Okay, I get it now.  The PRO version isn't a curriculum, just the features to edit, make your own content, and download new files from the library.  The English version is separate.  I don't know why I didn't get it the first time I read through everything- it's pretty clear.  Sorry!

Sounds like some great changes!  What is the difference between the basic version and the new pro version?  I see both listed in the store, but they look the same to me.

Not to start a debate, but the hulabaloo about testing has very little to do with parents not wanting their kids to be tested.  It is more about not wanting to take national tests, not wanting to be part of the data mining the common core tests do as far as questions about religion, political preferences, etc, and wanting to keep things more local.  All I'm saying is that it's a lot more complicated than test anxiety.  I don't know enough about it to give solid facts or references at this point, but I do hear enough of the discussions in the homeschooling community to know that these are the common objections.

 I got most of the Saxon books on E-bay for a very decent price.  I think I paid less than $50, including shipping, for 5/4 through Algebra I.  The best part about getting them second hand is that the older, hardbound books are much more sturdy and I'll be able to use them for multiple children.

We really love MonkiSee.  While the DVDs are great, the physical flash cards are where you will get the most bang-for-your-buck as far as supplemental material is concerned.  While my older kids liked the flashcards from YBCR well enough, having a picture on the other side makes the MonkiSee cards a clear win.  If you are looking for more off-screen time, I would suggest the MonkiSee flashcards, they are very high quality.

We love Preschool Prep, having only experience with "Meet the Sight Words".  These are great because it will help them learn their sight-words quickly, and from there, almost every sentence will have at last one or two familiar words, so they can start reading any book with you, you just fill in the words that they don't know.  This worked great with the LR books as my 3rd was learning to read them.

I also love "Your Child Can Read."  YCCR has more of a phonetic approach with the idea that a child's foundation was with sight words, so it's a perfect addition to your library.

All are good.  We use all of them.  It's just a matter of deciding what you can afford, what you will reasonably use, and how much time you have to dedicate to it.  TweedleWink and Sparkabilities are also worth looking at.

I think the rich diversity my kids have seen on-screen has really helped them.  We moved from a predominantly white community to Southern California where there is a very rich diversity of people.  I wondered how my kids would respond, if at all, and they haven't batted an eye, asked about color, or anything.  It was a major victory for us.  Phew!  I remember feeling shocked as a kid the first time I saw a black person, so I'm glad they didn't have the same experience.  Hey, we didn't have TV and it wasn't really something my parents thought to tell me about.  They handled it well that evening, it was just the initial surprise that could have been avoided.  I'm loving the racial diversity in our new area. 

Peter recently read this book about Abraham Lincoln, and I would like to read more from the "Childhood of Famous Americans" series.  The books aren't all fact by any means, but much of it is and Peter came away with a better understanding of who AL was.

 http://www.amazon.com/Abraham-Lincoln-Emancipator-Childhood-Americans/dp/0020420307/ref=pd_sim_b_5?ie=UTF8&refRID=1XGD07ASMDE1XGRFGCTT

Thanks for the post!   

I am teaching my children notes and solfege.  LMs teaches fixed "do", and I am teaching movable "Do".  The big advantage to fixed "Do" is that in many countries, that is what they use- ie- there are no letter names, "Do" IS the notes.  BrillKids is an international company, so when they were making the program they had to take that into consideration.  With fixed Do, "C" is always "Do".  With movable Do, the key note is "do".  So in C major, C is "do".  In F major, F is "do", and so forth.  Everything in Semester 1 of LMs is in C major, so it doesn't matter which kind of solfege you are teaching.  I originally was going to adapt semester 2 for movable "do", but ultimately I got lazy and just redid semester 1 again as I have other music resources we are working on.  But I did make a sound file to share that may be helpful:

http://forum.brillkids.com/little-musician-general-discussion/letter-names-file/

That was the short answer.  Here's my more in-depth explanation of what the difference between movable "do" and fixed "do" is, which may also help answer your question: http://www.professional-mothering.com/2012/10/movable-vs-fixed.html

This video might help.  The print-out, which you could use for movable or fixed "Do", is available here:  http://www.professional-mothering.com/2012/10/movable-piano-insert.html
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/ZjsHXzbyEGU&rel=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/ZjsHXzbyEGU&rel=1</a>

