Customer Reviews

I Like Animals!/Me Gustan los Animales!

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

 

 

We have the Boca Beth program (CD's, puppet, flashcards) and both my 2yr old daughter & I love it. She can count to six in Spanish & uses several words, plus I'm re-learning Spanish myself! The "I Like Animals" video is a great addition to this program, my daughter really enjoys watching the animals and copying what the children do.

What a fun way to introduce Spanish to our children. This DVD is a huge hit with my 3 and under crowd....they absolutely love this and can't wait to show off their Spanish!

Direct quotes from 2 1/2 yr old bilingual twins. Don't like it, don't want to see "monkeys on the bed" song -which normally they love. This is basically a recording of a daycare/playgroup run by a non-native Spanish speaker. It's probably much more fun live than on a video that looks like YouTube or cell phone quality.

The idea of Boca Beth as a virtual bilingual playgroup is a GREAT! But it's probably a stretch to think kids without other Spanish resources would be able to go beyond repeating a few words. They also might have trouble understanding a native speaker.

Animal Planet in Spanish is better.

I can't recommend this product. The grammar is poor. It sounds extremely "gringo"... in other words, it's obviously a non-native speaker speaking Spanish, but making little or no attempt to pronounce the words correctly. I teach Spanish to university students, and to be very blunt, this pronounciation sounds a lot like 101/102 students.

Further, after reading the other reviews, I'm confused at how so many people *rave* about this program. I ask - how many other Spanish language programs have you reviewed? Are we talking about the same product? I have a huge inventory of Spanish resources, and unfortunately Boca Beth falls at the very bottom in comparison. What's odd to me is that there is no middle ground here... the reviewers either LOVE or WILL NOT RECOMMEND this product. And, nearly all the reviews who "LOVE" this program do not use real names and have not reviewed any other products...?? Odd. (OK, well, I'm just getting started reviewing myself, but I'm not trying to endorse an obviously sub-par product with stellar reviews...).

Anyway, as I wrote in the Boca Beth CD review, the reason I gave this 1 star is because I do respect Beth for her enthusiasm and contributions to bilingual education. I contacted her with concerns about grammar, etc and she replied immediately and even sent me a revised DVD and CD. The customer service is AMAZING. Beth is obviously doing a great job marketing and developing this program - however, I would recommend employing native speakers for translations and for the acting on the DVDs. Further, step it up on the production quality.

Sorry, Beth. The concept here is good - but the end result is lacking. I can't recommend this.

Boca Beth gets two stars; one because she is entertaining, and one because children will learn some Spanish from her. The problem is that her program is based on the assumption that the children need to hear Spanish translated into English in order to learn it. For example, if children are shown a horse and then hear "horse", followed by "caballo", then it's true that they will learn that caballo means horse in Spanish.
The problem is that by using this method, the children learn to speak Spanish by thinking in English first and then translating into Spanish. I would not recommend this DVD to my pre-school students for that reason. Students that learn by this method often have difficutly when they actually have to use their second language to communicate, because in their minds they have to translate everything they hear into their native language first, think of what they want to say in their first language, then translate it back into the second language before they can speak.
Try Whistlefritz instead. They're by far the best Spanish DVDs I've found. In contrast, they use the full immersion method, teaching children to relate the Spanish words directly to the objects instead of to English translations, making both listening and speaking much faster and more natural.
The immersion method is also good because it treats the Spanish language as equally valid as English. With constant English translations, it gives the impression to the kids that you can hear the Spanish word, but the English also is needed for it to have meaning. The result of that approach is seen in students I've had that have watched these types of programs, when wanting an English translation, asking "what's the REAL word for that?"
Spanish for Kids: Adentro y Afuera

Coming from a bilingual home, I thought this would be a great addition to my daughter's repetoire. The DVD is cute in its presentation...with the animals, children, etc., but the quality is not great. It looks like a teacher-made home video. More importantly for me, the Spanish in the DVD is spoken with a very bad American accent, which is not what I want my daughter to pick up on. The English is perfect, but the Spanish is clearly spoken by someone who does not have a good Spanish accent. The DVD sounds like an American who just happened to have the Spanish translations. It does not sound like a natural Spanish voice, but more of someone reading off of a card. I was not impressed. My daughter watches it but does not love it as much as some of her other videos (like Brainy Baby Spanish). I give it a mediocre rating.

First and for most I'm rating the overall video and content not just one part. The video it self is very low quality. Anyone can set up a camera and tape a bunch of kids singing bi-lingual songs. Just step into a bi-lingual class at any school and you can find them. So why it's Award-Winning is beyond me. As a Bi-lingual mother and homeschool teacher, that learned Spanish at age 12. I can honestly say that Beth's overall Spanish is not good at all. When a English speaking person has a bad Spanish speaking accent, guess what... your children will have a bad English-Spanish accent when learning Spanish. When she says a simple word for example; VEO ("see" in Spanish) she pronounces it BEO with a B not a V. This is simply not acceptable and our children should be hearing it how it is, not how she interprets Spanish. Thank You

I have four kids under the age of 8, and they all love this DVD, especially the 3 year old. We've watched it over 100 times, though I had to limit them to three times a week for my own sanity. The kids have picked up a bunch of Spanish vocabulary from this DVD. I especially like the section that shows a Boca Beth class with circle time. My 3 year old dances and sings along every single time. The songs are catchy and use tunes the kids already know. It makes learning fun.

The reason it didn't get 5 stars is that the production quality isn't the greatest - it looks a bit like the powerpoint presentation done at the end of vacation bible school, rather than a polished DVD. But you know what? It doesn't matter. My kids love it and watch it all the time anyway.

Boca Beth is a fun way to get your kids learning Spanish.

We bought this DVD upon a recommendation of a Spanish teacher in our child's elementary school! She is a native Spanish speaker (from Pravia, Spain) and even though the Spanish is not Castilian in this DVD for kids (it's Latin American dialect) she thought it was the best DVD out on the market for young children to learn Spanish and English at the same time in the same movie.

The I Like Animals DVD from Boca Beth brought smiles and happiness to our 8 year old and her baby brother this past Christmas morning! They insisted on watching it time and time again and now each of them wants the puppet BOCA! Too funny! Even abuela was watching and marveling at their love to (finally!) speak some Spanish around the familia.

Thanks to the founder of this program (who I found out just upon opening the DVD case is a native speaker of English!) for putting together something that really captured the interest of our two kids - enough that they finally love speaking Spanish around the house with us and outside.

We met Boca Beth during her first year of business and attended her Mommy & Me classes. We bought every CD and DVD she has released, but this one is our son's favorite now that he is 4.5 years old! He loves the music video segments where lots of kids sing and dance in Spanish and English plus he truly hunts for his BOCA puppet before the teaching scenes so he can interact with puppet BOCA on the screen.

I have to tell you that when we enrolled our little one into Montessori school only a few weeks ago his teacher asked my wife who in our family is Latino because our son knows so much Spanish. According to the teacher he has to be placed with the 8 year olds for Spanish lesson time due to his advanced knowledge of the language. That is a WOW in my book as a parent!