I’m bummed that Nick Jr. started showing commercials. Sure, there were some sponsorship messages, but those were very limited in quantity. The promotional items for other programs airing on Nickelodeon didn’t bother me much either. But now that Nick Jr. airs commercials, we don’t watch that channel much. Now we get two new DVDs of Nick Jr. programs that are not only educational and entertaining, but help to recreate that glorious time when there weren’t nearly as many commercials on the network.
Nickelodeon Let’s Learn ABCs and Nickelodeon Let’s Learn 123s are two new DVDs that are more educational in focus than some of the previous themed DVD releases. Here’s the episode breakdown for each DVD.
Let’s Learn ABCs
Team Umizoomi – To The Library
Dora The Explorer – ABC Animals
Blue’s Clues – Blue’s ABCs
Go, Diego, Go – Linda The Librarian
Ni Hao, Kai-Lan – Kai-Lan’s Big Play
Wonder Pets – Save Humpty Dumpty/Save The Itsy Bitsy Spider
Let’s Learn 123s
Team Umizoomi – Counting Comet/Super Soap
Dora The Explorer – Pepe’s School Day Adventure
Blue’s Clues – Numbers Everywhere
Go, Diego, Go – Three Little Condors
Wonder Pets – Save The Old White Mouse
While the episode counts may be off, both DVDs have similar run times (137 and 138 minutes, respectively) so don’t think you’re getting shorted. Both DVDs come with “activity pages” inside, essentially just the inside of the DVD slip cover as a small work sheet. The 123s DVD concerns matching numbers with groups up to 5 and the ABCs has kids tracing letters up to “h” – which I feel in both instances falls short of what these should be and points to my problem. In most cases, the stuff just isn’t complete. When teaching number sense, you have to go up to 10 and less than half the alphabet isn’t going to help any child out.
On the first DVD Team Umizoomi kicks things off with a trip to the library and while there’s some alphabetical fun there, it’s mostly about numbeer recognition, which is the show’s strength (being one of the more directly educational shows on the network). Dora actually goes through the whole alphabet in her adventure which is nice, and Blue and Steve solve a typical mystery, but this time there are a lot of words on the screen. Diego has an adventure getting books to the library with a llama, and Kai-Lan puts on a play based on the Monkey King folk tale. Lastly, the Wonder Pets involve themselves with nursery rhymes.
The only episode on this DVD that deals with the alphabet is Dora, which is bothersome. Why would you label this as educational for the alphabet if most of the programs on here don’t do anything to address the theme?
The second DVD Team Umizoomi start off counting up to 5, and end the episode by counting to 11, then 15 and finally 25, but there just isn’t much other counting in the episode unfortunately. The second Team Umizoomi episode played out almost exactly like an episode of Dora, and with virtually no counting. Dora goes to school, and counts from 7 to 10, but here again we don’t get much actual counting (but some measuring in math class does occur). Blue and Joe don’t do a lot of sequential number introduction, count a lot of items and introduce number recognition and addition and subtraction. Diego helps 3 baby condors get home (and magically lifts the sun) and the Wonder Pets round things off by saving a mouse.
Repetition is key to early learning, and these DVDs just don’t offer enough of it. Despite this, I still recommend them. Why? Because they are decent shows, and at over 2 hours each they can occupy a youngster for a decent chunk of time without commercials. Just don’t substitute any of this for actual educational opportunities.