Sesame Beginnings DVDs for Babies and Toddlers

The makers of Sesame Street have gone into direct competition with Disney’s Baby Einstein line. Sesame Beginnings is Sesame Workshop’s new line for children six months to two years of age.

Several Sesame Beginnings books and toys are currently available; however, the Sesame Beginnings DVDs are bound to get the most attention. The new DVDs are intended to be viewed by parents with their children and are supposed to promote parent-child interaction through creative play.

The cast of the Sesame Beginnings videos features younger versions of Sesame Street favorites and their adult relatives. The major characters of the cast are Baby Elmo, Elmo’s dad, Baby Cookie Monster, Cookie Monster’s grandma, Baby Big Bird, Nani Bird, Prairie Dawn, and Prairie Dawn’s mom.

As of today, only two titles are available on DVD: Beginning Together and Make Music Together; however, more titles are expected to follow.

Rockin’ Real Wheels Is Not Like the Others

The other Real Wheels DVDs are excellent, but Rockin’ Real Wheels is an entirely different DVD. Rockin’ Real Wheels appears to have little to do with the regular Real Wheels series. The music is poorly written and poorly produced. The animation is cheap, and the acting is weak. There is very little humor in the dialog, and there is nothing children will find engaging in the story lines.

On the bright side, the footage of the various vehicles is pretty good and interesting to watch. The producers really should have put more work into the music and scripts. Rockin’ Real Wheels could have been excellent, but it falls far short of the other Real Wheels DVDs.

Growing Reader Phonics Bible DVD Is a Poorly Produced Slide Show

The Growing Reader Phonics Bible on DVD is very disappointing. It is little more than a slide show with narration and an awkward score. The bland presentation is far too boring to hold a child's interest. Do not buy this DVD. Your children will probably not watch it more than once.

LeapFrog Talking Words Factory Provides Excellent Introduction to Reading

Professor Quigley, Leap, Lily, and Tad are back in Talking Words Factory, the logical sequel to the Letter Factory DVD from LeapFrog.

In this follow-up, the young cartoon frogs spend a day at the Talking Words Factory with Professor Quigley as they learn how words are formed.

The story first tackles the most important letters: vowels. Professor Quigley demonstrates that vowels are special because they stick letters together to form words. From there, Quigley uses the Word Whammer 3000 to form simple three-letter words like cat and bat. Then he moves on to four-letter words (like stop and best) that use blended consonant sounds. (A toy version of the Word Whammer 3000 is available from LeapFrog as a complement to this DVD.)

Each phase of the story includes a catchy little musical number to add to the fun and help your child remember each lesson. The story uses many of the familiar talking letter characters from the Letter Factory video to remind your child of the previous lessons in phonics.

The Talking Words Factory DVD is very thorough. In a little more than half an hour, the characters present the basics of reading. The one negative about this video is that it moves very quickly and contains a tremendous amount of information for a young mind to absorb. The producers should have considered not going beyond three-letter words for this DVD and saved the four-letter words for the next sequel.

Please note that, since Talking Words Factory is rather advanced, your child must have the alphabet and phonics mastered before he or she will be able to understand this video. Even though this DVD does stand on its own, it shares a lot of elements with Letter Factory. It is highly recommended to use the two videos together.

Overall, Talking Words Factory is an excellent teaching tool for introducing your child to reading. It will take dozens of viewings for the lessons to sink in, but this video illustrates some concepts that are invaluable to budding readers.

LeapFrog’s Letter Factory, the Best DVD for Pre-Readers

LeapFrog’s Letter Factory is a video that teaches children the alphabet and the sounds of each letter through phonics.

The story is about Tad, Leap, and Lily (cartoon frogs) who spend a day with Professor Quigley at the Letter Factory. During the tour, characters move from room to room and learn about the individual letters of the alphabet. Each short segment features a different theme, a very brief skit with talking letters, and a catchy little song. These mini-lessons do an excellent job of introducing each letter and associating it with its sound. At the end of the story, all of the letters appear for a big musical finale to review the lesson.

