Your Baby Can Discover/Your Child Can Discover Review

[cokers4life]

This is one of our TOP 5 must have DVDs for early learning in our family.  I really love this series, and I wanted anyone who was on the fence about this one to get a real inside look.   We have been watching this series for over a year, and it is not one of those series that grows old quickly.   It is still popular and for soooo many good reasons.   Please check out my review, and I hope you find it helpful.    As always thanks so much for reading!

http://pushplaylearning.com/your-childbaby-can-discover-review/

[robbyjo]

I kind of agree. I have some reservations, however:

1. My biggest pet peeve: The "secondary color" names. They're ridiculous. I mean... It is of near zero practical values. I understand that there ought to be a way to distinguish different shades of blue, for example, but calling lighter blue "aqua" or "aquamarine" or bizarre names like that isn't really that helpful. It is especially true for colors that we could barely distinguish. Yes, that's in YCCD. I understand that some of the secondary color names are standard (e.g., magenta, cyan, beige, etc.), but there is absolutely no reference on the color naming standard used in YCCD. Which standard are the names based on? The Pantone? The X11 color name standard? Or the HTML color standard? The follow up question we should ask is: Is knowing these absurd color names useful for general communication? Namely, if you ask someone to give you a chartreuse pen, will he/she give you the precise color or would he/she give you a lime (or other very similar hue) pen instead? If the latter is most likely to happen, then why bother learning all these color names? Why don't we instead refer the colors as RGB triplet (or HSK, CMYK, YUV, etc.)? It's far more precise, standardized, science-based, and useful in graphics design, for example.

2. The shape lady talks too much that the real message is often unclear. I understand that we ought to teach shapes, but throwing in big words like "quadrilateral" early on isn't really helpful. I think the approach used in YBCD/YCCD is from general to specific (deductive). I think the approach should be inductive instead. Get the babies / toddlers to know rectangles, squares, triangles, etc. Then, generalize and then cover the more unusual specifics (e.g., obtuse triangles, etc.). I think that would work a lot better.

3. The music lady (i.e., the one on piano) also talks too much that the real message is often unclear. I understand the need to teach the concept of melody, tempo, etc. But I think it is more important to work from the bottom up. I like the intro of notes and how they get built up. I think they should keep it up instead and introduce the concepts slowly afterwards. I think the music-concept teaching in YBCD/YCCD is more or less useless verbiage.

4. The segment on sequence learning (e.g. triangle, square, triangle, square, what's next?) is pretty good. However, they should one step back and show that the idea is like a rolling stamp in an animation or so. Now that the rolling stamp is taken and only the trace is observed, can you guess the pattern?

5. Lack of real logic thinking. Come on, to discover things, we need at least some logic, right? The logic building contents of YBCD/YCCD are limited to counting, opposites, grouping, sequence. They should cover natural ordering (by size, by number, etc), ascending / descending. Then, they could teach superlatives, odd one out, natural sequence, etc. None of them is there.

Now the forte:

1. Counting is spot on
2. Teaching how to group items to ease counting --> very valuable
3. Basic colors in YBCD are spot on
4. Opposites are spot on
5. Simple arithmetic are spot on

[robbyjo]

Oh another thing: The creator of YBCD/YCCD should be very clear on the target age for each package. IMO, we can start YBCD as early as 3-4 months, except the segments with which I have reservations. Some segments of YBCD should be for a 2 yrs old. So, there's some unevenness in the content distribution. YCCD is most likely for 3-6 year olds, with some segments can given a bit earlier.

[cokers4life]

I enjoyed reading your point of views, and I would like to ease yours and any other person who has reservations.   I am a really huge fan, and we have been watching this program for over a year.  I don't get paid to tell you what I think about this program.  I believe in this product.   

To your concerns over the color language,

If you watch the clip below, you will find that isn't so much what you call something as much as giving it a name that matters.  There is a lot of science pointing to word associations with pictures including colors.   It doesn't have zero practical value.  The color words chosen in YBCD/YCCD are to appeal to the world the child is living in right now along with color words they will find in literature.  An in depth sophisticated color language can allow a child to see in more detail.   Here is the clip below about the research coming out over visual perception and words.  It is more than just about an African tribe that they talk about.  They also talk about young children and the affect of color names on their perception.   

http://www.boreme.com/posting.php?id=30670

Concerns over the depth of Geometric information

My son is almost two and understands a lot of the concepts being discussed in both YBCD and YCCD.   He can point to the edges of the 3D shapes.  He found joy in seeing the cylinder coming forth from the rectangular prism.  He knows all his 3D shapes fluently.  He knows that a cone has round shape while a prism has straight sides.  He can distinguish between an obtuse and an acute triangle.   He loves right triangles.   He can point out parallel lines.   

