It’s a rare DVD that engages (and is appropriate for) all three of my children at once. My Baby A to Z - Come Explore Shapes with Me - is that rare DVD.

CJ was my intended target audience for this DVD; it’s perfect for her. She knows her shapes, can draw them shakily, and can identify them in objects around her. She talks back to programs that ask her questions. And one of the little girls on this DVD is named Catherine. Score!

I figure Oliver would be mildly entertained. Obviously he’s nowhere near grasping the concept of shapes, but he’s a baby and babies dig puppets. Clowns, not so much - but puppets? Oh yeah.

So it was Tacy who was the big surprise. I never expected her to sit down and happily watch, and I really never expected her to get up off the sofa and make round shapes and angular shapes with her body. I didn’t expect CJ to do that either - she never obliges when Dora exhorts her to “Stand up, please!” - but she did.

Speaking of angular - and no, I’m not going to make a Sprockets joke - I love that they introduced that concept in this DVD. Angles aren’t a difficult concept in and of themselves, but kids usually learn about angles along with a whole host of other concepts and terminology - right angles, acute angles, obtuse angles - and how they relate to geometry. It’s a lot to take in at once. At least now the concept of angles will be familiar to my kids, thanks to this DVD.

The music is appealing to children, yet not at all childish, and although the visuals are a bit much for a mom who prefers to look at the inside of her eyelids while relaxing, they aren’t over the top. And again, those puppets are darned cute.

Check out the series of PBN reviews of My Baby A to Z - Come Explore Shapes with Me - and use my extra-special coupon code (SWNXHTUR) to get 20% off for yourself when you purchase through the My Baby A to Z site. Whoo!

Two things about kids: 1) They love animals; and 2) They love anything with their name on it.

CJ will point out C’s and J’s anywhere she sees them.  When she sees me at the computer, she hops onto my lap and starts pestering me to type her name.  Never mind that she thinks C-J spells “Mousie”; she’s a big fan of her name in any incarnation.

Likewise, she loves animals.  She’s more fascinated by them than Tacy was at this age.  On one of our trips to the zoo, she and a baby baboon stared at each other through the glass - until the baboon’s mother leaped at CJ, screeching in alarm.  Startled me more than it did her.

So even though I was a little dubious about this blue-haired main character named Billy, I figured a DVD filled with animal facts and several mentions of her name would be right up CJ’s alley.

Billy Blue Hair: Why Do Giraffes Have Long Necks? is an award-winning DVD (2006 iParenting Media Award, for one) hosted by Billy Blue Hair himself - an animated character whose blue hair and casual style is intended to appeal to kids.

CJ definitely enjoyed the DVD, but I’m not sure Billy deserves the credit.  I think she really dug all of the animal footage.  Oh, and hearing her name.  Not even Blue’s Clues or Dora address her by name.

For my part, I liked all the animal footage too, as well as the facts and figures.  The style of the script was a bit inconsistent though.  Billy’d be going along just fine, speaking at a kid’s level, and then all of a sudden he’d launch into a description that sounded like it was straight out of Encyclopedia Britannica.  I got the gist of it, but I’m pretty sure it would go right over most kids’ heads.

Even so, I’d rather have her watch something that she might not fully comprehend yet than something that’s completely dumbed down.  With Billy Blue Hair, Tacy can watch and not be bored out of her gourd.  Plus, it’s one of the few items that I can hand down from CJ to Oliver - as long as he doesn’t start thinking that his name is CJ, or that C-J spells “Olliepop”.

While CJ is still in speech therapy, we’ve seen her progress by leaps and bounds this summer.  Not only is she speaking in complete sentences, she’s acquired a newfound love of reading.  Well, she loves it when we read to her, that is.

But she’s also starting to consistently recognize and identify letters, and while she can’t yet put any of those letters together - except for C and J, which she insists spells “Mousie” - she’s on her way.  So it’s really important for me to encourage her, even when it means dropping everything to respond and reinforce.

