I'm always pretty hesitant about buying stuff like this, especially when it has a bunch of high-rated reviews that read like paid shills wrote them. When the DVD set came, I was even more incredulous than before because the packaging is plastered with all kinds of different award logos from organizations I've never heard of like "Informal Education Products Award - Best Product of the Year" and "Film Advisory Board Inc. Award of Excellency - Award Winner." I have no idea what any of those are, nor have I ever even bothered to look them up. Not only that, but there were quotes taken directly from Amazon reviews on the back of the main box, which is usually a big red flag for me and indicative of some sort of scam or low-quality product.

Anyway, I took the plunge on this because it had the most variety of subjects for the cheapest price. Kind of a gamble on my part, but I'm glad I did it because, astonishingly, my son wound up knowing the majority of the alphabet within a couple of weeks from just watching these videos. My wife especially was ecstatic about this because our son had just turned 2, and she had a friend that insisted he must be slow because he still tended to talk in gobboldy-gook. He almost immediately outpaced her kids after watching this DVD set, and only a couple of months after buying them he knows his ABC's, can count to 10, knows about a half dozen shapes or so, and is just way more communicative than he was before. Bizarrely, this stuff really did work and he loves all of it, constantly begging to watch ABC's and shapes and what not.

The movies themselves are totally boring. Very basic, cheap, and honestly pretty lazy animation with random voices repeating words or sounds over and over again. I understand repetition is key to learning a lot of things, especially with very young children, but it's nearly unbearable watching these with him. One thing I will point out that I actually did appreciate was for the Colors and Shapes movies they had reminders to adjust your TV settings to make things appear the way they should. For example, if the square looks like a rectangle then you need to turn off forced stretching, etc. Very helpful since these are all 4:3 aspect ratio and you might have that turned on by accident.

Other than that, the packaging is also cheap. It's the super thin plastic cases you see movies sold in at dollar stores. There's some pretty heavy advertising for workbooks and flashcards and multi-level DVDs and phone apps, but I haven't bothered to try any of that stuff out yet, and I'm honestly not sure if I will. At the end of the day, my rating for this is based on how my son reacts to it, the kind of stuff I've seen him learn from these movies and the excitement he has for learning now. As far as that goes, it's a definite 5.

I like the variety of videos in this bundle. Some of the more basic ones (colors, shapes) work for my two year old, while others focus more on prerequisite reading skills (letters, sounds etc). As a teacher, my criticism is that the letter sounds dvd introduces all of the sounds each letter makes, rather than focusing on each letter's primary sound. This is confusing and too overwhelming for a beginning reader. This is especially confusing to young readers because many of the letters require other letters in order to make the sounds the dvd introduces. For example "˜a' says /aw/ like "awesome." The reason "˜a' makes that sound is because the diphthong "˜aw' says /aw/ (paw, saw, crawl etc). They introduce "˜o' as saying /oo/ like in "shoe." Again that is confusing for a beginner reader. I also don't think it is wise to introduce all four sounds that "˜y' can make at this stage (long e, long i, short i and /y/). I would have rather seen them stick to short vowel sounds and to introduce "˜y' as a consonant.

This is a phenomenal product! I made a schedule to allow daughter to watch this video from the time she was 1 month old until 3 years old). She watched it 2 daily (once in morning and once in the evening). She loved these videos and was an extremely interested learner. She was reading books by 1 years old ad counting. Early on she was bilingual in Spanish from the Spanish versions, too. Highly, highly, highly recommended! She's now 6 and reads at 12th grade level. ðŸ'ŒðŸ¾

Buy this. Seriously.

So, I have a 2-year-old and a 10-month-old and in typical mom fashion, I was stressing myself out with mom guilt over whether I was spending enough "educational" time with my oldest now. Sure, he is talking and can operate a DVD player or do a puzzle, but what about those specific things he's supposed to know like colors, counting, etc? I was doing the best I could but still worried that I wasn't doing "enough" when I tried and got interrupted for a nursing session with the baby.

I started the search for some actual, REAL educational DVDs that I could let him watch while I wasn't physically able to sit down and focus with him. We had tried Sesame Street, Baby Einstein, etc. and I just felt like although those shows were somewhat about learning, they were still 90% just for entertainment.

I read the reviews on this set and took a chance. All I can say is - WOW. It's exactly what I wanted. The videos are simple, but varied enough that it keeps my toddler's attention. There is REPETITION, which is amazing because they need to hear the word "yellow" multiple times in different settings for the meaning to really sink in. He's not quite 2 1/2, and so far we have only been watching the numbers and colors videos. He actually enjoys watching them while
I am sitting down to feed his little bro, and he now knows all his colors. He loves pointing them out to me in a store and looking things up based on color in his books.

We're going to focus on numbers now. He already is counting 1, 2... and can recognize by sight others like 5 and 10. My plan is to continue numbers and introduce shapes... then on to letters and sight words!

If you're like me and you stress about your kids getting ahead and being prepared to learn as much as they can, this is a phenomenal set. I don't want my kids being addicted to TV so we usually only watch it while the babe is sleeping or if mama just needs a dang minute... but it works so well in a short time.

Five stars so far for sure!

I bought this set of videos for my son and daughter-in-law while my daughter-in-law was pregnant. The first four videos: Letters, Numbers, Colors and Shapes, are geared to begin at 9 months of age. We began showing these first 4 videos to my granddaughter when she was 6 months old. We showed her one video per day on most days, but not every day. She is now 12 months old. She is beginning to say many, many words such as: mommy, daddy, puppy, stop, sock, etc... Most babies say, "Mama" and "Dadda." They repeat the same sound. So as another example, they might say "Kee Kee" for Kitty cat. Repeating the sound is about all they can do at this age. But my granddaughter says "Mommy," "Daddy" etc... So she is combining 2 completely different sounds together. I think these videos have helped with this! I really do! Now she is beginning to tell us the names of the letters. We can hold up a letter and say, "What letter is this?" At 12 months, believe it or not, she can tell us the name of the letter! I am the babies grandmother, as I mentioned above, but I am also a teacher. It is a dream come true when you can teach these things to your children with very little effort on your part. As I said, we simply showed one video per day to my granddaughter and she has learned the letters on her own from the videos alone. Because she is not fully talking yet, we are not sure how well she knows the shapes, colors and numbers. However, we expect that she knows them just as well. It's just really hard for a 12 month old to say, "Triangle" or "Purple." Time will tell in the next few months when she begins to talk more.
Update:
My granddaughter is now 14 1/2 months old. She knows and can pronounce every letter. We bought a bucket of foam letters with upper and lower case letters. She even knows the lower case letters. She also knows the numbers and can pronounce the colors purple, pink and blue. Seven is difficult for her to say. I highly recommend these videos. She loves them!
Update: My granddaughter is now 16 months old. She knows all of the shapes and can say them. She knows all the numbers in English and Spanish, because they showed her the videos in Spanish as well.

Update:
My granddaughter is now 18 months old. Her parents have shown her the 3 site words DVDs a few times. She has memorized all 3 levels very quickly. These DVDs amaze me! She is not reading. She has simply memorized the site words.