Suburban Reviews

We love our Wii. It’s probably the first system we’ve owned that I’ve spent any kind of real time playing. When Parent Bloggers Network offered me the chance to check out the new Boogie game for the system, I wasted no time accepting. This had to be good!

The game comes packaged with a microphone, the game, and 2 pairs of 3-D glasses. There is a 3-d effect in the music editing section, so I can say from experience if you plan to try that, keep them away from my your 2 year old or they may get torn up like tissue paper misplaced. *ahem*. The mic is corded, something that takes a few minutes to get used to, but not something you will even notice once you are acclimated.

Once you start, there are several options for activities. You create a character from a pretty limited selection of heads and clothes, and then chose from either karaoke, dancing, or story mode. Story mode tells the story of each character as you go through 3 sets of dancing and 2 sets of singing, to songs the Wii game picks.

The dancing I think is both the easiest and the hardest part of the game. Your natural inclination is to dance, but as I sat and played with it, I realized it is scoring you by your hand movements staying on the beat of the song. You literally can stand still and move just your hands up and down, and if you do it right, score really well. Maybe that’s a good thing for those of us who are, let’s say less than coordinated.

As far as the karaoke, I have very mixed feelings on it. I loved a few of the more recent songs, but I really, truly have a problem with the fact that they are heavily edited versions. So edited that it causes problems for those of us who know the songs by heart, and are left stumbling when huge chunks of lyrics are just missing. If the songs are so objectionable, why include them? There are plenty of current, somewhat child-friendly songs out there that wouldn’t involve butchering the music. Maybe this is where parental controls could come in? Don’t get me wrong, I am all about kid friendly games, particularly with having three children and owning every game system on the market. But I think when you are trying to make games that appeal to the whole family, you can’t just cater to the lower end, there has to be a good draw for adults to play too. Nintendo seemed to try to compensate for this by including older songs like YMCA, ABC, Brick House, and a few other 70’s and 80’s songs that were just before my time. Overall I just was not thrilled with the music selection, and sincerely hope they will be offering music packs in their download store in the near future.

That aside, the actual singing part was fun! Provided you aren’t shy. And you have a decent voice. And being slightly inebriated would help too. Lacking all that, I simply waited until my husband went out of town, and after the kids went down I tortured the dogs with my howling, complete with a cold and sore throat. Just from knowing the songs I picked I was able to score pretty high, and despite how bad I sounded, I had fun. So much fun I actually played it for about an hour straight, a rare thing for me.

Aside from the music choices the biggest downside for me was that I am NOT someone comfortable with performing in front of people. Obviously not Nintendo’s fault, but if you are not up for being goofy and looking foolish in the name of good fun, you might not enjoy the game that much. I would highly recommend getting it for the kids, all three of mine tried it and had a good time with it. The more outgoing members of our family had a blast with it also, and this really would make an amazing party game if you are into karaoke.

Head over to the Boogie site to check it out, and be sure to stop by the Parent Bloggers Network and see what others are saying about this game!

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In this day and age of Baby Einstein videos and educational toys, one thing is clear- we all want our children to reach their fullest potential. We start our children listening to classical music before they enter the world, we make sure our crib mobiles are black and white so our 3 day old infants can see them properly, and we start reading to them within weeks, all in the name of “smarter babies”. It’s not surprising then that there are actually videos on the market claiming to be able to teach these babies to read. Yes, you heard me, to read. The Infant learning Company, Inc is making such a claim with it’s Your Baby Can Read dvd series, and as part of the Parent Bloggers Network, I got to put them to the test.

Each Your Baby Can Read dvd comes with the dvd and a set of pull-out flash cards. The disk itself consists of sections for both parents and children. The parents portion explains how to use the video with the cards. I admit I was a little taken back when I viewed this section, as it’s creator suggests that to get the full effect, the video should be played 1-2x per day, and no other tv should be watched. At this point I started to laugh; the guy is obviously a first-time father.

(We all had those no-tv-and-only-educational-when-it-is ambitions with our firsts. By the third child, Dora rules the roost.)

I put the dvd in the first time not expecting a lot. After viewing the parent’s portion is seemed like it would be just a lot of words on the screen. Boy was I wrong! Instead I was shown videos that dare I say it, put the Baby Einstein series to shame. The words are there, shown first before the delightfully engaging clip of the animal, object, or action. We especially loved the animal ones; ‘pig’ is a very easy word to pick up, and the shot of the baby pigs nursing made my boys giggle uncontrollably. In between the narrators ask questions such as “Do you know what color the baby ducks are?” to keep the children interested. For my 4 and 2 year olds, I have to say this was the most truly interactive video, ever. It kept them watching and participating through the entire 30 minutes, no easy feat for a 4 and 2 year old!

The flash cards were also enjoyed, but admittedly not as much as the video. They liked the pictures, and didn’t mind sitting still for short sessions of reading the word and then viewing the picture. The way they are put together is a problem though. They are very durable, but one of them stuck for us, and I still do not know what the horse looks like, as we’ve not been able to open at that card at all. Other cards had minor sticking that we were able to open without breaking, and overall I thought they were well-made.

My 4 year old is I *think* starting to pick up a few words, but is very hit or miss. Sometimes he seems to recognize them, sometimes not. My 2 year old is not picking up any at all yet, but we’ve not been able to manage the twice a day viewing either, so it may just take longer when you are doing it a few times a week.

That’s not to say we got nothing out of it. In fact we had a very surprising outcome, in that they have turned out to be a wonderful speech therapy tool! My 4 year old has verbal apraxia, and has been in speech therapy for nearly two years. It has become second nature for us to incorporate sounding out words and having him repeat things in our day to day life, and this has become a wonderful supplement to that. When the narrator reads a word on the screen, my son will immediately repeat it back, and with him, repetition is key. In addition, my 2 year old would repeat everything his brother would say, so it ended up being great vocabulary practice for both of them.

I am not one to push educational toys and reading to your child the minute they are expelled from the womb, but as far as these things go, the Your Baby Can Read dvd sets actually have some value. Some kids will start recognizing words right away, some like mine may benefit more from the verbal vocabulary building parts, and still others may enjoy this as just a truly entertaining and worthwhile educational video. As long as you can take the instructions with a grain of salt, I would recommend these to anyone with small children. They really were a delightful find, and I thank Parent Bloggers Network for allowing us to be a part of this one, because I will be purchasing more of the dvd sets in the future.

Interested parents can find Your Baby Can read dvds and books on the Infant Learning Company website. Each dvd can be purchased for $14.95, or special muti-disk set prices are also listed. Either way they are well worth it!