Friday Post - Whistlefritz Program

So, we took out the "Dedans Dehors" DVD by Whistlefritz and it's pretty great.  I've had such bad luck with French DVD's for kids, but this basically met all my needs.

It isn't perfect.  The animation is pretty cheap, but at least they didn't try to make it 3D.  The acting is so hokey, but my daughter really enjoys all the fake laughter for some reason, and even mimics the French lady's laugh.  The songs are okay: not inspired, but actually mildly educational.

The big difference between this program and any other DVD we've seen is that it focuses on some basic concepts, has a lot of repetition, and works the concepts and needed repetition into a narrative.  It's methodical, so that by the time you're finished a video, especially if you've seen it a couple of times, you can come up with a few sentences.

For instance, they count cookies.  Every time the lady counts the cookies, one of the kids steals one, and she ends up counting to a different number.  So she repeats the counting, she repeats the phrase "Where is the cookie", and she also talks about how they are eating the cookies, so that the whole segment ties into other segments about eating.



I really can't stand watching it because of the dreadful acting.  My daughter has seen it 3 times and excitedly brings it up in conversation randomly.  When I ask her what they're saying on the video she says, "I don't know..." in her far away voice and with a grin on her face, because she is too embarrassed to talk about it.  A little frustrating, but a little cute.

There are only two French videos made so far.  I hope they make more and that the library stocks them.  I wouldn't say that you could learn French watching them, but they're incredibly useful for supplementing haphazard French learning at home.

Friday Post - Watch and Learn French with Professor Toto

 What the deuce.  This is the second time that I've taken a "Learn French" DVD out of the library and struck out.

Can you imagine these two characters rattling off basic vocabulary in French with only their lips moving (although Professor Toto's eyebrows and mustache move too) through the magic of Flash.  There is little to no repetition.  The accompanying graphics seem to be poorly drawn animal clip art that doesn't match the style of anything else.

Each scene is spliced with the same 3d animation of a bus with static wheels jerkily moving down the street with an angular giraffe at the wheel.  This same animation is played over and over with a different song in the background each time.

The songs aren't all that bad, except that they did the cheapest recording job, they don't have subtitles or any kind of corresponding pictures/animations to help the viewer determine what in the heck they're singing about.  In fact, there's no English on the DVD at any point.

The "Eric Goes to School" cartoon is passable.  It would be good if they actually talked about it and explained any of the words or phrases that were used.

My favourite thing by far is the giant sticker on the bottom: this DVD won 6 awards.  There is no information anywhere else to indicate which awards were won.  The list of credits is huge for something that looks like it was made by two guys in a basement with open source software and images.

Friday Post - French for Kids by the Learning Tree

This was such utter crap.  Where do I begin?

Visually offensive.  As far as I saw, which was admittedly only about 15 minutes tops, they didn't use any steady shots as backdrops when they were doing scenes with the animated dog.  So he floats weirdly over the shaky-cam.  The narrator is in the shot as a large man in a tree costume.  Why?  for branding.  Oh, and the French girl wears a beret.  Because we're learning about French culture, too, I guess.

Not very educational.  The girl wakes up, rattles off 6 sentences in French and the viewer is immediately tested on the content.  They don't tell you what she's saying, either.  They rely on the viewer to be able to quickly read the English subtitles (I say quickly; the average 10 year old might be okay).  So it isn't even for kids, really.  But the large tree-man says, "See? Learning French is easy!" afterwards, which should fix EVERYTHING, but I guess my child is dumb.

Gimmicky.  The test that we are immediately given has a long intro with 3D animated text!  You have to pick up the DVD remote and answer true or false questions.  My two year old can't wield the remote, or understand the concept of true or false, or understand 6 phrases rattled off in French with subtitles with no repetition or explanation.  When they introduced the first question, "Comment ca va means 'Hello'!", she just repeated what they said so that she was learning the false questions as if they were true.   It was kind of funny.

I can't see this video being useful for anyone under the age of 12, and anyone over the age of 12 would be so annoyed with the content.  What a giant waste of time.

Friday Post - Moving Art on Netflix

 We rely on Netflix to entertain the kids, but we're still careful about how we watch TV with them.  Most importantly, they don't get to pick their shows on their own.  They have to pick from a small selection of things that we're willing to watch with them.

One of the shows that gets requested often and that we encourage is "Moving Art"

 Moving Art is a collection of nature videos with distorted time.  We like to watch the flower one most because we can name the flowers as we watch.  It's really calming to watch.  It's especially good if kids are sick or tired or grumpy.

The music that accompanies it is a sort of fake Phillip Glass.  I dislike Phillip Glass, and this music is pretty corny, but it works well for what the videos are trying to achieve.

Friday Post - Bonjour les Amis

We found this show on Netflix.  It's fairly ancient; it spends the first ten minutes teaching kids how to use the VHS machine to pause and rewind.  Even without that segment, it's a pretty terrible show for kids.  All the character names are way too long for young beginners to pronounce, let alone remember.  They should have been named "Fille" or "Garcon".  It also is basically a course for adults with fun animals in it.  It doesn't go at a good pace for young kids, and the material is completely uninteresting.  My daughter tried really hard to like it, because it had a cat, but neither of us was really engaged.

It doesn't seem to be available on Netflix anymore, anyway.  But it got me started searching for French shows at the local library.