Babies are sponges. It amazes me how quickly their vocabulary mushrooms. My little guy, soon to celebrate his first birthday, has started saying a few words, but he signs even more. His comprehension of what we say is even further ahead than that. Amazing to watch this precious little baby begin to communicate.
MonkiSee creators recognized this learning potential and created videos and books to capitalize on it. Through their videos, books, and flashcards kids less than two years old can begin reading on their own. My own guinea pig is just learning to talk, so we have a little time before he speaks these words let alone reads them, but I can see the potential in this product.
Product: Baby’s First Words DVD and Know Your Monkey book
Details: A 30 minute DVD that highlights words common to a baby’s environment in a fun, repetitive manner to help them learn to recognize them in print. The book reinforces the words and give them a print medium to enjoy as well.
Price: $19.95 for DVD and $11.95 (on sale now for $9.95) for the book
What we loved . . .
- Perfect for its target audience. My son was instantly mesmorized by the cute monkeys and characters on screen. He clapped and squealed as they brought their message to our living room.
- Focused learning. The videos definitely focus on the specific words and present them in a variety of formats to help the children learn and connect with each one. It doesn’t get dull as it moves along and keeps the child learning.
- Not too fast paced. Of course one of the issues with the medium of video is that it often moves at a quicker pace than real life and is a bad influence on attention spans. These videos seemed to find a reasonable pace to keep things from getting dull, but also to prevent them from moving at an overstimulating pace, an important consideration when targeting the under three crowd.
- Good quality. The videos are cute and well made. The product itself is of good quality and we did really enjoy the graphics. My older kids also enjoyed watching along with my little guy and interacting with him through the video.
Some considerations . . .
- The age of limited screen time. Although my pediatrician doesn’t concern himself with educational screen time, I am still acutely aware of how much time my kids spend in front of a TV or computer monitor. Under the age of three I don’t tend to encourage it at all. That said, I can see the benefit to this type of video to help them learn words in a fun setting. And, it is easy to repeat it even when the adult gets bored of the repetition. The DVD can easily be played multiple times.
- Books are sturdy, but still paper. I suppose my son is kind of on the young end of their target audience, but he does not yet understand that pages are not to be ripped out of books. So, all that to say, our book has a little character now.
- Might be a little long for some attention spans. My son loved the video, for about 10-15 minutes. After that he was ready to move on. I left it playing in the room he was in, but he didn’t pay too much attention to it after the halfway point most days other than stopping to dance when he heard music. 😉
- Some of the vocabulary might not be applicable. In trying to teach words common to babies they may teach words that your child doesn’t really know, or that you use different terms for. My son doesn’t use a pacifier or a bottle, so those are not concepts he has much connection with, but most of the words were standard.
- The expectation. The program is designed to be used 5 days each week for a month or so. This is a lot of time for our household, and we were not able to use it that often, so I don’t know that we would see the desired results even if my son were a bit older.
MonkiSee has made some adorable video and book products. Eli loved the bits he did watch and kept coming back to the book even after he dismantled it. I could see using this in a few more months for 15 minutes at a time rather than the prescribed 30. He may or may not learn to “read” with this method, but I can see it being helpful for him to begin to make the connection between printed letters and objects in his world.
For more TOS Crew reviews on this product, check out the TOS Crew blog.
Disclaimer: This product was provided to me free of charge through MonkiSee Videos as part of my participation in The Old Schoolhouse Homeschool Crew. I received no additional compensation and the opinions expressed here come from my personal experiences and sincere thoughts.