He knows that squares, trapezoids, rectangles, kites, rhombus, and parallelograms are quadrilaterals.   His favorite song is the quadrilateral song, and he has been reading the word quadrilateral for a few months now. 

He knows a whole lot when it comes to geometry.   I know it is because of YBCD/YCCD in depth presentation of geometry that has expanded his knowledge of geometry.   He is passionate about shapes, and he talks about them all day.   I am not saying this to brag but to prove that the material is fine for babies and toddlers.   He has learned so much from all the DVDs and I know he can continue to learn from them for the next couple of years.   Is it in depth? Yes.  Is it beyond the scope of babies and toddlers?  My experience says no.

Verbiage is important.   A child acquainted to the verbiage at a young age isn't going to shy away from it when they are older.   They will be familiar with the terms, and they will have fond memories.    Fond memories of a particular subject help to build a future of joyful learning.   It is like any foreign language.   You need to be familiar with the sounds and words of the language first before true comprehension can take place, and YBCD/YCCD does this in a way that makes it joyful for the child.   

I guess I should have included my testimony in my review.  It just always sounds like obnoxious bragging.  People need to know the mind of a baby is so capable, . You can present things in so many different ways and still get amazing results as long as you are consistent.    Is YCCD/YBCD the best product that will every be made?   No, we can always improve a product, but it is one of the best we have right now for early learning DVDs.

[Tamsyn]

YBCD/YCCD is my favorite DVD set in our collection.

I agree that "aqua" will perhaps mean something different as far as exact shading goes depending on where a child is, but in all cases, it is a greenish blue, and these videos teach that.  And going beyond the "triangle" and "square" is something I really love about this series.  There are plenty of shape books and shape videos that only cover the basics, I'm grateful that there is a resource that goes beyond them.  I think the overall point of the series is to give you a basic vocabulary that you can build off of later.

[robbyjo]

I think verbiage is important when a child starts understanding the language as a whole and at 2 year old, most kids probably are not there yet (except perhaps for EL kids). This is especially important considering that much of the explanations of the shape lady and music lady requires complex reasoning and quite an advanced language understanding. This is so very unlike YBCR, where the explanations or verbiage (e.g., "spiders have eight legs") can be complementary to the word teaching and multisensory approach. That way, babies could still learn the main principle (that is, the words and their meaning by way of multisensory approach) without much distraction. The verbiage there will enhance understanding for precocious babies (or EL kids).

So, I think it's misleading to call YBCD as "fit for babies". I'm thinking that YBCD is more for toddlers unless that babies already understand language to some extent. Parents must be aware that they'll need to bring their toddlers up to a certain point before they could reap the benefits of YBCD. Or else, they'll be sorely disappointed that YBCD would do nothing to their babies.

I am aware of the scientific connections between colors and vocabularies. However, would knowing 100+ secondary color be useful practically in life? Even more so that these 100+ colors are associated with some unknown standard? This is especially misleading since the word "lime", in the YCCD context, is associated with a specific hue of green, where as the real object "lime" may represent a range of green hues. The same goes to the colors "pumpkin" and "tangerine". Babies or EL kids may know that such color "names" (albeit non-standard) represent specific color hues to them. But would that knowledge be useful to communicate such precise color concepts to others (especially to non-EL kids) with non-standard terms? Case in point, try "chartreuse" and see how many green hues are represented with that word. If you scroll down and you'll see that "lime" color is included in the "chartreuse" color. If so, why fuss over the distinction between "lime" vs. "chartreuse"? That is my primary concern.

The experiment in your video link represents classic clustering issues on multidimensional data (if you take color spectrum as dimensions, that is). People who would cluster the blob of data into 11 clusters vs. those into 6 clusters will have different centroid for each color vocabulary (and thereby having different "boundaries", if you will, to represent the colors). This gives rise to the phenomenon shown in the video. This happens to Chinese language as well---especially, the notorious word 'qing', 青, which can be associated with blue, green, or even black. But Chinese have many more words representing colors (and so are people in the western world). Those many words were introduced into children early on. The scientific question that should be raised is therefore, is the multiplicity of the vocabulary associated with colors improve the distinction between colors more than the 11 or so clusters presently available? If so, what is the ceiling of such clusters if we do the "right thing" since baby? I am not aware of any experiments testing these questions. But informally, try some random unlabeled tertiary colors (try the HTML/web standard first) and show it to your kid and ask its name. See if he could get the name correctly. You can even coach him using digital or printed flashcards, if you will. (Try digital first since printer color calibration could be problematic)

I'm going to address the geometric issue later when I have time.

