Hi, that's really exciting.
We have Level1 and 2. They are a bit slow, but very nicely made and easy to learn from. A  huge plus is the characters: so often we just get the spoken chinese or pinyin. I wish the flashcards had an image on them, not just the words.

I'm excited about the subjects. We are a bit tired of "numbers, body parts, colors and counting"... it seems all products cover the same things. Items around the house and transportation will be great for us (already my son says "motuoche" instead of motorcycle in English or French, which are our main languages... I think he'd be excited by any dvd that has trucks and cars etc..)

Anyways, cannot give a review but am very excited by the news. Thanks for passing it on! I look forward to hearing what other commenters say.

btw, they also have them at childbook.com
http://www.childbook.com/Baby-Learns-Chinese-DVD-Level-4-5-6-Flashcards-p/dvd364bundle.htm

Well, it it freezes up, then the "how to " youtube video should be perfect:you'll have time to note down the tones on the pinyin. And seeing as you know the tune already (it's not like learning "zhao a zhao a xiao pengyou"  or "Ba luo bo" without hearing the tune), once you've got the pinyin and tones, you can sing it yourself onto a cassette a couple dozen times and just play it back LOL!

oh, here it is with tones:
yi1 shan3 yi1 shan3 liang4 jing1 jing1
man3 tian1 dou1 shi4 xiao3 xing1 xing1
gua4 zai4 tian1 shang4 fang4 guang1 ming2
hao3 xiang4 xu3 duo1 xiao3 yan3 jing1
yi1 shan3 yi1 shan3 liang4 jing1 jing1
man3 tian1 dou1 shi4 xiao3 xing1 xing1
http://www.earlylearning-chinese.com/songs.html

BTW, from reviews, I'd go with the Sing to Learn cd, and not the Teach Me Chinese cd. Apparently the voices on both are grating, but the Teach Me Chinese cd, they didn't use the standard Chinese versions of songs, but rather translated the English themselves. Thus the lyrics are nonstandard and don't fit the music rhythm well. I don't own either, but had spent several evenings comparing them online.

Is this the same mp3 as before?
http://bitmunk.com/media/6937910 for $0.81 US

There a a whole slew of youtube videos of kids singing Twinkle Little Star in Mandarin. Are you saying the audio is such that you cannot learn from it?

Here are some cds:
http://www.worldlanguage.com/Products/Sing-and-Learn-Chinese-Audio-Cassette-Music-1090
70.htm
http://cdbaby.com/cd/yoon

here's an mp3
http://www.tradebit.com/filedetail.php/1684648-little-star-xiao-xing-xing-twinkle-twinkle

Here are the words in pinyin:

yi shan yi shan liang jing jing
man tian dou shi xiao xing xing
gua zai tian shang fang guang ming
hao xiang xu duo xiao yan jing
yi shan yi shan liang jing jing
man tian dou shi xiao xing xing

And finally, here's a youtube tutorial to sing it:
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/EA32vdH_U2w&rel=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/EA32vdH_U2w&rel=1</a>

Have fun!

Rereading this, I am wondering if the $20 per hour is for the group, or per child? I find $20 per hour per child is expensive. When we found a private teacher for a group of 4 adoptive moms (adopting from china), she charged $20 per hour for 2 hours, ie $40 total, so it cost us $10 apiece, plus we had to buy a textbook and workbook.

We pay $20 for one on one with our at home teacher, just my son and I, for about 1.5 hours.

PY, I totally understand your problem! That happened with my son! He'd ask signs for things and I didn't know. So I bookmarked on my computer a couple of online sign language dictionaries. And sometimes in a middle of a meal I'd run to the computer to look up the word! Unfortunately there are a bunch of common words in English that don't have "signs", but rather they spell them out with fingerspelling. Very annoying. It is hard for a small child (or even an adult newly learning ASL) to be spelling out broccoli, truck, park. Strange they can have a sign for helicopter but not truck!

Here is one site that has little video loops to show to sign different words (set up like a dictionary). It is helpful but I find it is missing a lot of words (ie it doesn't have truck but has "Taco Bell"!)
http://commtechlab.msu.edu/sites/aslweb/browser.htm

You might try googling "ASL dictionary" etc to find others.

Hope that helps!

Oh, my 3.5 yr old son still loves baby signing time: it has WAY more songs and we just got the two new BST that came out in Dec, and he enjoys them as much as the new ST dvds I got him about school and feelings.

I think the 26 dvd set is in a wooden box, which is very heavy to have shipped to Canada. If you are in the states, go for it!

