns and one verb.  Let's say they come up with "Chicken, Fork, and spin."  Well, the poem was Jack and Jill, so the new version would be, Jack and Jill went up a chicken to spin a pail of forks."  Tee hee, everyone laughs, and players switch roles.

I printed this out and put it by our toilet.  My kids read it extensively until it got torn and we threw it away.  I admit that besides this and School House Rock videos, we haven't done anything to specifically address grammar.  But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't.    The poem's author was unknown, it's old, and I don't feel like digging to figure out where I got it.  Sorry. 

Three little words you often see
Are ARTICLES - a, an, and the.

Every name is called a NOUN,
As field and fountain, street and town;

In place of noun the PRONOUN stands
As he and she can clap their hands;

The ADJECTIVE describes a thing,
As magic wand and bridal ring;

The VERB means action, something done -
To read, to write, to jump, to run;

How things are done, the ADVERBS tell,
As quickly, slowly, badly, well;

The PREPOSITION shows relation,
As in the street, or at the station;

CONJUNCTIONS join, in many ways,
Sentences, words, or phrase and phrase;

The INTERJECTION cries out, 'Hark!
I need an exclamation mark!'

Through Poetry, we learn how each
of these make up THE PARTS OF SPEECH.

I've had that thought too.  I suppose that ultimately, my dream and goal for myself RIGHT NOW is to be a professional mother.  By helping my children achieve their potential, I am also achieving something great for myself.   Helping them discover and reach for the next step also stretches me.  I really doubt that my kids would look at my life and say "Wow, for all she made us do, she really flopped herself."  Instead I expect something more like "Wow, our mom made great sacrifices to give us the best education possible.  She wanted us to stand on her shoulders."  And when we are dead, they will fondly tell their grandchildren about us.  Parenting is as noble a calling as anything the world has to offer.

But I also have some of my own personal goals.  And they do take the back seat sometimes.  That just means that I'm giving priority to service to my children.  That's okay.  There will be plenty of time for us to develop ourselves and achieve personal goals again after the kids move out.  Every thing in it's proper time.

By the way, Piano Wizard launched their kickstarter campaign today. There  are lots of options- more than you usually have access to in their regular store.  I'm so excited about the new app. 

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/musicwizard/learn-to-play-music-in-minutes-and-kickstart-your

As promised, I finally finished this review.  I hope this can help some of you. 

http://www.professional-mothering.com/2013/08/piano-wizard-review.html

Are you singing and clapping?  My kids definitely build off of each other.  They take turns singing the notes, etc, and I always have a turn too.   Otherwise I don't know if they would sing with the program.  We also do a lot of singing throughout the day here and there and gives LMs some context, for example, singing the scale as we go up and down the stairs.  We haven't had as much luck with the clapping, but they do think that part is fun and it's a time for us to do a little "karaoke".

Yes, I only remember one other sale like this a couple years ago- a black Friday sale.  It's a great price!

My kid's favorite math manipulatives are the ones that come with Mathtacular.  They especially love the bears.  http://www.mathtacular.com/

This is the one I got for my preschoolers.  They love the "restart" button that sets the abacus back to zero.
http://www.amazon.com/School-Office-Calculation-Japanese-Soroban/dp/B004U88IOI/ref=sr_1_cc_1?s=aps&ie=UTF8&qid=1374868118&sr=1-1-catcorr&keywords=soroban

Yes, it is in C, and shows the notes correctly.

I found the video that I saw a couple years ago that I instantly thought of when I learned about midbrain activation.  I have a hard time believing that he can play video games by sound alone, we just don't know how else to explain how a boy without eyes can "see".

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/AiBeLoB6CKE&rel=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/AiBeLoB6CKE&rel=1</a>

Preschool Prep comes and goes on groupon, I think I've seen it 3 times?  At least two.  It's not a current deal, but it might be worth it to hold out for it.  We really love "Meet the Sight Words".  Once the kids know sight words, they can read anything with your help, and they'll be excited to see their "friends".  We started letting Patrick read scriptures with us.  He would read the sight words he knew, and we would tell him all of the words he didn't.  With time, common words become sight words as well, so this is a good way to get them reading.  There are VERY few sentences that don't have at least one or two of the sight words in them.  Patrick watched "Meet the Sight Words" twice and he knew them all.  The movies are extremely repetitive and somewhat slow for an adult, but for a child who doesn't know the material, they're absolutely wonderful.  My father-in-law bought the same set for his private school kindergarten class, and he was surprised at how much the children loved them.  They often talked about the different words with each other during lunch break.

That's a cute 2-year-old!  Maybe I'm a little biased though...

I think I can speak for all the moms when I say that we love the fathers on this forum!  My husband isn't active here, but I couldn't do what I do without his support.  Fathers are very much needed for our children, and men have a unique perspective that certainly adds to the discussions.  Thank you for adding your input!

I do plan on doing a full video review soon, but it won't be done before the last 3 keyboards sell out.  I actually bought one myself because I'm confident I can sell the Piano Wizard curriculum to someone local and I wanted the free keyboard.  This is something that would be much easier to show you than to tell you.  I promise to do it soon!