Customer Reviews

Spanish for Kids: Adentro y Afuera

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Educational research continues to point out that the best method for learning a second language is in early childhood, through immersion - the same way children learn their mother tongue. Living North America puts parents who seek to give their children a bilingual advantage in a difficult position. The vast majority of us are monolingual, speaking only English, the international language of trade and commerce.

So, what's a mom to do who wants to equip her young children with a solid foundation in a second language when she only speaks one? The lack of high quality resource for Spanish immersion was just the catalyst needed for one mom to launch Whistlefritz and the Spanish for Beginners series in 2006.

The latest release in the series - Adentro y Afuera (Inside and Out) is designed to appeal to children from ages two through seven - and does it ever. Who would have thought that a 30-minute DVD, entirely in Spanish, would so captivate the hearts and attention of my one, three, and six-year-old?

I was a bit skeptical as I popped in the disc. My children are largely unfamiliar with Spanish. They've seen Dora, watched some educational DVDs that teach common phrases through English to Spanish translation and repetition, but have no formal language education under their belts. I was so surprised to find my children singing, dancing, and laughing throughout an entirely Spanish presentation of what could pass for cable television children's programming.

The animated host "Maria" leads children through scenarios revolving around a small, animated mouse named Fritzi who whistles to communicate (hence the company name, Whistlefritz.) Similar in style to the popular television series Blues Clues, Maria and her gang of multi-cultural children in the target age ranges interact against a colourful, cartoon backdrop with the animated mouse, and a variety of entertaining hand puppets. Live action segments are also interspersed throughout the DVD, showing the children interacting and singing in real settings.

Maria communicates the meaning of the Spanish words she uses through repetition, exaggerated facial expressions, props, hand gestures, and body movements. Her level of enthusiasm is contagious, and she is an excellent teacher. Narrative teaching is broken up with songs from Horge Anya which include activity songs where children are prompted to perform certain hand movements in response to the lyrics, songs about food, songs about the directions (up and down) and so on.

The narrative teaching focuses on greetings, room names, common locations (in front of, on the side of, on top of, etc.), food names, numbers up to ten, bathroom tasks, and more. A vocabulary guide which includes the Spanish words in the order they are presented on the disc, and their English translations is provided to help children decipher the meaning of words which are more difficult to determine from context. Parents who watch the DVD with their children and discuss the onscreen action and vocabulary with them will greatly enhance the effectiveness of the DVD, and pick up valuable Spanish skills themselves.

With Maria and Horge both speaking Spanish fluently, their accents are bang on to my untrained ear. They speak at a slower pace than a native speaker would in order to allow children to follow them, and often repeat words and phrases to encourage children to join in with responses. My two oldest girls were already chattering away from time to time with the disc on it's second play through.

The DVD menu provides options to play the disc through, put the disc on auto play, or play only the song segments. No scene selection option is provided, though with a 30-minute disc that isn't a hardship.

I've been teaching my six-year-old the five-star rating system; when I asked her how she'd rateSpanish for Beginners: Adentro y Afuera (Inside and Out) she replied, "Six stars, I'd give it eight if I could." The natural humour, infectious joy, and enthusiasm contained on the DVD have already made it a much-requested favourite in our home. My six-year-old has asked for it four times today (I had to stop her or she would have kept going.) It's just this sort of repetition in an immersive language experience that will help build a solid foundation for future studies in Spanish.

Whether you want to give your children a taste of Spanish for National Hispanic Heritage Month (Sept. 15-Oct 15, 2009), supplement a more traditional language program, or use the Spanish for Beginners series as the first step in a full-immersion course of study, Adentro y Afuera (Inside and Out) is well worth your investment in time and money.

Video clips of every Spanish for Beginners DVD can be found at [...]

The first time I watched this DVD, I winced and thought to myself, "How lame!" Then I realized how well this DVD was put together so that I could think it was lame instead of being completely bewildered by watching a DVD in a foreign language. As an ESL teacher, I was impressed at how simply Sara Jerez presents grammatical concepts. The song and visuals for "Arriba/Abajo" (Up and Down) were genius. While watching a parachute that the children throw upward and downward, even the slowest language learner can understand the meaning of the song. Lovely. It takes skill and experience to teach grammar without overwhelming a novice learner. Well done. An especially nice touch was the use of mini-reviews to reinforce learning, such as the brief scene where the mouse puppet asks for something to eat. Just that short review helps cement the learning from the earlier segment.

Full disclosure: I took a year of high school Spanish, I have forgotten all but the basic words, and I have no child. Yes, I am an adult language learner unabashedly using a children's DVD. Long vocabulary lists suck. :)

To that end, I have submitted two suggestions to Whistlefritz:

1. Add subtitles, at least for the songs.
2. Modify the suggested age range.

1. For this DVD to be more useful for older learners and adults (which I firmly believe the company should tap into to expand their selling market), including a subtitle option will allow older learners to reinforce spelling, especially of accents. I support the idea of full immersion and appreciated that the enclosed translation guide forced me to make connections in order to figure out what songs and conversations meant. However, novice learners, especially older ones, would benefit from seeing sentences written as well as spoken.

