Customer Reviews

Preschool Prep & Sight Words 7 DVD Pack (Meet the Letters, Meet the Numbers, Meet the Shapes, Meet the Colors, Meet the Sight Words 1, Meet the Sight Words 2, Meet the Sight Words 3)

5 star:		(74)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

I purchased the entire 7 Preschool Prep videos. I was very pleased with the "Meet the sight word" series. I purchased them as an experiment but after watching them 10-12 times (at about 20 min. a time since we didn't watch the repeats) my 5 year old learned almost all of the sight words and my 4 year old learned about 1/2 of the the sight words. It is WELL worth your money, as I have spent an entire school year trying to teach these words. Once the kids know them, it makes reading so much easier because they don't have to sound out every word. I prefer "Meet the sight words" over Your Baby Can Read just because the kids will see the sight words in print in almost any book they pick up.
As for "Meet the Letters" it is a huge disappointment. My kids were so bored with it that they wouldn't even sit through 1/3 of it. Also, IT DOES NOT INCLUDE LETTER SOUNDS, which is fundamental for reading success. I purchased "LeapFrog Letter Factory DVD." which is much better for teaching letters and sounds. It is 35 min. long and is much more engaging. I will be using the letter factory DVD and the meet the sight words DVD. I suggest buying the Meet the Sight words and not the "Meet the Letters, Numbers, Colors, or Shapes.

I bought this series for my 2 yr old son and a 3 yr old autistic child in my care.

My son was deathly afraid of the voices at first and would not watch it for more than 1-2 minutes without begging me to turn it off or go to bed (yes, it was that bad). However, I turned the volume down a lot (well below the norm), and now he absolutely loves the shows.

Now from an adult perspective... they suck! They're mind numbing, brainwashing, torture! All they do is repeat the same word over and over and over while showing the shape, letter, or color.

I do give them 5 stars though, because they do what they are meant to do. They hold the attention of active toddlers while teaching them something useful. They have helped the autistic child to verbalize and both boys love to watch them. As painstaking as it is for me to watch them, I would still recommend them.

Let me first start out by saying that I am a teacher - I really value any educational toys or learning activities. I wanted to get a few educational DVD's for our car for my son to watch on longer trips. I was excited after reading about the awards this series received in a parent magazine. I popped in the first DVD and waited for my son to be "ooh-ed and ahh-ed" - after about 5 minutes, he no longer wanted to watch it. I brought the DVD's in the house and sat down to see what they were all about. I was shocked at how horrible they are, the graphics are very low budget, the character talks in a very high and hard to understand voice, and ther is no story/plot...the "characters" just move across the screen and repeat their letter over and over. No wonder he did not want to watch it. I thought maybe the letter one is just too basic, so I popped open the sight words DVD - same horrible experience, only the character repeats the word over and over. It is not educationally sound AT ALL, I think they must have made up the award they received. :) I thought maybe I was missing something so I took the DVD set over to a friend of mine who is also an elementary reading specialist, she agreed that they were horrible and was shocked they cost $50+ dollars for the set. She also said that they do not even follow the protocal of how letters are introduced and the foundations of phonemic awareness to teach phonics or sound. She said you are much better off with the Sesame Street or the Leapfrog learning DVD's. Amazon was great for letting me return this horrible series....we orded the entire Leapfrog learning DVD set when my son was almost 3 and he still loves this DVD's (and asks for them) at 4.5 years. Don't waste your money.

I bought this item and also the Leapfrog series. This series is rather boring for my 2 1/2 year-old. He hates to watch any of them. It would probably be better suited for a younger child, maybe 1+. There really isn't a story line, it simply says the letter name/sound OVER and OVER and OVER again while showing the letters.

The plus to this series is that it includes capital and lower-case letters, as well as several different types of fonts for each letter.

First my 2 year old grandson amazed us with what he learned & then our 1 year old followed, we could not believe how fast they picked up letters-numbers -shapes and sight words. My 14 month old knows her numbers & letters - she has about 4 shapes and even though she can't pronounce octagon, she knows it. We were amazed she can even knows a couple of sight words. With continuity between parents -g/parents & daycare they learn quickly and think its fun.
I think I believe what the tapes say about a window of time for learning, just as they are learning to speak. Or maybe my babies are geniuses as I thought.

