A little while back I shared a review with you of Little Pim’s language DVDs. It gets 5-stars from me and both of my kids. Check out my review to see why they love it so much (cute stuffed animals, colorful books, and lots of learning are just a few reasons). We had such success with the Spanish DVD, book, and music CD that Little Pim offered to send our family another DVD to supplement the one we already had, plus some flashcards. Ladies and gentlemen, we have two more winners!
I really love this company and their products for a bunch of reasons. First of all, I’m a big believer in feeding kids’ brains. They can absorb a lot more than you think at such a young age. I love having the tools I need to keep them challenged and learning. They get so excited when they learn a new word (and so do I!). Language, while a bit trickier to learn as you get older, comes more naturally when you’re young. So introducing kids to a second language when they’re primed to soak it all in is ideal.
Now if you’re anything like me you think of your 9th grade Spanish class when you think about learning a new language. Yuk. I’m not going to lie. Not my favorite class, not my favorite teacher. But boy did I think I was the coolest when I could string together a few sentences in Spanish. And, thankyouverymuch, I still remember a fair amount. But it was boring. You know that kind of learning won’t fly with little kids. And this brings me to the next thing I love about Little Pim: They provide so many different kinds of learning tools, there’s something that will click with every child’s learning style. So far we’ve enjoyed DVDs, music CDs, books, and flashcards. I think it’s great that they cater to all learning styles and help parents make it easy to reinforce new skills in different ways.
My kids like to watch the Spanish DVDs and pick up some new words because they are repeated often and paired with a picture of the object. We got the Spanish Disc 5: Happy, Sad & Silly to check out and this is really a fun one. My kids totally latched onto the panda bear, Little Pim, when we first started using these products. In this video two more sweet characters are introduced: Bob the Bobcat and Lola the Elephant. I really like this particular video and so do my kids. I find that watching videos is more of a passive learning experience. I can try to interact with the kids while they’re watching, but let’s face it: You put the kid in front of the TV and all eyes are on the TV. This video, however, gave lots of opportunities for me to reinforce what was being taught while the video was on. I think this was a result of the subject matter. The video shows kids laughing, being happy, waving, and other actions and emotions. So for example, when the kids on the video were waving and saying “el saludo” I could wave to my kids and they’d wave back to me and I might say, “Leo saludo.” We all liked that about this video. Lots of active learning which is not always the case with kids’ DVDs.
We have also had great success teaching new words with the Little Pim flashcards. These might be my favorite of their products. First, from a practical standpoint, they are sturdy so they won’t get destroyed by little hands and they come in a nice little box with a cover that keeps them all in one place. That’s easy clean up and earns a bonus star in my book just for that. I’ve bought my kids flashcard sets when they were babies and they didn’t come in any kind of carrying case and I had to put them all in a plastic bag. Not pretty. So I just like the way this set is put together.
There are LOTS of cards included here , 60 of them, and what I did was choose about five words to start with and we’d practice them for a period of time and then add one or two more new words once the kids were confident to move on. I think that confidence is key. They can’t learn them ALL at one time and we all know when you overwhelm your kids they shut down. That’s not just mine, is it?! I really like that this set includes such a wide variety of words so you can start with some pretty easy confidence-builders and slowly add to it at your child’s own pace. Given the number of words included they won’t outgrow it too fast and you’ll have learning material there for months! My first-grade daughter loves to be quizzed on her weekly spelling and vocab words and now we throw in some Spanish words, too. The flashcard set comes with a Parent Guide to give you some tips on how to make the most of this new learning tool. One morning I caught my daughter practicing her new Spanish words before she went to school. My son quickly joined in, too. She likes to play teacher so this is just perfect!
Little Pim makes language kits in Spanish, French, Chinese, Italian, German, Japanese, Arabic, Hebrew, Russian, English and Portuguese. Plus they have digital downloads available for your iPhone, iPad, or iPod. They’ve even got apps for LeapFrog devices! Explore the Little Pim website to learn more about these awesome early language sets and their teaching methods. Then be sure to follow Little Pim on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and YouTube to be the first to hear about their latest products and promotions! If you’ve got little kids in your life these language sets are a fantastic investment in your child’s education!
I was provided with a complimentary Little Pim Gift Set to facilitate this review. The opinions in this post are 100% mine. You can read my full disclosure policy here.
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