[robbyjo]

Ah... another point. Will YBCD/YCCD's color "drill" improve the Munsell's Hue test?
http://www.colormunki.com/game/huetest_kiosk

[Korrale4kq]

I have to disagree with quite a few of your points Robby.

I love that they name a lot of the color names. And I think that there are standards that most people do know. When my friends talk about painting a room a rust, or wanting to buy aubergine sheets we all know what that means.  I think that the color names for the most part are the normally used color names. I know what aqua, hunter green, chartreuse, champagne, Kelly green, navy blue, midnight blue, sky blue, dusty rose, rust, teal, turquoise and possibly even hundreds of other color names are. My issue is that on my screen the YCCD colors are off. I assume others have other settings on their TV, or laptops and would experience similar issues.

I love the shape lady! My son has learnt so much from her. I don't know about others, but what I want from this DVD is to cover more than the basic stuff that I taught my son when he was little. He knew his colors from a young age. He has known his shapes for an extremely long time. Basic shapes and colors are taught over and over again in nearly  every kids concept book, show or app. I wanted something more. I love that my son knows about points, planes, obtuse, right angles, perpendicular.  All of those things. At 3 we use those words a lot.  We talk about parallel train tracks and perpendicular cross streets. I was tutoring a 5th grader and I could see how hard it was for her to remember terms such as parallel, congruent, line segment, and even quadrilateral, it made me appreciate that my son now knew those terms.

As for the music lady, my son loves her. He really is engaged and learnt so much about tempo, pitch, duration. I was just saying to Tamsyn that there needs to be videos just like her segment. Gosh I would love a video of the shape lady also going into more advanced concepts.

For what it is worth my son's favorite part of the 6 shows is the painting lady. He doesn't even request to watch YBCR or YCCR. He always asks to watch "Make-y paint a painting." I can't figure out if the narrator is calling her Maggie or Mickey. So I just let James calls her Make-y.

[Korrale4kq]

One thing I do not like is the "Duh! Blllrrr" baby sounds pattern. My son loves to do that, very loudly, spitting everywhere because he thinks he is funny. We have worked hard with my sons speech that we try to discourage "talking junk."

[PokerDad]

I'm pretty sure her name is "Mickey"

Curious what the other 5 DVD series would be if this is in "the top five"? I don't think I have 5 various sets yet, so it's in my top 5 by default.

Cub loves the YBCD DVDs; they are his absolute favorite. Furthermore, they are well constructed, not just graphically, but overall. The producers did an excellent job with these, though I can see where the asymetric complaint can come in - some content seems like it's suitable for younger viewers, some for older. The shape lady is somewhat verbose, but not much. I really watch for how much of screen discussion is out of context and these have a very high percentage of in-context language. YBCR is the best at it though.

For young (ie, year or younger) viewers, having video that is clearly in context (words used have explicit meaning on the screen) is absolutely pivotal.

There are other series where the percentages are significantly lower (no need to say which ones ITT)

As for the colors, Dr Titzer found with Aleka that she could learn all those shades and remember the names just due to early learning, while he forgot them all. I think this is a reason why they include them (Titzer did them with his own kid).

We've all heard about Eskimos having 50 different words for snow; while they may not help a child do the Munsell test, I doubt it would hurt all that much if done at the proper stage.

[GeniusExperiment]

thanks for the review! My kids weren't into YBCR at all but I have just ordered YBCD/YCCD and am hoping they will show more interest in these as so many of you say your children learnt a lot from them. My first one (3.5) still doesn't count backwards or do skip counting and I am hoping I can set better foundations with my second daughter. I will report back!

[Lund]

We love YBCR and anything by Titzer (I discovered his program in 2008). The discover DVDs was on our 'to buy list'. Thank you, for making me want them even more now

[GatorDad]

I wasn't able to pull up the link, but I'm glad I came across this discussion. The first time we let her watch YBCD, she was under a year old, and it didn't seem to hold her interest for very long. However, she really enjoys it now (14 months).  We really like that it goes more in depth than other programs.

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