LeapFrog’s Letter Factory is brilliant in its simplicity. Letter Factory reduces the alphabet to its most basic elements: the letters and their sounds. This simple content provides pre-readers with just what they need to know about the alphabet without overwhelming them with excessive information.

The catchy songs sung by cartoon letters cement each lesson and provide the child with an audio-visual mnemonic device for each letter of the alphabet. These well-imprinted memories will become invaluable when your child begins learning how to read. LeapFrog’s Letter Factory is educational, entertaining, and simply the best video for pre-readers on the market.

LeapFrog's Fridge Phonics toy is a complement to this DVD.

VeggieTales: Hilarious Entertainment with Values

Big Idea Inc. produces the highly popular VeggieTales collection of toys, music, books, apparel, and educational products; however, the company is best known for its series of VeggieTales DVDs.

The VeggieTales DVDs are excellent, but what really makes them stand out is their focus on moral values. Each Veggie Tale DVD contains valuable lessons in being a good person. These Christian-themed videos address issues such as honestly, respecting parents, sharing, kindness, etc.

VeggieTales DVDs feature a lot of fun and catchy songs (“Silly Songs”) that kids love. The characters such as Larry and Bob are very engaging, funny, and memorable. As an added bonus, the VeggieTales scripts are intelligently written, so even adults can enjoy some of the subtle humor that is certain to fly over the heads of most children.

Little Einsteins Is the Next Logical Step

At some point, the marketing guys at Disney must have sat down and realized that their Baby Einstein audience was getting older. Hoping to capitalize on the success of the Baby Einstein line, Disney developed Little Einsteins as the next step for their aging audience of little geniuses.

Little Einsteins is a television show airing on Disney television and available on DVD. The animation is an odd but unique combination of cartoon characters and photo images. Young cartoon children, Annie, Quincy, June, and Leo travel around the world and beyond in Rocket, a red flying submarine/spacecraft. In each episode, the Little Einsteins characters go on a mission. To complete each mission, the children must decipher clues that involve music, art, geography, animals, etc.

Little Einsteins is intended for children three- to six-years old; however, unusually bright one- and two-year olds may find the show interesting.

Learn About the Zoo DVD Review

Learn About the Zoo just might be the worst educational video ever released. This video from Quest Media Inc. manages to fail in almost every area imaginable. The DVD case graphic includes the major mistake of displaying the tagline for a different production (Learn About Dinosaur ABC’s), and things just get worse from there.

The video’s premise of a class trip to the zoo via computer is weak and dull. The computer-generated graphics are horrendous and evoke Atari video games from the 1970s.

The most obvious problem with Learn About the Zoo is the presentation of the animals. Instead of live action video, this production takes a cheap shortcut by displaying photos. To make matters worse, the photos are of stunningly poor quality, and appear to be a collection of snapshots from a zoo trip and photos of 2D images. The images are grainy and washed out. In some photos, the animals are barely recognizable.

The most harmful feature of Learn About the Zoo is its unreliable information. The video contains factual errors and mispronunciations, giving this video negative educational value. Simply by missing this video, your child will have an advantage over children who have seen it.

If you have already made the mistake of purchasing Learn About the Zoo, you might consider returning it to the retailer and demanding a refund.

Baby Einstein DVDs Are a Brilliant Beginning

The Baby Einstein Company offers a library of developmental DVDs for babies. These DVDs are an excellent way to expose your baby to sound, color, and motion. (Click here to read about The Baby Einstein Company.)

In the second month, your baby should have just enough awareness to begin noticing the more basic Baby Einstein DVDs. Baby Mozart Music Festival is one of the more basic DVDs and seems to have a universal appeal among younger babies. To see if your baby is interested, put him or her in front of the television, play the Baby Mozart DVD, and watch your baby’s reaction. If your baby has a pleasant reaction, then he or she is ready. If your baby ignores the DVD or gets upset, he or she will need a few more weeks before watching the DVDs. Once your baby is showing interest in Baby Einstein DVDs, play them at will.