This stuff is not only annoying, it is absolutely terrible. During the whole time you'd hear:

"Yellow, yellow, yellow, yellow, yellow, yellow, yellow, yellow, yellow, yellow, yellow, yellow, yellow, yellow, yellow, yellow, yellow, yellow, yellow, yellow, yellow, yellow, yellow, yellow, yellow, yellow, yellow, yellow, yellow, yellow, yellow, ..." until you'd either turn off the TV or become a brain dead. (Yellow gets substituted with other colors, or shapes, or numbers, or whatever, based on the DVD theme.)

The reason I bought this stuff - it was suggested by Amazon after I bought Leapfrog's "Letter Factory", "Math" and 3 other DVDs. They are absolutely not comparable. I had a great experience with Leapfrog and was very-very happy with their DVDs. Don't waste your money and don't torture yourself and your kids - buy Leapfrog's DVDs instead - kids will learn faster and in much smarter way.

my daughter's godmother got this for her as a christmas gift. so far we've only used the meet the colors and meet the letters (we try not to used too many of these videos at once) and although its boring for me (it reapeats the same thing OVER and OVER) my daughter not only likes it but shes REALLY learning. so far she says all the color words, and can repeat all the letters. she recognizes about 5 different colors and daily she amazes me with the letters. Just yesterday at the park she saw the letter X on a tic tac toe board and she showed me the X and said "X?" then she looked at the o and said "O?" my daughter is 19months old and has been watching those two dvd's for a week. its really amazing to see how quick a child can learn with the right tools. I can't wait until we start meet the numbers and meet the shapes!

Well I was hesitant to buy these because of some of the reviews written by folks in the education field saying that this was not an educationally sound way to learn. I am SOOOO glad I ordered it though, and have since ordered as gifts for friends who are pregnant a second time and will have two kids under two (hey, they need something to do while you're nursing right?). I got these when my son was 17 months old. He already knew shapes so he never watched that one. He has known upper and lower case letters since he was 20 months old. I used to put this on while I made dinner and repeat the letters and their phonetic sound shouting from the kitchen. He has known his phonics since 21 months. He is now 26 months old and knows his phonics, upper and lower case letters, numbers 1-10, shapes, colors (colors were the last to come, around 25 months), and many of the sight words. He has even made some of the sight words by putting letters together from his Leapfrog Fridge Word Builder. He is attempting to sound words out and can now sing the alphabet start to finish. He has really taken a shine to letters so I am hoping this will transition well into reading. Too bad there are no videos by this company teaching to read...but I think there is where the "educationally sound" part comes in. These teach through repetition. One can't simply memorize every word in the dictionary (I suppose only the sight words). But for basics that everyone needs to memorize such as what the letter A looks like, I don't see why repetition is so bad. If you were to learn another language, wouldn't you learn their alphabet through memorization/repetition? You wouldn't learn to read that way, but in order to read you'd first need the building blocks to sound out the words. I believe that is what these videos give - the basic building blocks for future learning. My son actually never liked Sesame Street (which I believe another reviewer referred to as educationally sound) until he had memorized his letters. It was at that point that Murray playing the "Whats on me that starts with (letter)" game became really interesting.
I think these videos are great, and have taught my son so much. I only hope I can keep him on the fast track without the aid of more awesome videos. The best I can seem to find to teach him to read are some Hooked on Phonic products and the Leapfrog Singalong DVD set.

After reading many reviews, I decided to go with the Pre-School Prep series. I think the idea is 'great'...but the reality may not be so easily implemented/attained. My daughter, 3 1/2, gets bored with the videos pretty quickly. I think that she's past 'her' prime learning opportunity with these videos. Had we started earlier, they may have kept her attention better. We are still using them, but after showing her The ABC Factory by Leap Frog, it's hard to get her to go back.

I was very disappointed and surprised to see that there was negative feedback on these DVD's. As a mother of four children 6 and under I can testify to these DVD's being everything the company claims they are. My 10 month old, three year old, four year old and a boy I watch who is 18 months old, LOVE these videos and have learned so much. My 10 month old now says letters, my 3 year old now recognizes all his letters and numbers, and the 18 month old went from counting out of order to counting to 8 in just watching the DVD's about 5 times. I purchased these DVD's after my oldest was diagnosed with dyslexia I so wish I had learned about these DVD's years ago, I believe if my oldest had watched these as a toddler she would not have the challenges she has today.