I have watched the first DVD, and I am impressed! I haven't watched the other ones, but I have previewed them, and it looks like they build on each other and eventually teach suffixes/prefixes, sentences and longer stories.
They have great animations, bright colors, lots of kids and interesting scenes, a lot of variety and faster moving scenes and words than YBCR. There are fun music segments with kids dancing around (I really love the three blind mice song even though I don't like the part about cutting off their tails with a butcher knife. It seems like they could have come up with a different version of the popular nursery rhyme. Anyways, the song has a catchy tune that causes me to sing it every time
). There are poems and stories too. The story segment is great because it builds on an initial sentence. Every time a word is added, the sentence is said again. Nicholas is making...Nicholas is making a sandwich....Nicholas is making a sandwich with peanut butter......
I also like that it has some easy words and harder words words that you may not think to teach, such as tambourine, vibrate, famished and disguise. The words are shown in a variety of different colors, fonts and objects (like beanbags, finger puppets, etc), mostly with some sort of highlighting or arrow that moves with the pronunciation. You are asked to repeat a lot of the words when they are said again.
Some of the words are shown like the phonics lessons in LR with different color ends or beginnings so that kids can see how words are formed and how a letter or two can be changed to make a whole new word.
There are 2 different ways they teach the words. One has prefixes or a letter or 2 at the beginning that change and one has suffixes or end letters that change. So for instance, there is cap, cape, camera
dice, drop, dig, dirt
meat, seat, beat, eat
red, sled, bed.
And there is a very creative poem that has a bunch of words that start with fl.
My son has really enjoyed it. He has watched the first DVD for a little over 2 weeks, twice a day for the most part, and he has not gotten tired of it yet. He has memorized the order though. He announces who the story segment is going to be about (Nicholas or Natalie) before it comes on. I think there are 4 story segments.
My only complaints so far are:
I wish is that they made them so you can set the DVD to randomize segments. I have an exercise DVD like that, and it's really cool. It would keep kids from memorizing the order and getting bored.
There is a scene that shows oranges bumping into each other. The word that is shown is bump, but it sounds like the boy says ball. I had to turn it up loud and listen closely to make sure it wasn't a mistake.
Other than that, I think they're great. I highly recommend them.
Digg
