DVD Picks: Mommy & Me: Fun & Friends

By Nicholas Moreau

• Mommy & Me: Fun & Friends
• Titles: Fun & Friends, Splish Splash, and Lullaby & Goodnight
• Ages: 0 to 5 years
• Producer: Madacy Kids
• Length: Approx. 40 minutes, plus bonus footage on DVD
• Release date: August 24, 2004
• DVD SRP $14.98
• Features: Educational tips from Dr. Cindy Nurik, sing alongs with on-screen lyrics, behind the scenes featurette
• Details: Live action, puppets, colour, stereo, includes non-commercial public performance rights.
• To order: Call 1 (800) 991-8766

The video series of Mommy & Me is releasing three new titles into their series today.

Set in a colourful house, the videos star real mommies with their tots, a talking flower named Rosebud, an old-fashioned looking radio named Walter, and three singing fish. The titles are based on playgroups, consisting of songs, games, and rhymes, all meant to be readily interactive.

Designed to stimulate young minds, they are meant for parent and child to play, laugh, love, and learn together. Lullaby and Goodnight is the "ultimate cure for the bedtime blues", Splish Splash "explores all things wet and wonderful", while Fun & Friends offers a unique opportunity  for "family fun and interaction while entertaining both family and child."

There's a great deal of music in each of the videos; the title I had a chance to see, Fun & Friends, has eleven songs featured. It's great how thoroughly the song selections have been thought out by producers. Take the video's first song, the classic "If You're Happy and You Know It". While I've always just known it as a fun song, it promotes emotions, aiding recognition of various body parts, following directions. It enhancing listening skills, gross motor skills, and helps to increase attention span.

Watch the video by yourself ahead of time, and let Dr. Cindy guide you through the best way to participate in your child's viewing experience. She'll explain the benefits of each of the activities, as I did above. She even suggests more way of using the songs and activities; for example at meal time, you could try "If you're hungry and you know it bang your spoon." and near bedtime, "If you're dirty and you know it take a bath."

And she knows of what she speaks. She was one of the pioneers in interactive parent/child playgroups. When the idea first emerged, she opened a Parent-Child Enrichment Center in Florida in 1979. The centre grew more and more popular, morphing into the Mommy & Me Company, devoted to providing activities, information and products that inspire parents to use play as a way to make the most of the one-on-one time they spend with their children.

Back with Fun & Friends, What's That Sound is a self-explanitory guessing game, that "will help your child build listening and language skills." Rhyming songs like "This Old Man" are to teach "receptive vocabulary", while the song "Do Re Mi" teaches the sofage system of learning music. A tea party teaches manner, social, and conversational skills. Look up at clouds, to find familar shapes and animals is not only relaxing, but it promotes imagination.

Probably my favourite segment is the wonderfully illustrated and told "The Musicians of Bremen", based on a fairy tale from the Brothers Grimm.

Frankly, the talents of comedian voices Tim Conway (4-time Emmy Award-winner, The Carol Burnett Show) and Caroline Rhea (Sabrina, The Teenage Witch, Hollywood Squares, The Caroline Rhea Show) seem somewhat under-utilised, almost undesirable accessories at times. While their characters are used regularly, they seemed flat, even for preschool targetted productions. Admittingly, my hopes are a little overstrung, being a major fan of Caroline.

Still, the people at Mommy & Me achieve the series' goals with amazing ease and grace, creating an enriching experience, rather than just an average video.

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