Review on Little Pim

I recently purchased Little Pim Spanish.  As I explained in previous blogs it's important to me that my son grows up knowing Spanish.  I had been using a 2 DVD & 1 CD set from the Your Baby Can Read company up until now.  It's not a bad set, but the same stuff over & over for the past four years gets boring. 

Someone recommended Little Pim very highly to me.  I looked into it & liked what I saw & ordered the full set.  It comes with a backpack & plush Little Pim panda bear.  These really weren't necessary, at least for my kid, but I guess some kids might get more excited when they have stuff like that. 

It comes with 6 DVDs.  My biggest concern was the length of the DVDs.  I was worried they might be really short.  I am very pleased & impressed with the DVDs.  I don't know the exact length of them, but they are plenty long, over half an hour anyways.  They are also split up into short segments.  So for younger children (it's recommended for ages 0-6 on DVDs 1-3 & ages 0-5 on DVDs 4-6) with a much shorter attention span you don't have to run the entire DVD in one sitting.  The only complaint I can see with the DVD is that it doesn't appear to be chaptered by the short segments, which would be very helpful for someone wanting to stick to the short segments rather than the DVD in it's entirety.  Edited to add: For some reason, DVDs 1-3 are not chaptered, but DVDs 4-6 ARE chaptered.  The content on the DVDs is good in my opinion.  There is the animated Panda, Little Pim, which definitely is entertaining to little kids.  And then there is video footage of mostly little kids, which is very entertaining to my kid.  It's definitely done in a way that will hold the young viewer's attention, which makes the whole kit worthwhile to me.

It also comes with 2 books.  I'm honestly not too impressed with the books.  They aren't made sturdy enough for my kid to use without tearing it up (it has lots of flaps & pull outs that will easily rip & break).  This was the same issue I had with the Your Baby Can Read books & flash cards.  I also dislike the fact that these books are trilingual.  They have everything in English, Spanish, & French.  Personally I think having French in there is confusing when you are only trying to learn Spanish. 

It also comes with a CD, which has 15 songs on it.  I absolutely adore this CD & I recommend it just as highly as the DVDs.  It has 12 songs in Spanish.  It's a wide variety of Latin music & all really well done.  Some are well known kids' songs in Spanish, but I'm not sure about all of them.  The last 3 songs are in English, the English version of 3 of the Spanish songs on the CD.  But in the case they have printed lyrics for all the songs in both English & Spanish.  And they highlight the words that are taught in the Little Pim DVDs.  I currently have this CD in my car & we listen to it when we're on the go.  My son LOVES this CD & will even ask me to turn it on.  He can easily pick out words he knows in Spanish, he will try to sing along & hum along.  There's one number song in Spanish & he always giggles & says "nuuuuummmmberrrrsss" so he clearly knows what's going on. 

And it also comes with flashcards, but those were backordered & are supposed to be shipped when available.  I'm not expecting to be thrilled with them, quality wise, since I'm not impressed with the quality of the books.  I understand that not all kids are rough & destructive with delicate items, but they really should make things sturdy for the kids that are.  Especially when it's geared for such young ages.  My kid has never been too thrilled with flashcards in general, so I'm not expecting these to be a huge hit. 

I ordered the whole big package, wanting to make sure my son had enough material to learn the content well.  It was also cheaper to order it all together like that.  But in a pinch I think you could do very well to just order the 6 DVDs, although I don't know how that compares price-wise off the top of my head. 

One last tip on Little Pim: when I visited the website it said if I signed up to receive emails I would receive a 10% coupon code.  So I did that & was prepared to receive 10% off.  Then when I was comparing Little Pim to Flip Flop Spanish (which I mention next) I visited the Little Pim website & right after that I received an email with a 20% off coupon code.  It was then that I placed my order, excited to be able to get 20% off (there was a time limit so I had to order it soon after receiving that email).  But then after I placed my order I was browsing on Facebook (& I had "liked" Little Pim on fb) & saw a coupon code for 30% off!!  So if you are planning to order it just sit back & wait until you get at least a 30% off coupon code.  I could've saved some more money had I been more patient, but I didn't want the 20% deal to expire on me! 

I did run across another company with a Spanish curriculum, called Flip Flop Spanish.  (Well I looked at quite a few, but most are outrageously priced & I didn't even seriously consider them for that reason)  I did compare Flip Flop Spanish to Little Pim prior to purchasing Little Pim.  But for a younger child I still think Little Pim is the better choice.  Flip Flop didn't have DVDs from what I could see, just CDs & workbooks mostly (I think flashcards too, which my kid isn't really into, at least not yet).  Perhaps as my son gets a little older we can do Flip Flop Spanish at that time, when he's able to do workbooks, either prior to the Alpha Omega Spanish I'm planning on purchasing, or even along with it.  Since the first CD rom from Alpha Omega spans for grades 3-6 I am worried he will finish it prior to 6th grade & get bored with it, so I think it will be good to fill in with other stuff as well during that time.

I definitely don't want to slack off & let my son get bored or give up on learning Spanish.  A lot of kids let it go as they start to get older, but I think it's mostly because there isn't a strong effort in teaching it/learning it taking place.  So I'm hoping/planning to try to keep it fun & exciting so he will want to continue to learn it.  And hopefully my own Spanish will improve as I follow along with it with him.  Then we can all talk in Spanish together & improve as we use it more. 

So once again I highly recommend the DVDs & the CD.  I don't think you will regret ordering this.  Adios! Hasta Pronto!!