MonkiSee Baby’s First Words

God has created babies with an incredible ability to learn new things. Just think about it. Everything is new to a baby! They are exposed to new sights, sounds, tastes, smells, and textures daily. In the first years of life, children develop faster than at any other time. They learn to sit, crawl, and walk. They go from eating only milk to feeding themselves a variety of solid foods. They learn to talk. They learn to read.

What was that?

They learn to read?

According to the Krista Guerrero, the Founder of MonkiSee, babies can learn to read. By repeated exposure to the shapes of the words in connection to concrete images of the word, babies and toddlers can learn to recognize words. And as they learn more words, they intuitively begin to understand basic phonetic rules. Like b says buh.

I received a DVD, Baby’s First Words Volume 1, and the book Know Your Monkey. Both the video and the book focus on body parts and several other familiar items to babies, like blanket, toys, and stroller.

I put the DVD in for my 4 month old to watch.

He was definitely interested!

The DVD is 30 minutes long and shows a word, like “head”, followed by various clips of children or puppets talking about or doing things related to “head“. It’s a cute show with lots of babies and children in it. The video quality is not fantastic, appearing slightly pixelated on our 32-inch high-definition television. Baby didn’t seem to care though.

So does it work? Well, I don’t know. I’m not sure exactly how you’re supposed to tell. My baby can’t talk or even point to his body parts yet, so he can’t show me that he can read the words. Though the DVD is recommended for 3 months-3 years, it would seem to be more effective at the upper part of the age range. I admittedly didn’t have him watch the video daily because I generally try to avoid early exposure to television. But as a busy homeschool mom, I do recognize that the television can help me to get a few extra minutes teaching another child. I would certainly feel much better about having my baby watch one of these MonkiSee DVD’s than Nick Jr.

Visit MonkiSee.com to see the complete product line including videos, flashcards, and books. The book, Know Your Monkey, is currently $9.95, and the First Words DVD is $19.95. A collection of all 3 DVDs is available for only $49.95.

Disclosure: I received this product to review as a member of the Homeschool Crew. I was not compensated for this post. All opinions expressed are my own.