I do personally like the flash cards. My son plays with them a lot, and they are very solid and nicely made. They DO have all the info on one side however. Ie pinyin, characters, image and english word (and phonetic transcription of the english word which would be more helpful for those learning English than those learning Chinese). And then they have another topic on the reverse side. The cards are about 3.5 inches wide by 4 5/8 inches tall, solid cardboard, with one corner cut off, so it is easy to put them all the same side up. Then they' d have say, occupations on one side of all the cards, and places on the other side of all the cards. So they aren't good for holding up a card and not having the child or yourself see all the info. On the other hand, I quiz myself by showing the top half of the card with the chinese, and then checking the lower (image and english translation).

It is up to you. It definitely is a huge savings to just buy the 26 dvds altogether. I guess I started with just the one set, as I didn't know if they were good. And when I liked them, I already owned 5, so it didn't make sense to then buy the full set. I also like the boxed sets. They are just nice packaging. When I think of it now, that is a silly reason to spend another $100!

Anyways, just to say we love all the stories. They cover so many topics, from Christmas to Easter eggs, colors to birthdays, cowboy Dora to fireman to train to doctor Dora, that it is  joy to learn from them. You get so much vocab from all the different topics, with all the same format "initial problem: ask the map what three places to go to: go to each place one by one: solve the problems (good for learning counting, colors etc): get needed objects from the backpack: solve the problem/arrive at the final destination" which really simplifies understanding the new words and phrases. And all the repetition in English (it is for chinese children to learn English) really aids in understanding the mandarin.

If you think you'd eventually get them all, why not get the full box? ;D

oops!
Sorry haven,t been here in a bit!

I have bought the Dora 5-dvd plus flashcards sets from asianparent (as per the link above) as well as from http://bogeji.com which is an ebay store. The Asianparent site has them cheaper, but I am in Canada, and with shipping the asianparent came out more expensive. I have ordered at least 4 times from bogeji.com and have had fast and pleasant service and no excessive shipping charges.

I am sorry to hear that someone got bad audio on their Dora dvds. We have all five sets (five sets of 5 dvds, one set of 6) so that is 26 dvds with two stories on them each, and we only have one dvd that has substandard sound. All the others sound very professional. I have found that the plastic window on the box holding all the dvds comes unglued, but two secs with a gluegun fixed htat. Other than that, the dubbing quality is fantastic, the images clear, and the girl, Nan Nan Jie Jie (big sister Nannan) who introduces the vocabulary and introduces the dvd is fun and engaging. We have had our first Dora dvds for a year now from Bogeji.com and they are going strong and my son hasn't tired of them. We have lent them out to another little girl adopted from China, who is going with her parents to get a new little brother, and she loves them too.

I would also recommend the Pororo dvds from the same site. They are 3D animated short stories for toddlers and preschoolers, starring a little penguin and his bear, fox and cat friends at the north (south?) pole. Very cute, easy to understand. Our chinese teacher said the accent was very good, and the sentences very short and clear. There are subtitles.

Finally, if you already have those,they also have BBC's Little Robot dvds in mandarin. Again, 3D animation for toddlers and preschoolers. They are a bit harder to understand but very fun and the songs and characters are engaging and memorable.

I would definitely go for it! How WONDERFUL that you have found others to join you. We are doing much the same thing, but just privately: my 3 yr old son and I have someone come over for an hour or two once a week, for the past year and a half now. She is from Beijing, and is here to stay with her son who is studying at university. We pay her $20. We learn SO MUCH more having one on one interaction. Someone to correct our pronunciation and grammar, suggest the word we are searching for, give a common conversational word when there are 6 different words given for an English word in the dictionary.

I learned phrases that were immediately applicable such as "TT must make a peepee now" "Mommy will open your bottle for you" "Mommy will put on your bib" "mommy will wipe your face" "would you like a cracker?" "you should put on your slippers now".

I mean, really, where have you found language learning materials that have such mom and baby specific vocab for in the home? I was thrilled to see that when we bumped into other mandarin-speaking families in the park (even in a library in Saskatoon Saskatchewan!), the parents were saying the same things as I was! "bie peng!" (don't touch!) "bu yao!" (don't do that" "yi qi wan r" (play together!) "bu shi wanju!" (it's not a toy!) "re de! xiao xin!" (it's hot! careful!).

I never learned any of that in Practical Chinese Reader, Little Pim or Better Chinese.

I even learned to say chinese "r" properly (essential for "re de!"). People commend me on my accent.

So I would say if you want to spend on something, go for the live person, and chop the dvds.

We have also found, through ads on kijiji (craig's list by google) and a university volunteer board, chinese students who are happy to come play with my son for a couple hours only in Chinese. Just straight immersion. He is so thrilled to have 100% attention from an adult, and I am thrilled to hear him say "Jin lai! jin lai!" (come in! come in!) trying to get her to crawl inside his huge watercooler box!

I have no idea of the "expert opinion" but I am a huge fan of bilingual books... if both languages are written well/correctly. Sometimes you come across horrid translations, where the words are misspelled and grammar is wrong and nonsensical.