Not surprisingly, I was really hoping there’d be a spot left for me in the latest PBN DVD campaign, featuring “Meet the Sight Words”.  I’m not usually a fan of kids’ DVDs - give me a Pixar movie instead, please - so that’s a testimonial to the appeal of “Meet the Sight Words” right there.

I actually haven’t watched the DVD with her, but Kyle has.  The two of them sat down to watch together while I kept tapping away at my laptop and listened in.

Not only did both of them sit still through the entire thing, repeating back the words to the screen, but CJ sat through a repeat screening immediately.  She’s asked to see the DVD again since then, and she’s also started talking specifically about “words”.

Kyle said that he really liked the animation, which is no faint compliment.  I cracked up to myself listening to the two of them repeat the words over and over with different inflections.  We’ve all been going around the house doing the same thing ever since.

Which may not be the objective of the DVD, but it’s definitely made an impression on all of us.  And if it’s helping to encourage CJ’s interest in letters and words, then it’s worth popping “Meet the Sight Words” into the player.

…but neither one of us wants to watch Barney.

Being the younger sister, CJ has had the benefit (or not, depending how you view it) of watching the same programs as her older sister Tacy. When in doubt, we screen the show geared toward the older child. That means a modest amount of Dora, very little Sesame Street, and absolutely no Barney.

Even when Tacy was younger, she didn’t watch Barney - mainly because Kyle and I couldn’t stand it. I actually don’t mind Barney himself that much; it’s BJ and Baby Bop that make me want to stick icepicks in my ears.

But we figured it was only fair to give CJ a shot at enjoying Barney, especially in the form of a DVD that contains two of her favorite things - letters (which she’s beginning to identify consistently) and animals (which she has always loved). Barney and Friends: Animal ABC’s was certainly our best bet at enticing CJ to watch that beloved big purple dinosaur.

And we tried. We screened it multiple times. We kept watching even when she had wandered away. We pointed out the animals and grooved along to the songs.

But it was all to no avail. SpongeBob Squarepants has taken away CJ’s innocence. Singing children and dancing dinosaurs hold no interest for her compared to a simpering yellow sponge and a smartypants squid.

If CJ had been the first child, and we’d shown her this DVD before ruining her with SpongeBob, I’m sure she would have loved it. As it is, my jaded three year-old has already moved on.

So long, Barney. We hardly knew ye.

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Want to win our Barney and Friends: Animal ABCs DVD? Send me an email at mothergoosemouse@gmail.com - lucky winner to be drawn at random!

And be sure to check out the other reviews of this DVD over at Parent Bloggers Network.

Some of you may be familiar with my friend Jenn’s gaming blog, Aggroqueen. Basically, Jenn’s whole family was heavily involved in the online game World of Warcraft, and since she couldn’t beat them, she joined them.

My husband is also a WoW disciple, and now that my older daughter is reading, he has introduced her to the cult community. I’ve joked about how if she had a gaming blog like Jenn’s, it would be called Aggrotot. But while I like it that she can follow the game and understands the concepts of completing quests and exchanging currency for goods, I’m still a little put off by some of the adult themes (read: violence) in the game.

So when one of my fellow PBN bloggers was unable to try out the new Knowledge Adventure game - JumpStart World - because it’s unfortunately not Mac-compatible, I have to admit I was excited to become her stand-in. She mailed her CD to me, I received it yesterday, and it went directly from mailbox to CD-ROM drive. Other than a brief overnight respite, my daughter has been glued to the PC, and instead of killing mythical creatures, she’s completing learning games and missions. She LOVES this game.

Even more impressive, the version we received is the second grade one (she’s in kindergarten), and while she’s run into a few hurdles she couldn’t quite leap on her own, she’s (forgive the expression) kicking ass and taking names - which makes her feel like a real big shot. I honestly can’t even tell you how far she’s progressed because she won’t stop playing long enough to let me check out the game for myself, but she and my husband have already told me that we need to subscribe so that she can get more adventure packs*.