Regarding non-pedagogical concerns, the acting by the children was awkward and stiff. The live-action shots in the park and at the picnic were a delight, but the responses to "Maria" (such as telling her where Fritzi was hiding) were extremely stilted. If you look at the children's eyes, they are clearly watching someone for directions. The child most enjoyable to watch was the little girl with long hair, painted fingernails, and front teeth only partially grown in. She managed to look and sound natural, and her giggle was infectious.

2. The notation "Ages 2-7" on the front cover are unnecessarily limiting. While the overt content of the DVD is certainly geared toward a young age, the DVD can be useful for children much older, not to mention adults. This DVD would make a good gift for my niece, a pre-teen, but I doubt that she tolerate a DVD with the label "Age 2-7". I'm not suggesting changing content but to simply change the marketing label.

Overall, a nice product and very useful. I'm looking forward to the next DVD!

I am a native speaker from Venezuela and have tried lots of Spanish DVD's from the library. Many of them are boring, annoying, or poorly done in Spanglish. I am not a big fan of the Spanglish used in popular cartoons like Dora The Explorer. I prefer the whole video to be in one language. My 4.5 year old has been watching Plaza Sesamo since he was 2 and loved it for a really long time. After 2.5 years he's become curious about the many other English cartoons available, so I was extremely happy to find this DVD to get him excited about Spanish again. He loves all 3 DVD's in the series, and I wish they made more. His 2 year old brother also loves it, even though his Spanish is not as good as his brother's, but the cute songs really keep them both entertained. I highly recommend this one as well as Vamos a Jugar and Los Animales.

I am a bilingual speech-language pathologist, and I bought this dvd for my 20-month old twins. I am not a native Spanish speaker, but I want my children to be exposed to as much Spanish as possible. I am so happy with my purchase. My children love the dvd. It holds their attention and they are beginning to repeat some of the words and try to sing along to the songs. The way the language is presented is very effective. There is full immersion with plenty of visual and contextual clues (no translations, which is great). There is also repetition of the targeted vocabulary and sentence structures, but in fun and interesting presentations. My children enjoy all of the characters (cartoon and real people). I highly recommend all of these Spanish for Kids dvds.

First of all, where is that park! It is incredible! I'd also like to know who provided the food for the picnic. It looks delicious! I am especially pleased with these picnic scenes because they have inspired my finicky, very verbal two-year old to eat. Ever since she saw the film for the first time she has been asking me for foods she saw the children eating in the video. She has said, "Mommy, I want some corn to bite!" and "Can I have green beans?" and "Can I eat some chicken?" and "I want some plums." This morning she was eating grapes and told me, "I'm eating, just like in the movie!"

This DVD is now the only video my daughter wants to watch. First of all, she loves watching the kids sing and play, inside and at the park. We both enjoyed the introduction of the Jorge character, the musician responsible for the Whistlefritz music. We have enjoyed his music in the other two DVDs as well as the CD (which I highly recommend if you haven't heard it yet) so it was fun to see him. My daughter was also very excited to see Fritzi the mouse. She talks about him constantly now. There is a grey cartoon mouse on her placemat so every morning at breakfast she looks at him and says, "Hola, Fritzi!" She especially likes the part at the end when Fritzi is in bed pretending to sleep. He opens his eyes, smiles at the camera, and then winks. That gets a laugh every time! I have to rewind to that scene several times before we can turn off the TV.

Finally, I like the "Songs" feature on this DVD. If we don't have enough time for her to watch the whole video, or I just need a distraction for a diaper change, I can turn on the songs for her to listen to and watch. As with all of the other Whistlefritz songs, they are enjoyable even for adults.

I am a fan of all of the Whistlefritz products. We have the first two DVDs and the CD and love them all.

We own the two previous Whistlefritz DVDs plus the music CD and my 2 1/2 yr old daughter loves them all. I had no doubt she would like the latest production so I bought it as a surprise for her to watch during a recent 6 hr car trip. She LOVED Fritzi! She watched the DVD over and over and over during our vacation and beyond. My first language is Spanish and I have been teaching my daughter since the day she was born. Now that she's a little older and knows more Spanish she can interact more with Maria by answering and repeating her words. I was glad to see Jorge Anaya perform in the DVD. My daughter likes all of his songs. I wish they would have put more new songs in this production (next time please!) but including some of the old ones gave it some continuity. Dora doesn't teach any Spanish to your kids unless you play the Spanish track (which we always do). I highly recommend purchasing all of the Whistlefritz productions. They are well made and well thought out. The Whistlefritz DVDs have helped me teach my daughter Spanish. Get it! ¡Compralo!

