Review and Giveaway: The Red Hen ... and more cooking stories

While there is no substitute for personally sitting down and reading to your child, I would like to posit that I have something that may be a close second, and earns bonus points for allowing you a couple of minutes to yourself thanks to electronic babysitting:

Scholastic has produced a new DVD which is a collection of four "read-along" stories (with a bonus short recipe at the end.)  Each story is cooking related, narrated at a comfortable, relaxed pace, and has subtitles at the bottom of each story so that children can follow along.  As you know, following along while someone reads is a very powerful way to improve reading abilities.

Beginning with the title story, "The Red Hen" illustrates the classic story with the predictable text that is so important to emerging readers, and just enough hilarity to keep everyone watching.  "Bread Comes to Life" is a fantastic life story of bread from growing the wheat, grinding it, mixing it, baking it, and eating the loaf.  The easy rhymes keep the young ones interested while the older ones learn about the origin of one of the most world-wide foods.  "How Do Dinosaurs Eat Their Food?" is an imaginative story of table manners; as it turns out my children could use some etiquette lessons from those prehistorics.  "Arnie the Doughnut" is my children's favourite, a sweet story of a self-aware doughnut who somehow missed the memo that he and his friends were all destined to be eaten (spoiler alert: happy ending after a lesson of listening, problem solving, and cooperation between him and the man who purchased him from the bakery.)

As a post script there is an un-subtitled short featuring Red Hen from the first story giving step-by-step instructions for the children watching to make cake (or cupcakes) with adult supervision at home.

Each of the four stories are animated using different genres ("Bread Comes to Life" is live action) and narrated by different actors, providing variety and a clear delineation between the stories.  They instruct children about food as well scaffold emergent readers.  My children have a renewed interest in my weekly breadmaking and as a result of this DVD I have promised that next week I will plan my breadmaking for a time when they can help.  Not only did my five-year old get a little bonus reading time (please note that screen time is never a substitute for reading with your child) but both of my boys want more kitchen time.  I'd say that's a win/win.

THE GIVEAWAY:

TWO lucky readers will win a copy of "The Red Hen" on DVD

US residents only

~enter after the jump!~

Disclosure:

I was sent this dvd free of charge.

This has in no way affected my opinion.

This review is my opinion and has been written in my own words.

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