When I first encountered Baby Einstein I was extremely skeptical of its value. My beginning experience was my sister using it basically as a babysitter while she took care of other things in the house. I watched my infant niece zone out as she watched toys dance around the screen to music. Initial thought: “What a marketing scam. They have produced a $2 video and sold it for $20, saying it will build your baby’s brain because it has classical music.” Now that I have experienced several different videos in line my feelings have changed a little since my first meeting with Baby Einstein… Thanks to Baby Newton.
Baby Einstein
The premise of the Baby Einstein line of videos is that classical music enhances brain development for young children. Each video is made up of flashes of familiar objects (or some dancing across the screen) such as toys, puppets and children set to classical music. First, I would like to clarify that it is not just classical music that builds baby’s brain but the interactions baby has when the music is played. Many times I have seen this video series used as a babysitter. This is not the recommended usage.
So onto Baby Newton… Recommended for infants 9 months and up Baby Newton is a 30 minute show that teaches about shapes. I have found this video to be a good introduction to shapes and a much better production than others in the Baby Einstein line. The straight classical music videos (Baby Mozart, Baby Bach etc…) are primarily toys being manipulated or some sort of special effects. Occasionally a baby is on the screen. The camera shows the toy from many angles and then, just when you are tired of it and they have moved on…. they show it again. Not really my idea of educational. Baby Newton is set up slightly different.
I Know My Shapes…. Oh Yes I Do
What sets the video apart is the way the show is laid out. A computer animated clown, who has a cute little personality, introduces 5 different shapes to infants while using them in some manner i.e. the rectangle becomes a music book. The shapes shown are circle, square, oval, rectangle, and triangle. The screen then fades to various clips of objects of the highlighted shape. Examples from the circle series include a basket of dumping oranges, bubbles floating, and a girl on a tire swing. Many of the clips used come from the National Geographic library. Everything has bright, vivid colors so they are appealing to infants and toddlers. Since each shape is like a separate episode, it was easy to tell my son “after the square is done it is time to get a bath.” Each “episode” lasts approximately 5-7 minutes. My son now at 2 years old, can identify several shapes included in the video.
Oh Those Puppets
To help provide transition from one scene to another small “puppet shows” are included. I think these are the biggest waste of DVD space. The time could have been much better spent with more on the actual shapes. One or two are cute but the others are inaccurate and annoying to me. Usually we skip over these. In the beginning my son could care less about them but seems to like them now.
Our Love of Baby Newton
My son started watching Baby Newton when he was about a year old. When we first introduced it, he just HAD to watch it every night. Because of the classical music, the video has a calming effect, which was nice during the teething times. While watching, generally either myself or my husband were with Little Man. We would always talk about the shapes on the screen and what was happening in the clips as well as mentioning what colors were on the screen. This is good for vocabulary growth as well as shape (and color) recognition. My son actually said one of his first words “bobbas” (aka bubbles) while watching Baby Newton. We have since moved on to more action filled kid videos such as Bob the Builder and Veggie Tales but Baby Newton resurfaces every-so-often.
What’s on the DVD?
Our partcular version of Baby Newton is fairly old as it was handed down. Current Baby Einstein videos contain extras including flash cards, the toy box (scens of toys from the video) and puppet shows (the puppet shows from the video). Also DVD’s do have some advertisement for additional Baby Einstein products. Most Baby Einstein DVD’s retail from $14.99 o 19.99 and can be purchased almost anywhere children’s products are sold.
