Customer Reviews

Kids Love Spanish: Volume 2 - Alphabet & Numbers

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I have two toddlers ages 2.5 and 1.5 and have been searching for the right vehicle to introduce them to Spanish. I bought all seven of the Kids Love Spanish DVDs because we were wearing out the one we bought originally! My two-year-old is so fascinated with the kids on the video he just sits there and repeats the Spanish words. Working the Spanish vocabulary into our family dinners has become a nightime ritual in our household. I think he has more fun with these words than with new English words because he thinks HE'S teaching US new words that he learned first!

My husband and I feel a lot more comfortable with our kids watching this series than even the popular educational TV programs out there because this feels so much more interactive to us, like we're engaging in a game with our children because we're all so actively involved in learning together. I hope other people's children enjoy this DVD as much as ours do!

Nice visual. Have about 6 repititions (2 from teacher, about 4 or more from different kids) for each of its word (or alphebet) which I like it. The down side is they are not native. Some of the kids says it in a English accent. And one of the reviews that I saw said one word is prononced wrongly. However, Compare to other spanish educational dvds (eg Mi Casa My House), I'd recommend this one. If it's not for the American accent, I would definetly give it a 5 stars. Only have 2 songs. The spanish ABC song which is good. The other song is fun but it's in English saying something like learning Spanish is fun and useful.

We were hoping to augment our children's exposure to spanish with this DVD. However, it failed to hold our children's interest and only held ours in disbelief. The pronunciation of the words is forced and very 'American'. The production value is very low- it looks as if someone learned Windows Movie Maker and made home-videos for the segments.

On those notes, if anyone is looking for a used copy....

I purchased all the Spanish DVD's volume 1-7 and was extremely dissapointed with this product. As an American who speaks fluent spanish, I know that kids learn best with songs and animals. These DVD's have none of those features. The sisters spend an inordinate amount of time singing a spanish song that was absolutely not necessary for the video. Words are spoken one at a time over and over by many people in the most redundant of ways and never grouped into phrases-ever. My daycare kids eventually tuned out after about 10 minutes. This was in contrast to the Spanish dvd I purchased that featured a parott puppet that mixed songs and stories.
When I tried to return the product, I was unable to do so as one of the sisters said they can't re-sell them. Purchase this product at your peril. Believe me, you will regret it.

The second volume of Kids Love Spanish is a vast improvement over the first but still leaves a good deal to be desired.

This time, viewers are taught the alphabet, the numbers one through twenty, and forty-four additional words that correspond with the thirty letters of the alphabet and the numbers one through twenty. (Thirty plus twenty equals fifty additional words, but since five of these words were taught during volume one, and one word is repeated in both the alphabet and number sections, the net additional word count is forty-four.)

Volume two therefore contains a LOT more information than the paltry eighteen words taught in volume one.

Still, the DVD is far from perfect.

The pronunciation is still erratic. For example, the letter "g" is sometimes incorrectly pronounced like the English word "hay" and the word "seis" (six) is repeatedly mispronounced "ses." Although the word "xilófono" is written correctly on screen, the voice-over accents the incorrect syllable (the third instead of the second).

During the numbers portion of the program, a photo of a group of objects is shown while the voice-over explains what the viewer is seeing. "Cinco zapatos. Zapatos is the Spanish word for shoes." Unfortunately, only the number word is shown on screen during this segment, so the viewer must rely on the voice-over to learn eighteen of the twenty additional words presented in this section of the DVD. Since the pronunciation is less than perfect, it is sometimes difficult to decipher exactly what the voice-over is trying to say. It would have been helpful if all of the additional vocabulary words had been reproduced on screen!

Volume one's opening and closing songs (both in English) are also repeated here---a waste of time, since the DVD is only half an hour long---and I'm still annoyed that the creators failed to conserve resources by putting four half hour volumes on a single two hour DVD.

Still, volume two has the same appealing kids and interesting backdrops and graphics as volume one. On the whole, it is much better than volume one, though there is still room for improvement.

I moved to the Republic of Panama and my 3 year old son needs to learn Spanish. He loves this DVD and can now say his ABC's and 123's. I also bought the box set and it is great also. The 2 girls in the DVD do a grat job.