Damian Daily

Preschool Prep Company has created a series of educational DVDs that focuses on teaching sight words to young children.  Sight words are commonly used short words in the English language that do not always follow traditional rules and are typically better learned through sight recognition rather than phonetically sounding them out.  Examples of sight words are “of,” “the,” and “you.”

The first DVD is titled “Meet the Sight Words 1” and features sixteen frequently used sight words.  The colorful animated graphics and repetitive use of the words throughout the video seem to be an effective means for teaching these sight words.  Though this DVD is recommended for children ages 15 months to 6 years, it seems geared for kindergarten or pre-kindergarten education.

As is always the case when I am sent kids products for review, I went straight to my resident experts — my five-year-old and two-year-old daughters.  Being designed for the kindergarten classroom or supplemental educational tool for kindergartners, I expected my five-year-old to show an interest in “Meet the Sight Words.”  What surprised me, however, was how fascinated my two-year-old was by the DVD.  It quickly became her favorite thing to watch, and she requested it over and over again for weeks on end.  In fact, at age two, she now recognizes several of the sight words in the video, as well as the individual letters and the sounds that correspond with them, thanks to this educational video program.

It seems to me that shows designed for children have raised the bar and developed into something significantly more educational than the choices I had as a kid.  With the exception of perhaps “Sesame Street,” it seemed that most of the offerings of my generation featured animated characters beating each other to a near-death pulp.  “Meet the Sight Words” is far beyond that genre of programming, yet it still manages to effectively capture the interest of young children.  Speaking as both a professional product reviewer and a mother of young children, “Meet the Sight Words 1″ receives my hearty recommendation.