Your baby is likely to show a surprisingly high level of interest in the DVDs. Babies find these DVDs fascinating because they are specifically designed for their age group. The music is high-pitched and playful. The images are simple. The motions are easy to track. This is the perfect formula for capturing a baby’s attention.

The DVDs contain a variety of sounds and images that will help stimulate your baby’s brain. The on-screen motion will help the baby learn to focus and track with his or her eyes. The music will entertain and give the baby a broad assortment of sounds to help develop hearing.

There is one annoying thing about the most recent Baby Einstein DVDs. Since Disney took over the company, there has been a gradual push toward more advertising content on the DVDs. On some of the recent DVDs, the advertisements are pushed on the viewers. On some DVD players, you will not be able to skip over or fast-forward through commercials for Animal Kingdom, Little Einsteins, etc. The first few times you watch these advertisements, you might be a little interested; however, after you have seen them a dozen times, you will begin to get irritated. After a few months of seeing these advertisements, you will probably start having negative reactions to the material. Disney needs to rethink their policy of how they insert advertisements into their DVDs. Many people do not like to have advertisements inserted into DVDs they have purchased for personal use.

Even with the annoying advertisements on some of the recent titles, Baby Einstein DVDs are still a great tool for introducing babies to a world of sights and sounds. Your baby is bound to love the DVDs, and you will be amazed at how much of the information your baby will eventually absorb.

All About Big Red Fire Engines DVD Review

All About Big Red Fire Engines, from GoodTimes Entertainment, is a video that is presumably about fire engines. In reality, the video is about firefighters.

All About Big Red Fire Engines is essentially an orientation session focusing on what goes on in the typical day of a firefighter. The video includes many lengthy and dull demonstrations of all types of firefighting gear. What the video lacks is an adequate amount of engaging footage of fire engines and firefighters performing their jobs.

All About Big Red Fire Engines does provide some interesting information, but it delivers the information poorly. All About Big Red Fire Engines is a boring production that sparks little interest.

Learn About Dinosaur ABC’s DVD Review

Learn About Dinosaur ABC’s, distributed by Quest Media Inc. under the Treasure Box Collection label, is a low-budget animated production available on DVD. Roxy the Dinosaur is the poorly animated host of this half-hour program which consists of little more than static cartoon dinosaurs appearing one by one on-screen while the host provides a brief audio description of each one.

The information in the video is fairly useful, but the production values are poor to the point of being a significant distraction. The animation employs a minimal number of frames, making the action jerky and repetitive. The background audio is on a loop that repeats many times per minute. Basically, while the information may be good, there is nothing on-screen to hold a child’s attention. To make matters even worse, the DVD appears to be merely a transfer from videotape as evidenced by frequent tape glitches in the program.

The overwhelming poor quality of Learn About Dinosaur ABC’s makes this DVD a bad purchase. You will not have to look far to find a better educational video.

Baby Einstein: A Single Video Leads to a Learning Revolution

In 1997, suburban Denver mother, Julie Clark had a moment of brilliance. She imagined a simple video incorporating basic, colorful images set to music and voice that would capture and hold the attention of babies. She and her husband invested about $18,000 to produce a single Baby Einstein video. They got the video into stores, distribution grew, and a nation of parents began demanding more.

Within a few years, what had started out as a fairly modest investment, turned into a multi-million dollar business. The Walt Disney Company soon took notice of the dramatic success. Disney purchased Baby Einstein from Julie Clark in 2001 and kept her on as a consultant.

During the last several years, The Baby Einstein Company has managed to release many DVDs, toys, flashcards, books, etc. All of these materials can be valuable tools in teaching babies.