Also don't forget BrillKid's music e-book- it does a great job addressing this topic as well.  http://www.brillkids.com/free-download/teaching-ebooks.php

I have the Wink program and it's amazing.  It's just one of those things that I haven't fully used yet.  How silly to make that kind of investment and not use it, but that's life.  Manda is right that you could put together everything yourself.  For that matter, there isn't anything on Little Reader that I couldn't do myself with homemade flashcards or power point, but time is worth something too, and the materials in Wink will save you a lot of time.  The materials are very different from TW, and they build on it.  The photo eye-play has a different focus.  Instead of flashing opposite colors back and forth, you see and image and focus on creating the after image on a blank screen, or a blank card if you are using the flash cards.  We have used the mental imaging before going to bed and the kids love it.  It's very good for relaxing- similar to the kind of things in my hypno-birthing CDs.  I'll look over the materials, make some notes, and give a better overview in a day or two.  I have only skimmed through the book, but it seemed to be well done.

We really love both of these programs.  Tweedlewink does indeed cover a lot of reading basics, although Little Reader is a better reading curriculum.  As far as encyclopedic knowledge goes, both are very good.  TW packs a LOT of information in each of the 7-minute, 48 lessons.  The advantage to a video program, and this goes for MonkiSee and YBCR, which we also love, is that the makers can put more effort into smooth transitions between subjects/words/themes, can add music in the background to make it more engaging, and can add special effects.  The big advantage to LR is that you can customize it.  You can add pictures of grandparents, their favorite toy, a recent vacation, and tap into the amazing library that other parents have made.  For that reason, Little Reader is my favorite reading program.  But I also love and use MonkiSee (my kids love the stories, and their off-screen materials are fantastic and very high quality) and YBCR regularly.  To be clear, this is a library that I've built over time.  It would be a hefty investment up-front, but I've been having babies for a few years now and have collected things over time.

There is one area where TweedleWink really outshines these other programs, and it's not in reading or EK.  It's in the right-brain training.  There are affirmations, which I really love as they help my kids settle down before bedtime.  There are eye-tracking exercises, speed reading clips, and photo-eye-play with poetry, which is a precursor to developing photographic memory.  The music theory part of TweedleWink is really good too, although I much prefer Little Musician.  Your CHILD can Read also has speed reading clippets, and Sparkabilities has the best eye-tracking exercises I have seen for little ones.

We are so lucky to have so many resources and options available for our little ones!  I love, love, love them all.  They each have their own strengths.

No thank you.

I just realized the Your Baby/Child Can Discover videos weren't on here.  They serve as an excellent introduction to music, and a slew of other things as well.  I absolutely love the series.
http://yourbabycanread.com/index.php/products/math-music-logic/your-child-can-discover.html

My sentiments exactly, EKTeam.  YouTube hasn't been around very long.  The only thing I would add is that I know a lot of professional pianists, and they seldom talk about what method they started with.  It's such a small part of anyone's music training anyway.  As a student, I only used a curriculum my first three years of piano lessons, after that I studied exclusively from classics and other selected music.

The biggest thing that great musicians have in common is not any given curriculum, but three other factors.  A student's desire to succeed coupled with hard work, supportive parents, and great teachers/mentors.

We love Hoffman academy too!  It really is well done.   

There are a lot of resources on http://www.musick8.com that I would love to delve into.

Boomwhackers have been a lot of fun, and the colors mostly match LMs, so you can play them with the karaoke section.

Here's a little shout-out for my own printables:  http://www.professional-mothering.com/p/store.html

I especially love Anne's barnyard friends videos.  My kids use her stories as reference when we do flashcards.  http://pianoanne.blogspot.com/

Don't discount the benefits of a local children's choir if you have the budget and the teachers are well trained.  I think being part of a group has helped my son Peter more than anything else I've done.  Helen and Patrick have learned more at home.  I guess it depends on the kid.  There's also a lot of children's song books with fun activities in them, percussion instruments, and just playing with silks while listening to music.  Building a rich music vocabulary with songs unique to your family culture/region/religion (if applicable) is one of the best things you can do for kids.  My children's favorite songs are mostly the ones the learn at church, so I've jumped with it and made them part of their piano lessons.  I know the last comments are kind of simple answers, but everything seems to go smoother for us when we do the basics.