I recently had the opportunity to test a product for Karen Clark, an Independent Consultant for Story Time Felts. She sent me a CD for review entitled Grandpa's Farm, available here http://www.funfelt.com/story-song-CDs.html for $12.99 which I find a very reasonable price. Most CD's you find in the store range between $9.99 and $19.99, so this price is great. I didn't receive the Felt Story Board that can also be purchased, just the CD, so I'm not able to review the interaction between the two but I can give an honest review of the CD which included a booklet with each song's lyrics printed out. (Very nice). I enlisted the help of my children ages 8, 4 and 18 months to test this product. Who better to test a children's audio CD than...well...a child?!?!? We'll start with the oldest and work our way down giving notes about each child's reaction:
My son (8) was interested for a little while but like a typical little 8 year old boy became a little bored and was ready to move on to a video game. HOWEVER! He did listen longer than I had anticipated and sang along with the song's and said that he liked the singer and the song's. I also found that he would come into the room each time the CD was playing and sit with us for awhile singing and playing. So that is a DEFINITE plus when it can grab the attention of an 8 year old boy even briefly each day! WOO HOO! +++
My next observation was of our 4 year old daughter. This is a child who LOVES music. It is in her blood but she also gets bored very easily so I was very anxious to see her reaction. And guess what? She loved this CD and listened to about half of it each time we put it on to listen. Then we would listen to the second half the next time which was simply later in the day. There is a collection of 15 songs all sung by the same singer. A woman with a very lovely voice. I think that so many songs were just a little much for one sitting but considering she wanted to listen twice in the same day, that is a really good sign! So, she WAS willing to listen to the entire CD but with an intermission halfway through. My daughter would sing each song and had to sit right beside the CD player each time. She absolutely claimed ownership of the Grandpa's Farm CD!
Now on to our 18 month old daughter. This is by far one of the best learning tools for a child this age. She sang, she danced, she had a blast singing E-I-E-I-O this week. We sing these songs regularly but having the music accompanying the song and having it sung in a very upbeat, fun way REALLY caught her attention. It didn't matter what time of day we put the CD on or if it was at home or in the car, she was going to sway to the music and belt out a tune! We have other children's CD's but Callie seemed to connect with this CD in an entirely different way than the rest, really taking in the words, the rhythm and the tune to each song.
(I apologize for the quality of the following video. I had to use my digital camera but wanted to add a little clip of our baby listening to the CD )
As you can see...sort of :0) ....she had a ball listening to the first song on the CD. And the fun continued throughout the entire song list. The 2nd song on the list, "My Favorite Animal" had the entire family singing along trying to guess which animal was the singers favorite at each verse.
Now it's mommy's turn because I have a favorite on this CD myself!
The third song entitled "The Peacock" is my most favorite. It is soothing and in my opinion would make a lovely lullaby. I found myself harmonizing and singing right along with the singer and then humming the tune throughout the day. It is a very pretty tune!
It's hard to touch on every song in one review so I will be revisiting this review in a few weeks.
But, from my testing I can say that each song is produced in a way that grabs the child's attention and creates a learning experience through sound and movement.
And with titles like "I've Got a Secret", "The Turkey Trot" and "All the little babies are born each Spring" you can tell from the get-go that it is jam packed with ear-catching, attention grabbing songs! My children loved it and as a parent, I loved it and I thank Karen for allowing me to test such a wonderful CD!
2 thumbs up!
(Graphics provided by http://www.thegraphicsshoppeclub.com/)
0 comments:
Post a Comment