Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #8097 in VHS
• Released on: 2000-10-16
• Rating: Universal, suitable for all
• Number of discs: 1
• Format: PAL
• Number of tapes: 1
• Running time: 27 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
If you've been around babies in the last few years, you will have seen these newfangled toys that are abstract in colour (or just black, white and red) and make curious, crunching noises. Studies have shown these types of toys stimulate new-borns, expanding the capacity of their little sponge-like minds, a concept that comes to the video age in Baby Einstein. This 30-minute tape is called a "video board book" and the creators instruct parents of babies from one to 18 months old to huddle around the TV while it plays, pointing out objects and interacting with the child as you would with a book. Bright toys, patterns, blocks, and the like move across the screen accompanied by natural sounds, music and voices. English, Japanese, Russian, German and other languages are heard telling nursery rhymes or counting to 20. Now, the creators don't expect your baby to recite "Humpty Dumpty" in Spanish by the end of the tape but, as they state in the introduction, hearing different languages invigorates a baby's mind. These educators went on to combine classical music with their program on Baby Mozart. --Doug Thomas

Synopsis
Designed to be entertaining and stimulating to children from the age of 0-36 months, this programme combines language, natural sounds, classical music and visuals of nature, animals and toys.

From the Back Cover
At The Baby Einstein Company, we believe in giving babies the opportunity to experience the greatest forms of human expression - music, poetry, language and art - in a baby-friendly way. Baby Einstein is a delightful, creative introduction to the sounds of foreign language that will stimulate your baby in uniquely positive ways. Based on recent language acquisition research and infant visual preferences, this video presents visually stimulating toys, interesting kinetic art and photographs set to spoken passages, music and natural sounds. The audio includes nursery rhymes sung by mothers in their native languages of English, French, German, Hebrew, Japanese, Russian and Spanish.

tBaby Einstein is part of The Baby Einstein Learning Laboratory, an integrated family of products that includes award-winning Video Board Books, audio recordings, flash cards and books. Baby Einstein is a "Video Board Book" for parents and babies to use together or for babies to view independently. The video images are based on known infant visual preferences - bold patterns, colourful toys and real-world objects that your baby may recognize. Some images teach concepts, like prediction (what happens when the button on a jack-in-the-box is pushed) and object permanence (things continue to exist even when they are out of sight). We suggest that you interact with your baby as you watch Baby Einstein together. Point to objects and name them, move your baby's hands and feet to the sounds of the train, and bounce your child on your lap as you both respond to the music, sounds and visuals. There is nothing more important than the time you spend interacting with your baby, so have fun and be creative!

Research has shown that infants have a natural ability to distinguish and assimilate the sounds of all languages, but that this ability begins to fade as babies grow older. With this in mind, the audio component of Baby Einstein was crafted to expose infants to a multitude of phonemes (the sounds of human language) in a fun, baby-friendly way. There are more than 100 phonemes, not all of which are present in any single language. According to research, repeated exposure to these sounds will help form dedicated connections in the brain's auditory cortex. Please note this video is not designed to teach foreign language. Rather it is crafted to stimulate your baby in unique, delightful ways through exposure to the sounds of several languages.

To extend the learning process, some visuals and the languages featured in Baby Einstein are used in the unique set of Baby Einstein flash cards.

Customer Reviews

stimulating for baby - time out for mum!
My, now 1 year old, has been watching this and Baby Mozart and Baby Bach from the age of a few weeks. They have captivated him from the outset and provided me with 20 or so precious minutes of 'time-out' (yes, I know you are supposed to interact with the baby whilst watching the video, but I'm not perfect!). One year on, and we have 'progressed' to Baby Van Gogh and Shakespeare - with the same amazing results. We have loads of other children's videos (Teletubbies, Tweenies, Bear in the Big Blue House, etc) but NONE hold his attention the way these do and as a result, he is enthralled by all classical music where-ever he hears it.

Not as good as I expected after Baby Mozart and Baby Bach
6 weeks ago I bought my baby girl, now 8 eight months old, the Baby Mozart, Baby Bach and Baby Einstein videos. She enjoys watching Baby Mozart best and also likes Baby Bach, but I'm afraid Baby Einstein does not keep her attention for long. As a qualified linguist, I also question the uncontextualized use of foreign languages on the video: watching and hearing people count and say the alphabet in various languages while watching a static flower or other picture has no purpose, really, and will most probably not encourage language acquisition. While I would recommend Baby Mozart and Baby Bach, I would not do so for Baby Einstein.

Excellent way to calm down your kids and have a quiet time
This video is excellent. The music and images immediately attract my children's attention. My three year old tries to recite the words to the songs. She listens intently to the foreign language versions of songs that she already knows. My one year old focuses on the pictures and has started to try and call out the names of the things he can see on the screen.

I'm not a big fan of pushy educational materials for kids, and I certainly wouldn't want to force learning on them for the sake of it. But this video is fun, they genuinely like it, and they will sit quietly to watch and listen.

I've also found it really helps at the end of the day to calm down overexcited children before bedtime. I even find it quite relaxing myself!