Baby Einstein

I already got the following videos of Baby Einstein :

Baby Einstein Baby Da Vinci
Baby Einstein Baby Galileo
Baby Einstein Baby Monet
Baby Einstein Baby Newton
Baby Einstein Baby Shakespeare
Baby Einstein Baby Van Gogh
Baby Einstein Baby Wordsworth
Baby Einstein Language Nursery
Baby Einstein Numbers Nursery

Truth is, whatever the hype about it I was never interested in purchasing one since Playhouse Disney is already keeping the little girl busy. But one time a fellow blogger (who I met through the Tens on Tuesday meme) told me that Baby Einstein Van Gogh is a nice aid to teach Anevay colors.

So, I started downloading it through μ . But I am losing my patience so I thought of purchasing even just the Van Gogh. Last Saturday, I got a chance to go to Fully Booked in Gateway and look for the video. And like Vannie, I really took a step backward seeing the price in black and white. Although I knew beforehand the price, still, I can't believe that a DVD is that expensive.

With that I told myself just to patiently download and fortunately I got the 100% and was able to play the videos. I played the Van Gogh and the princess enjoyed it because of the puppet but I am not sure if Anevay learn a thing. Yap, I only played it once but my baby is good on picking up something from what she watched. And I don't like the fact that there are only few words being spoken during the duration of the show. The music dominates the video. I tried to watch every video and its the same. Less talk. Then I remembered one of the mommy blogs I visited during MommyFest and it talks about the study regarding Baby Einstein and Brainy Baby. I searched and saw this :

Baby Einsteins: Not So Smart After All

The claim always seemed too good to be true: park your infant in front
of a video and, in no time, he or she will be talking and getting smarter than
the neighbor's kid. In the latest study on the effects of popular videos such as
the "Baby Einstein" and "Brainy Baby" series, researchers find that these
products may be doing more harm than good. And they may actually delay language development in toddlers.

Led by Frederick Zimmerman and Dr. Dimitri Christakis, both at the
University of Washington, the research team found that with every hour per day
spent watching baby DVDs and videos, infants learned six to eight fewer new
vocabulary words than babies who never watched the videos. These products had
the strongest detrimental effect on babies 8 to 16 months old, the age at which
language skills are starting to form. "The more videos they watched, the fewer
words they knew," says Christakis. "These babies scored about 10% lower on
language skills than infants who had not watched these videos."

Read the rest of the report, here.

After watching all the videos in my own opinion I think it won't be wise for infants who are still learning to speak to watch this. Or if they would watch this, a parent or an adult is there to help the baby understand what is being shown. On my experience it is best to accompany the baby while he/she is watching to guide her into learning and speaking.

Yesterday, I let Anevay enjoy the videos. I hear her giggle many times because of the puppets. But what really gave me joy was that she was able to identify almost all pictures being shown. Which really surprised me. But I decided to just continue teaching Anevay colors rather than getting help from Baby Einstein. kasi nde ako makakita ng good software to convert avi file to vcd. Heck! I can't find my NERO installer. haha! And for this videos I save (Php 1300 x 9) a lot!

But if you would asked me what videos Anevay watched. Well, its the ABC video from BUMBLEEBEE. I bought it for only Php 100 when she was I think six months. That video familiarized Anevay with the alphabets and some words. To this day we sometimes watched the video and from there Anevay picked up her now favorite word "AMAZING" among other expression.