If you get well made bilingual books, you get two for one. I like them since I can read my child the same beloved story in more than one language. You can read it in the language they understand best first, and then read it in the other language and they will understand what the words are meaning as they already understand the story/plot etc. Sometimes I pretend to do this by "reading" an english book in French to my son (translating it myself as I read aloud) as I am bilingual English/French. Though a good french writer would have better vocab than myself, my child still gets exposure to French, and is more open to it if we are using his fave books. And it is less boring yourself than reading the same book over and over!

In chinese, I am learning as well as my son, so I like bilingual books as I can read the book without halting in English, and then stumble through the chinese, and having the english translation there helps me know what I am saying if I forget a word I don't know that well. I just bought three more toddler flap books bilingual chinese/english on abebooks.com

I try to find dvds that are bilingual or multilingual too... my son can watch Annie or Beethoven in English one day and French the next, and he gets twice the language exposure, and doesn't get "lost" in his 2nd language version as he already knows the story and what the people are talking about.

For books, I recommend Mantra publishing and Milet Publishing. www.milet.com and
http://www.mantralingua.com/home.php

I am in Canada too. Funny so many from SK, as I grew up in Saskatoon and Regina. I am in Montreal now.

I found this site through looking for teaching Chinese to kids sites. I didn’t do any small baby stuff, first as my son was adopted at 22mos, and also I just found this site now. He is now 3.5 yrs old.

People here mostly think I’m crazy for teaching him three languages (English which is my native language, French which is the majority language in Quebec, and Mandarin as it was his native language). I’m learning Mandarin, so we get a lot out of dvds, books, flashcards etc together. I stay a step ahead of him so I can point things out and say them in Chinese. Ie he learned colors first in English, then French (he goes to French daycare 2.5 days a week) and now Mandarin. I am working on reading easy picturebooks to him in Mandarin right now.

I also did Signing Time with him (Baby ST first) when he first got home from China: it was fantastic as he took a long time to speak intelligibly at all. Again, everyone thought I was insane: “how will he learn to speak English and French if you sign with him?” Of course all the Signing material speaks the words out loud, so he learned a lot of English vocab like that, including his colors.

Glad to see other Canadians here (and Saskatchewanians at that!)

Hello,
my son isn't a "baby": he is 3.5, and we aren't using them for character recognition, but we do have Baby Learns Chinese dvds #1 and 2. I would like to have #3 as well. They are beautiful cds with high quality images, and we find them helpful to learn chinese. My son was 2.5 when we got them. He likes them, but now he is a bit older he likes dvds with "stories" more, like the Baobei the panda (Early Start Mandarin), Dora the Explorer in Mandarin, the Mei Mei Hu ones (Sing and Learn Chinese with Mei Mei, Dance and Learn Chinese with Mei Mei.

However, now that he is getting interested in reading (ABCs, numbers etc), I think I will start again with the Baby Learns Chinese, as the characters are clearly presented.

Anyways, I think for a baby or young child, Baby Learns Chinese are wonderful dvds and have a more complete selection of fruits etc than many others. Little Pim is also wonderful.

Thanks for everyone's suggestions! Great list!

I have this site bookmarked:
http://commtechlab.msu.edu/sites/aslweb/browser.htm

And have been known to run into my home office in the middle of dinner to look up something! Though they don't have broccoli or asparagus... it can be a bit frustrating when you child is asking what something is.

I totally agree that Series Two is not as good. They seem set up for the tvshow format: I guess it is on PBS or somesuch in the states. They have fewer words, a lot of words repeat, even between series two dvds, and as was mentioned, they don't have a bunch of snappy new songs that will get your kiddo bopping along. There is more fingerspelling, which is beyond my 3 yr old's capabilities, and some "games" which, if you've seen them once, you don't need to do a second time. I was quite disappointed and find them a bit of a waste of money.

I don't know why they do it like this. We got "My Things"(series 2 vol 9) and unfortunately it has many signs that are in signing time and baby signing time like "books" "socks" "shoes". Children have so many things they could have given new vocab, like sandals, flipflops, slippers, rubber ducky, hand puppet, and that would keep collectors of series one buying the new dvds, and the new tv show watchers interested in buying all the series one dvds. Ah well...

Hi, I am a Canadian customer, and supposedly my Signingtime.com account has been transfered to their new Canadian Site (signingtime.com/canada). Are the Signing Time Coupons good for the Canadian site, and can we also use them now when all the dvds are at $17.99 until May 31? Thankyou!

Can't say for the adult materials, but we have the Mandarin Little Pim, and both I and my son really enjoyed the 3 dvds and got a lot out of them. It is very good to learn with just the Mandarin (no English) and understanding through gradual building of words to phrases to sentences with just the images.