My daughter is starting her 1st year in a Spanish immersion Kindergarten and I was looking for something to help her a little because she was kind of scared. We got this DVD and not only did she love it so did my 2yo. They have watched it atleast 20 times in just over a week. I find myself watching and trying to figure out what they are saying as well so if she asks me for help I know. They are good at showing what they are saying with movements, facial expressions and props. I plan to get the other DVD's in the collection.

I took German in high school for the sole reason that the German class took a trip to Germany every year, whereas the Spanish class didn't travel. Then in college I abandoned German for Russian and was told that I have "an incorrigible American accent" (perhaps because I'm an incorrigible American?). And I've spent my adult life regretting those decisions because Spanish would be a very useful language to know, but despite repeated efforts of varying lengths and diligence, I simply can't master it. Therefore, when I had kids I resolved that one way or another, they would master at least two languages while they're young enough to do it relatively easily.

The problem is that it is very difficult for a monolingual parent to raise a bilingual child. Videos and CDs only do so much because they are passive learning. Books can help add interaction, but I don't want my kids learning Spanish with my bad pronunciation. The best choice is language immersion, but such programs don't come cheap. In fact, when I enroll my older daughter in public school next year, I'm tempted to pretend she doesn't speak English so they'll put her in the bilingual program. But something tells me they won't believe me.

With all of that said, this video (and the other Whistlefritz videos) is perhaps the best introductions to Spanish that I've found for young children. Yes, it's passive learning, but it's engaging enough to keep kids' attention and the songs are catchy enough to get kids to try to sing along. "Maria" has a bubbly and engaging child-friendly personality which draws younger kids to want to participate with her. The best part is that it is solely in Spanish and kids learn from visual cues such as the objects in the video and Maria's facial expressions. This helps to learn to actually put Spanish together as a complete language, rather than just a collection of vocabulary words.

This particular Whistlefritz video focuses largely on relational words and phrases such as "behind", "in front of", "next to", etc. There is also a segment focusing on food and eating and, of course, the obligatory walk through counting to ten. A rather amusing scene involving cookies which mysteriously disappear during each counting combines all of these lessons. My daughters also like the mouse, Fritzy. There are three or four songs on the video that mesh well with the lesson themes. For instance, one song is a dancing song and instructs the kids to wave their hands over their heads, or in front of their bodies, or out to the side. Another song is about food.

We've been watching this video for about three weeks, probably once every two to four days, and my daughters seem to understand most of what's going on and have even been picking up on some words and phrases. My older daughter asks for the video fairly often but that is in part because she knows that except for Saturdays the only videos I'll let her watch are Spanish ones - at least it's her favorite language video, even if she still prefers English videos. Recommended for young children - probably the same target audience as Sesame Street.

The video is also helpful for parents. It's simplistic enough that I can follow what's happening and start to put phrases and sentences together. Maybe there's hope for me yet.

My only complaint about the video is that it's rather expensive for only 30 minutes of playing time, but it's not out of line with other language instruction videos and materials. Unless you're lucky enough to live in a bilingual family, learning languages is an expensive proposition. 4.5 stars.

I have a 2 and a half year old toddler who is bilingual already (English and Hungarian) but I wanted to expose her to a third language as well. I hired a babysitter who comes three times a week and talks to her in Spanish only. In addition to that, I got this DVD for her to watch so that she will hear Spanish from another source as well.
I limit my daughter`s television time to 2 30-minute shows a day. She loves Caillou, Dora the Explorer and some other HUngarian DVD-s but ever since we got this DVD (which was 2 weeks ago), that is all she wants to watch!
She calls Fritzi the `Spanish mouse`.
She is totally captivated by Maria, the songs, the puppets, the kids and Fritzi of course . :-)
I am a language teacher myself (ESL and French) and I have to say that the show is brilliant! I love how it is put together and how much repetition there is in it under different scenarios.
I am about to order some other dvds from the same series as well.
I agree with another review that mentioned that the preschool age is the best time to start teaching languages.
It was amazing for me to see that my daughter watched the whole show the first time , DESPITE the fact that she did not understand a thing they said. And she still keeps watching ......... only now, 2 weeks later, she counts to ten, knows the names of the rooms in the house, names of certain fruits etc.
Highly recommend this product to anybody who is looking for a quality dvd that teaches a foreign language.

I have 2 DVD's of this series, my teenage nieces gave it 2 thumbs up when they watched it with my 2 year old, they said they learned more from these 2 videos than they have in their Spanish class, they found it engaging and easy to learn from, my 2 year old loves the songs and dance and the mouse character, she has definately used her Spanish more since watching these videos