My Little Musician and Little Reader programs weren't playing the animations properly, so I followed the instructions in an old thread and installed K-Lite Codec pack. This fixed my issues with the animations not playing, and I can now see the characters playing the musical instruments and such. Awesome! However, that seems to have broken my ability to play the solfege songs under "Play & Edit".

Now, whenever I try to play a children's song (tried both "slow practice" and "sung in solfege" modes), the picture starts blinking, the song is not playing correctly, and the application crashes promptly.

I have updated my Windows. I have also tried "repairing" Little Musician. Neither solution worked. Please help! Thank you. =)

P.S. I have just submitted an error report including a diagnostic file via the BrillKids Support Tools application.

Anyone around into EL or "Paleo"  parenting? I'm a mom to a 19-month old boy in Jersey City.

So, I have found out that there's a thing called Khan Academy Lite that can be downloaded and used without Internet. I have also asked BrillKids if they would be willing to donate free licenses of their software. Looking for more suggestions!

Hi! What would be your suggestions for best downloadable educational materials for a 7-year-old who recently immigrated to the US and speaks very little English? Her native language is Spanish. When she visits us, we play Reading Bear for her, which she really enjoys. I think it would help her with her English if she could work with it regularly. Unfortunately, I haven't figured out how to use Reading Bear offline. We're planning on buying her first computer for her as a birthday gift, and I would like to load it with as much fun educational material as possible. She has no Internet connection at home.

I'll be grateful for any suggestions!

Such a heartwarming story. Thank you for sharing! The little girl sounds nothing short of amazing. Hoping the educational system and the world of academia won't discourage her, and she will go on to receive a Fields Medal!

Hi, Andrea --

That's beyond exciting! Originally I was planning on waiting till my little one is 2 years old, but given your experience, I can see there's really no need to wait. Especially that I am so excited to start myself. I'm going to follow your recommendation and just start by playing myself and making an SM-marked keyboard available to my son.

The work you've done with your children is very inspiring. This is why I love this forum. Thank you!

Thank you for sharing! My 15-month-old loves Little Musician, too. I have recently read "You Can Be a Musician" by Hellene Hiner, and I'm very excited to start Soft Mozart with my son in the near future. I am one of those musically illiterate people Hellene writes about, and I see this as a chance to become musically literate myself. I really can't wait. So, one question for you, based on your experience, at what age do you recommend starting Soft Mozart?

Hi, Evelyn -

Alright, this is fantastic! Thank you for recommending uSwim - I've just bookmarked it. I'm thinking I'll start looking for a pool around our area in the spring. Can't wait for that!

And I'll definitely keep your tips in mind once my baby gets bored of Little Math.

I'm really excited about Mandarin, too, actually. This is a perfect excuse for me to learn it myself. Can't imagine I could justify spending too much time on it back when I was working.

Thank you for the welcome, and we'll definitely be in touch!

Hi, Evelyn --

Ooh, you got me really excited about doing Fowler with my son, given you've had such fantastic results! And I'll follow your recommendation to look at the videos first. Can't wait to get started on that!

Haha, that's really funny about your husband getting convinced about German after you started with Mandarin. I'll be very curious to follow how your and your baby's Chinese are going, since I'm also starting practically from scratch. I'm sure we'll be able to exchange recommendations for resources. So keep us posted on what and how you're doing. We've been through the first LR Mandarin session, but before we do more, I'm going to have to study the pinyin guide to the course, because without pinyin I'm not able to repeat the words correctly. I'm also hoping I'll be able to get my husband to do the lessons in my place, but we'll see how that goes.

You know, our stories definitely are very similar. I also studied some German in college, and I always loved the language. So it's hard for me to imagine your husband would ever think it's not worth teaching it to your son! We have some friends who live in Basel, so I understand about the Swiss German difference, too. =)

And I'm definitely up for a thread for parents with kids our age!

Alright, so "Help Your Preschooler" is the immediate next on my reading list. I need ideas for activities other than, um, DVDs and board books.

Hello, everyone!

I'm a stay-at-home mom to a 15-month-old boy. We live in New Jersey. I first found out about BrillKids thanks to Larry Sanger's "How and Why I Taught My Toddler to Read", and I first found out about Larry Sanger thanks to my Quora feed. One thing led to another and for the past two weeks I have spent my nights reading through this forum and getting more and more excited about EL. I have been practically going bankrupt getting all the books and DVDs you, the forum participants, got me so excited about. In order to complete my financial ruin, I have just purchased LR English + Chinese, LMa and LMu. And since the courses are currently downloading, I thought I'd stop by to say hi.

So here are some notes on where we are and what we're planning.

