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Baby Shakespeare Customer Reviews (1 - 3 of 23 Reviews)

Excellent DVD for children who may be bored by regular kids' fare...
My son began watching the Baby Einstein videos around 10-12 months old. He loved the crazy antics of the puppets as well as the visual vignettes. Out of all of them, I think Baby Shakespeare was his favorite...and it was definitely my favorite.

I was a double major in creative writing and English education in college, and I am no sucker for things that claim to be "educational" but are really just money-makeable. The poetry in this video is an excellent auditory introduction into the world of words. The way the DVD shows and says the words is really a simple but effective teaching tool, particularly for children with good visual memories, like my son. He was spelling his name and saying his alphabet before he was 2, and he now is reading on about a 3rd grade level at 4 1/2. He was BORED by a lot of kids videos, but loved loved loved Baby Shakespeare. Now that we have a new baby around the house, he still enjoys the DVDs, except he plays them in other languages. And his baby sister is already captivated by the music and colors. I RARELY will sit on the couch with her and watch TV because I know that it's not a great idea to expose babies to too much TV, but I make an exception for Baby Einstein videos (in measured amounts). I think that monitored TV viewing when it is done with the parent and child watching together and talking about what they saw, etc., can be beneficial, and these DVDs are really great tools for that sort of interaction.

How many videos will engage kids in such wide age ranges and with such varied developmental levels? Uh,not many. I see a lot of reviews here talking about how great the Baby Einstein series is for developmentally delayed kids, but it is also good for children who are precocious learners...and for kids who love silly puppets, and for kids that are interested in the music and visuals...you get the idea. Baby Shakespeare is one that is probably better for kids 12 months+ because it is, of course, so focused on words. If you are looking for a DVD to expose your child to how beautiful language can be that won't bore them to tears, turn here. Baby Shakespeare is a great tool for parents who are interested in encouraging litercy and vocabulary, even in the youngest children.

The Your Baby Can Read series is better
Baby Shakespeare introduces 12 words by showing the word, saying it and then showing images of the words. The problem is each word is introduced only once. Showing each word multiple times with a corresponding image would have reinforced the connection between the word and the image. The description says Baby Shakespeare "is aimed at exposing little tykes to the language context." It will do that for kids 2 and up, but it's not useful for babies.

An older child may be able to make the connection that a word corresponds to an object by seeing the word just once. A baby will not be able to make that connection by watching this video. Of course, Baby Shakespeare is nice visually. My baby watched this a couple of times and she did enjoy it. But I doubt she "learned" anything, which is the point of showing educational programs.

The 5 DVD "Your Baby Can Read" series is better for teaching early reading because they show the word and corresponding action or image multiple times. It's pricey but it works.

Fine but Overrated
I was a bit disappointed by this DVD. First of all, the sound balance was heavily weighted on the side of the music, so that the text was hard to hear. I did concentrate in poetry at university so I love poetry myself but I also found the poetry to be poorly selected -- not really interesting to child or adult and it went by so quickly that I can't imagine that a child would have any educational benefit from it. It seemed to be something used to make parents feel good about buying this DVD and nothing more. The rest of the DVD was really just pretty pictures and like I said earlier, poor sound quality. My child finds it OK but nothing more. I prefer some of the other Baby Einstein DVDs like Numbers Nursery.

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