Preschool Prep Series Collection Boxed Set (Meet the Letters, Meet the Numbers, Meet the Shapes, Meet the Colors, Meet the Sight Words 1, 2 & 3, Meet the Phonics - Letter Sounds, Digraphs & Blends

Buy this. Seriously. So, I have a 2-year-old and a 10-month-old and in typical mom fashion, I was stressing myself out with mom guilt over whether I was spending enough "educational" time with my oldest now. Sure, he is talking and can operate a DVD player or do a puzzle, but what about those specific things he's supposed to know like colors, counting, etc? I was doing the best I could but still worried that I wasn't doing "enough" when I tried and got interrupted for a nursing session with the baby. I started the search for some actual, REAL educational DVDs that I could let him watch while I wasn't physically able to sit down and focus with him. We had tried Sesame Street, Baby Einstein, etc. and I just felt like although those shows were somewhat about learning, they were still 90% just for entertainment. I read the reviews on this set and took a chance. All I can say is - WOW. It's exactly what I wanted. The videos are simple, but varied enough that it keeps my toddler's attention. There is REPETITION, which is amazing because they need to hear the word "yellow" multiple times in different settings for the meaning to really sink in. He's not quite 2 1/2, and so far we have only been watching the numbers and colors videos. He actually enjoys watching them while I am sitting down to feed his little bro, and he now knows all his colors. He loves pointing them out to me in a store and looking things up based on color in his books. We're going to focus on numbers now. He already is counting 1, 2... and can recognize by sight others like 5 and 10. My plan is to continue numbers and introduce shapes... then on to letters and sight words! If you're like me and you stress about your kids getting ahead and being prepared to learn as much as they can, this is a phenomenal set. I don't want my kids being addicted to TV so we usually only watch it while the babe is sleeping or if mama just needs a dang minute... but it works so well in a short time. Five stars so far for sure!

These dvds are AMAZING. My kids are 1, 2 and 3 years old and my 2 and 3 year olds already know numbers, colours and shapes! Definitely worth every penny, I feel it really has given them a Jumpstart on the basics. Plus, as a busy mom, it's one thing I don't mind them sitting and watching the TV for hours because it's teaching them so much.

I'm always pretty hesitant about buying stuff like this, especially when it has a bunch of high-rated reviews that read like paid shills wrote them. When the DVD set came, I was even more incredulous than before because the packaging is plastered with all kinds of different award logos from organizations I've never heard of like "Informal Education Products Award - Best Product of the Year" and "Film Advisory Board Inc. Award of Excellency - Award Winner." I have no idea what any of those are, nor have I ever even bothered to look them up. Not only that, but there were quotes taken directly from Amazon reviews on the back of the main box, which is usually a big red flag for me and indicative of some sort of scam or low-quality product. Anyway, I took the plunge on this because it had the most variety of subjects for the cheapest price. Kind of a gamble on my part, but I'm glad I did it because, astonishingly, my son wound up knowing the majority of the alphabet within a couple of weeks from just watching these videos. My wife especially was ecstatic about this because our son had just turned 2, and she had a friend that insisted he must be slow because he still tended to talk in gobboldy-gook. He almost immediately outpaced her kids after watching this DVD set, and only a couple of months after buying them he knows his ABC's, can count to 10, knows about a half dozen shapes or so, and is just way more communicative than he was before. Bizarrely, this stuff really did work and he loves all of it, constantly begging to watch ABC's and shapes and what not. The movies themselves are totally boring. Very basic, cheap, and honestly pretty lazy animation with random voices repeating words or sounds over and over again. I understand repetition is key to learning a lot of things, especially with very young children, but it's nearly unbearable watching these with him. One thing I will point out that I actually did appreciate was for the Colors and Shapes movies they had reminders to adjust your TV settings to make things appear the way they should. For example, if the square looks like a rectangle then you need to turn off forced stretching, etc. Very helpful since these are all 4:3 aspect ratio and you might have that turned on by accident. Other than that, the packaging is also cheap. It's the super thin plastic cases you see movies sold in at dollar stores. There's some pretty heavy advertising for workbooks and flashcards and multi-level DVDs and phone apps, but I haven't bothered to try any of that stuff out yet, and I'm honestly not sure if I will. At the end of the day, my rating for this is based on how my son reacts to it, the kind of stuff I've seen him learn from these movies and the excitement he has for learning now. As far as that goes, it's a definite 5.

my two years old boy loves it,I borrowed sight words 1&2 from library first,really works,he can read the sight words on those DVD in 2 weeks,so I ordered this collection.my son can watch those DVDS again and again,not let me stop it.happy purchase.thanks:]

Great teaching tool. Fun and effective. Very happy with this purchase.