An all-new edition in the excellent Baby Einstein series,
Baby Van Gogh is a wonderful developmental video designed for infants,
babies, and toddlers. This time around, focus is on the brilliant world of color.
And what better classic artist to feature in a video all about colors than Vincent
Van Gogh? Known to have been a brilliant colorist, Van Gogh's use of pure, bright
color can be appreciated by even the youngest viewers.
With a combination of art, music, video, and poetry, The Baby Einstein company
has produced a fantastic video and book set. With Vincent Van "Goat"
as the puppet guide, young children are exposed to stimulating sights and sounds.
The program is divided into 6 vignettes, each devoted to a particular color
and featuring a playful rendition of a Van Gogh masterpiece (including such
delights as "The Starry Night" and "Fourteen Sunflowers in a Vase").
This engaging video presents a parade of colorful strawberries, flowers, hot
air balloons, flamingoes and more. Striking scenes from nature, colorful and
exciting toys, as well as real children capture the attention of young viewers.
Each vignette presents the featured color in word-form creatively appearing
on the screen. A pleasing succession of natural scenes and trademark moving
toys follows, as well as a sequence in which Vincent Van Goat paints his own
version of a Van Gogh masterpiece with a special focus on that color. A poem
is clearly recited with an emphasis on the feelings and moods that are commonly
associated with individual colors. Accompanying music and poems help define
the segment and clearly express the colorful "feelings". Interludes
are playful and do an excellent job of breaking up the segments and keeping
a young child's attention. We love the fact that each sequence is relatively
short and strung together in such a way that different styles are mixed —
that is, a word may be followed by a demonstration of a toy, a graphic animation,
then a nature scene. This keeps young children (whose attention spans haven't
fully developed) engaged and stimulated.
As with previous videos released by this company, the musical component of
Baby Van Gogh features re-engineered classical music by major composers like
Strauss, Brahms, and Tchaikovsky. Played on toys, the music is playful and designed
to bring out the creative and artistic side of any young child. Zany sound effects
and clear narration from the creator Julie Aigner-Clarke herself help round
out the audio component of this video.
The book that accompanies this video features beautiful photography and illustrations,
as well as expressive poems by Clarke. It follows the video sequentially, and
parents will enjoy sharing it with their children. Though a board book may have
been more practical for this age group, the book nonetheless provides an excellent
extension activity that not only helps reinforce concepts learned in the video,
but also serves as a gentle reminder to parents that the best kind of learning
is multi-sensory and interactive.
The addition of written words that are then spoken and illustrated through
an animation is wonderful — while one cannot expect that young children
will learn to "read" these words, this video can help impress upon
children that written words are not just scribbles, but rather they have real
meaning and can be associated with objects, actions, people, and so forth.
Many parents will enjoy the fact that the objects chosen for the video are
real — in my own experience, some of my favorite "baby books"
were actually photography manuals. Infants and toddlers, although attracted
to some animations, seem to respond to real objects more readily and spiritedly.
The intent is to use the video as a "video board book". At least
for the first few viewings, parents can sit their toddlers on their laps and
point out objects as they would when showing them a board book. Younger toddlers
are not expected to sit and watch the whole video in one sitting.
