Not to brag or exaggerate or anything but my daughter has already established herself as the smartest baby on the planet. It amazes us and her teachers that she recognizes every letter of the alphabet, all the colors and numbers up to 9. (10 gets confusing. It's the number 1 and the letter O in her brain.) She has however, managed to skip over the shapes. How do you know O vs Q but you can't recognize a square? (Answer: because shapes weren't covered in her intesive intellectual training regime.)
I used to hate the thought of TV for tots. That was before TV taught my daughter all her colors in an hour, after I had been working on it with her for months. Now I'm sold, but am very, very careful about what we watch. I was thrilled when Parent Bloggers offered me the chance to review the kids' DVD My Baby A to Z: Come Explore Shapes with Me. With the shapes under our belt, we could finally secure early admission to Harvard!
My Baby has some of the cutest puppets out there; I'm sure they could sell them by the thousands. (Though I must admit I want to kick the monkey in the face everytime he talks; his voice drives me bananas. And who names a Monkey "Moo"? When I heard we were going to "Moo City" I was definitely expecting cows.)
Marielle is captivated by the puppets and loves watching them shapes in the sand. There are some great little skits that remind me of something you might see on Sesame Street, my favorite being the gloved hands that construct the word circle. I like the segments where you search for shapes in the environment around you. After our first viewing even I couldn't help but see shapes all around me.
What bothers me about this DVD is I can't figure out the target audience. The shapes they teach are the most basic: circle, square, triangle, star and rectangle. The approach, however, is often directed at older children. "Can you make your body have angles?" I imagine this would be a good DVD for a mixed age group, perhaps a younger child with an older sibling. The young child would be captivated by the puppets while the older child could participate in the activities. They will both be entertained.
The pace is way too fast for Marielle - 22 months - and many things are just lost on her. She doesn't comprehend the whole, "Get up and moooooooooove!" and there's no time for me to help her understand. When they ask her to do something like, "Jump in the air and make a shape!" they are on to the next thing 2 seconds later; it's waaay too rushed. Even if she knew what that meant and wanted to do it, she wouldn't even have time to stand up before they are on to the next thing. If you really want to get kids off the couch, give them some time to dance.
I thought maybe it was just me and my whole lack-of-training-or-experience-with-other-children thing, so I had our babysitter (who is a grad student in speech pathology) view it as well. I didn't tell her my opinion as I didn't want to cloud her opinion, just asked her to watch it with Marielle. She said exactly the same thing I was thinking, that it would be the perfect DVD for a child a little older than Marielle, if they also included more advanced shapes. She didn't seem to have a problem with the monkey; maybe it's just me.
Hopefully future DVDs from this company will include at least 5 more minutes. The good news is it easily keeps her attention for the whole 22 minutes. The bad news is I can't shower, get dressed and check my email in that amount of time... and she still doesn't know her shapes.
I used to hate the thought of TV for tots. That was before TV taught my daughter all her colors in an hour, after I had been working on it with her for months. Now I'm sold, but am very, very careful about what we watch. I was thrilled when Parent Bloggers offered me the chance to review the kids' DVD My Baby A to Z: Come Explore Shapes with Me. With the shapes under our belt, we could finally secure early admission to Harvard!
My Baby has some of the cutest puppets out there; I'm sure they could sell them by the thousands. (Though I must admit I want to kick the monkey in the face everytime he talks; his voice drives me bananas. And who names a Monkey "Moo"? When I heard we were going to "Moo City" I was definitely expecting cows.)
Marielle is captivated by the puppets and loves watching them shapes in the sand. There are some great little skits that remind me of something you might see on Sesame Street, my favorite being the gloved hands that construct the word circle. I like the segments where you search for shapes in the environment around you. After our first viewing even I couldn't help but see shapes all around me.
What bothers me about this DVD is I can't figure out the target audience. The shapes they teach are the most basic: circle, square, triangle, star and rectangle. The approach, however, is often directed at older children. "Can you make your body have angles?" I imagine this would be a good DVD for a mixed age group, perhaps a younger child with an older sibling. The young child would be captivated by the puppets while the older child could participate in the activities. They will both be entertained.
The pace is way too fast for Marielle - 22 months - and many things are just lost on her. She doesn't comprehend the whole, "Get up and moooooooooove!" and there's no time for me to help her understand. When they ask her to do something like, "Jump in the air and make a shape!" they are on to the next thing 2 seconds later; it's waaay too rushed. Even if she knew what that meant and wanted to do it, she wouldn't even have time to stand up before they are on to the next thing. If you really want to get kids off the couch, give them some time to dance.
I thought maybe it was just me and my whole lack-of-training-or-experience-with-other-children thing, so I had our babysitter (who is a grad student in speech pathology) view it as well. I didn't tell her my opinion as I didn't want to cloud her opinion, just asked her to watch it with Marielle. She said exactly the same thing I was thinking, that it would be the perfect DVD for a child a little older than Marielle, if they also included more advanced shapes. She didn't seem to have a problem with the monkey; maybe it's just me.
Hopefully future DVDs from this company will include at least 5 more minutes. The good news is it easily keeps her attention for the whole 22 minutes. The bad news is I can't shower, get dressed and check my email in that amount of time... and she still doesn't know her shapes.
2 comments:
My kids loved this video (and I have it in that ancient VHS format.) It's long enough for mom to get a shower.
http://www.amazon.com/Baby-Einstein-Newton-World-Shapes/dp/B000063V8I
Interesting. Matt (almost 3 years old) would love the interactive action portions of the video, but you're right about the shapes covered. He knows all the basics, so the material is a little young for him. But it might be good for both of them together!
Matt learned his shapes from a shape sorter we had. It was a Ryan's Room one with doors that opened and revealed the space for the shape to go. That and from Sesame Street! BTW- the show Superwhy is a big favorite of his and focuses on letters and reading (PBS).
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