Parental Review of BabyPro Educational DVDs

A New Concept in Infant/Toddler DVDs

BabyPro DVDs were created by Mom/PhD Lara Hayes Needham in an effort to instill in babies and toddlers an early desire to be physically active. The series combines classical music, vivid sports imagery, and voice-overs to provide an engaging introduction to sports and active play. In addition to helping children develop an interest in sports and activity, the voice-overs describe simple actions and items, helping baby learn about words and corresponding movements and objects.

Uniquely, BabyPro follows a progression for each sport from baby to pro. For example, in the section about dancing, babies are first shown jumping around and waving their arms to music. Big kids are then seen learning dance steps, practicing dance numbers, and performing. Finally professional ballerinas and other dancers exquisitely perform beautiful ballet and other dance numbers. Thus, babies and toddlers see a form of the sport which they can already participate in, allowing them to jump into the fun right away. They also see an ideal that can inspire them to want to learn and practice so that they can perform like a pro someday.

• "Let’s Play Ball" - Highlights baseball, basketball, and soccer
• "Let’s Make a Splash" - Introduces babies and toddlers to swimming, diving, and surfing
• "Let's Dance & Tumble" - Features cheerleading, dance, and gymnastics

BabyPro provides a strong and clear example of the different highlighted sports in a way that will absolutely get toddlers excited about being active. (The imagery of babies, kids, and activity will likely hold baby’s attention too.) Children learn by example and have an innate desire to mimic. Nothing will awaken this desire like watching babies having fun, big kids practicing hard, and pros performing fantastic sport and dance moves.

The “Let's Dance & Tumble” DVD does briefly show a couple of little girls’ jazz groups doing adult style moves in costumes that might raise some parents’ eyebrows. The numbers are shown for a brief time in a montage of other dancers and dance styles, however, and the dances are probably not too far out of the norm for the jazz dance style of the age group (unfortunately).

The baby to pro concept is brilliant, and after watching the DVDs, older toddlers will be begging to play on a sports team or take dance lessons. BabyPro DVDs inspire kids to get off the couch and become active better than any DVD I’ve seen on the market so far. The videos will especially appeal to parents who have a love for sports and want to pass along the enthusiasm to their kids.

• For toddlers, expanding on the concepts in the DVDs is pretty obvious, play the sport with them. For babies, parents can set up activities like rolling a ball back and forth with them, setting up the sink or tub so they can splash around, or dancing with them. When parents take the time to play with their children after watching the DVDs, babies and toddlers alike will be overjoyed at the attention and the chance to fully experience the active fun they just watched on TV.

*For additional information about BabyPro products, visit their website at http://www.babyprosports.com/.