READING. We will be doing LR, since my son seems to enjoy it, even though he doesn't really focus on the phonics or the sight words. We've been showing him YBCR DVDs 4-5 times a week since he was about 9 months. We have also played with the sliding flash cards, which he used to love. He still enjoys the DVDs, so we show them to him occasionally, but - honestly - I haven't seen any signs he can read any of the words, so I'm beginning to expose him to phonics. He adores "Meet the Phonics - Letter Sounds" and LeapFrog "Letter Factory". We started looking at Starfall, too. We also just got the refrigerator magnets. We have foam letters for bath and wooden blocks. I've also been using the finger-under-the-words trick when I'm reading to him. The plan is to wait until he is familiar with the alphabet and letter sounds and then move onto the Reading Bear.
I'd also like to read more books to him, but I'm having problems keeping him interested. There are *some* books that keep his attention ("Where's Spot", "Where's Baby's Belly Button" and "Bright Baby Colors", for example), but most of the time he turns the pages before I have a chance to finish reading them! I'd be very interested to hear any suggestions for concrete books we should try as well as any advice on how to make our reading sessions more exciting.

MATH. We will be doing LMa, since he liked the sample lessons, and I am planning on reading "Marshmallow Math" to get more ideas.

LANGUAGES. We speak English at home. My husband is fluent in Mandarin, and he sometimes speaks it to our son. In order to increase my son's exposure to the language, however, we will be doing LR Chinese. (Can't wait to learn more Mandarin myself this way!) My parents see my son a lot and they speak mostly Polish to him. I will look into doing some reading lessons in Polish later. I am myself currently studying Spanish, so I thought of introducing it to my son as well, but I'm not sure if 4 languages won't be an overkill.

MUSIC. We will be doing LMu. My son loved the sample lessons! I was really surprised. He even started humming while going through the solfeggio exercises. Since he showed so much interest, I picked up "You Can be a Musician: A Defense of Music” and got inspired to look into teaching my son the piano probably starting at around 2.

PE. I have Doman's book on Physical Excellence, and I'm planning on studying it a little more to get some ideas. Interestingly, my son is a very late walker. He's just beginning to try to walk without support at 15 months, even though he was very early crawler (6 months), and cruiser (7 months). So I definitely think I need some help learning how to help him develop his physical potential. I'm thinking of starting swimming lessons, too, in the spring, since he enjoys water very much.

Finally, I love this forum and I'd love to connect with other EL parents in my area to organize play dates and do other fun activities together. We're in the NYC metro area, so I'm *sure* there are other EL-ers around here, but I am yet to find them. I will be posting on the local forum soon and also reaching out to some parents I know to see if I can get them interested in EL.

Anyway, again, hello to everyone. Can't wait to chat with many like-minded parents on this forum!

Hi, Evelyn --

Thank you for the thoughtful post, and welcome! (I'm new here, too, also from the USA, and just like you I have quit my job to stay home with my son!)

Thanks to this thread, I have just added "Young at Art" (thanks, Evelyn) and "Help Your Preschooler Build a Better Brain" (thanks, Korrale4kq) to my reading list. Oh, and have you been able to figure out if the Fowler program makes sense for an older baby/toddler? My son is 15 months old, and I'm trying to figure out how I could help him with his articulation.

I've had very similar experience to what you're describing with regards to ASL! I was inspired after watching "Sign with Your Baby", but didn't want to show my boy any videos due to the no screen time recommendation. Ugh. So I signed to him myself, but he doesn't seem to have picked up much of it. (Not that I was very consistent.) I know it's a little late in the game, but I think I will now try showing him "Signing Time" to at least see if he likes it.

As to EC, I think it makes perfect sense for you to just go for it! And Andrea's book makes it so easy to get started. It will literally take you 15-30 minutes to scan it and look at some videos on Andrea's website to feel more confident about taking the first steps. My own story is that I was into the idea of EC until the hospital gave us Pampers samples. I could not believe how convenient these things were. And that yellow line that turns blue when the nappy is wet? Pure genius! However, as it turned out, my little one let us know pretty clearly and pretty early on that he didn't think diapers were all that cool. He was so visibly stressed whenever he needed to go in the diaper that I decided to try ECing after all. We started when he was about 2 months and never looked back!

It's so exciting that you and your husband are planning on teaching your little one German and Mandarin! My husband was born in Taiwan, so he is fluent in Chinese. However, since he was raised mostly in California, he prefers speaking English at home. Darn! He does sometimes switch to Mandarin, but I'd like to make my son's exposure to the language more consistent, so I have just bought LR Chinese. It's downloading as I'm writing this post. (This is going to be so much fun I just can't wait!) Anyway, have you thought of making German lessons for your son in LR?

I'm really looking forward to seeing more of your posts in the future!