While I love that she’s taking a break from WoW, I’m even happier that she’s showing such excitement for learning. She loves going to school and loves asking me millions of questions on every topic from human anatomy to world history. We’re thrilled to encourage her natural curiosity outside the context of formal education, and JumpStart World is one more great way to do that. It’s going to be a perfect diversion for her over the upcoming holiday break, which makes it an ideal holiday gift too.

*The CD and first two adventure packs are $19.95, available for grades K-2. But if you’d rather give it a test whirl before buying, check out the free trial option instead. I’m betting you and your child will be hooked.

As I posted in my first review of “Your Baby Can Read”, I’d be thrilled if my younger daughter could learn to read, but I’d settle for her learning to talk. And as I posted on my personal site, my younger daughter had her first speech therapy session yesterday. Even without therapy, she’s been making great strides. What a difference six months can make!

Likewise, her response to the Introductory and Volume 1 DVDs of “Your Baby Can Read” was impressive - suddenly she was not only clapping, but saying the word as she performed the motion. But I’ve really been impressed by how Volume 2 has helped her comprehend action verbs - a point of weakness that the therapists observed at her initial evaluation a couple months ago. She’s beginning to use those words now, whereas she previously stuck to the nouns-as-descriptors.

(And “NO!” That one’s always a favorite.)

Of course, she adores seeing the children on screen and pointing out what they are doing. And she does recognize that words are made up of letters and those letters mean something. Is she reading? I don’t know, but it actually doesn’t much matter to me. Because although I may be using the DVDs and cards for a purpose other than their original intent - teaching little ones to sight-read - when I see the ways in which they are helping her learn, I know she’s benefiting from them.

You wouldn’t know it now, but I had to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into the digital age.  An unpleasant experience with coding in my freshman year of college convinced me that technology was evil.

Fast forward fifteen years, and now I debug HTML with a minimal amount of cursing.  Strange days, indeed.

But while I’ve never fully embraced the capabilities of PDAs like my old Blackberry or my cell phone, and Kyle and I used his Palm Pilot primarily to play Dope Wars (and I will forever and ever be the top scorer!), the project manager in me loves the idea of organizing my world even more so than it is already.

Cozi Central is a free organizational software product pioneered by some former Microsoft employees.  You can use it to set up and modify family schedules, task lists, shopping lists, and even upload pictures.  Finally, everyone can be on the same page - literally.

Although it’s going to take more time for us to fully integrate Cozi into our lifestyle, I can already see plenty of ways in which we can take advantage of its capabilities.  For example, collaborating on the grocery list will be a tremendous help for us.  I also think we could use the calendar for meal planning, which goes hand in hand with grocery shopping.  That may not sound like a big deal to you, but figuring out what to have for dinner - and assessing whether we have the right ingredients - is a recurring challenge for us.

Our family schedule hasn’t yet become too unmanageable, but it soon will be.  My older daughter starts kindergarten in a few months, and with school comes a plethora of details to track - not to mention the logistics of drop-off and pick-up, and pre-school for my younger daughter, and remembering which nights Kyle works late, and I haven’t even begun to consider my own schedule yet.  Hey, maybe if we mothers input all the tasks that we handle each day, our husbands would see how busy we really are!

Speaking of tasks, that’s another feature of Cozi Central that we can really use - creation and management of task lists.  There’s always a million things that need to be done, and even though you can keep a grocery list on the refrigerator, it’s not so easy to maintain a task list that way.  You’ll probably head out to get the groceries within a week at the most, but some of those big tasks can take months to finish.  Cozi allows you to keep track of them without cluttering up the refrigerator or forgetting to finish what you started six months ago.

You may not think you need organizational software, but Cozi is free - so why not give it a try?  And give yourself a month or so to play with it and find new ways to make it fit your needs.  You just may find that you’re using your cell phone for more than Tetris and texting your partner to bring home another bottle of wine.

Cozi Central can be downloaded from their home page - the PC version requires XP with Service Pack 2, and Macs can use the web access version of Cozi.

Check out more reviews of Cozi Central, sponsored by The Parent Bloggers Network!