Review: SmartKidz Media
Animals & Wildlife Collections
Documentaries & Culture Collections
Health & Fitness
History Titles
Lifestyles & Cuisine
Science
Travel & Adventure: World Wide Discovery Collections
Cooking Instruction
Classical Music Collections
Cultural Music Collections
Cultural Music: Vol 2
Jazz and Blues Classics Collections
Relaxation Music Collections
Mighty E-Book Collection
Sign Language Collection
Special Needs Learning
Living Skills
Singing
Fun Zone
This is an online streaming program; you go to the website and watch and listen to their many videos and ebooks or play their games.
The first thing you’ll see when looking at the SmartKidzHomeschool.com website is that there is a colorful menu bar across the top. When hovering with the mouse over some, you’ll see a drop-down menu with choices underneath. These are the Categories: World of Discovery, Music & Fine Arts, Mighty Ebook Collection, Baby Signs Program, My Animal Family, Quick Find Study Guides, Learning Special Needs, Living Skills Program, Ready Set Sing, and Fun Zone.
Here are some of the videos I watched/ e-books I read:
- World War II The Complete Story– Part 1 Very interesting documentary, easy-to-understand narrator, maps and old footage. I learned things I had never learned before!
- Classical Music– These were nice to listen to through my phone while driving in the car. I really enjoyed Brahms and Grieg.
- Animal Journeys part 3– About the Arctic Tern and Swallow, 10 minutes long, narrated by a lady with British accent. Fascinating stories and video footage about these 2 bird species who have incredibly long migrations.)
- Bodyforming– An exercise video, which was a little hard to follow because the narrator wasn’t the exercise leader. It was a bit old-fashioned, think eighties aerobics.
- Relaxation Music– A wide variety . I listened to some Celtic music and nature’s music (bird chirps and crickets).
- Flash-Animated Ebooks– There are tons of these! I loved The Real Mother Goose, which was a book I had as a child. The rhymes were set to music, with a singer singing them and the pictures had some animation to them. There are also Aesop’s Fables and many other stories.
- Baby Signs– Are you teaching your baby sign language? There are lots of videos to help you.
- My Animal Family: Fun Facts About Spotted Dolphins The videos in this category were good for my preschoolers.
- Bravo Chef: Italian– These were some Italian cooking shows. The narrator wasn’t the chef, so they were a little frustrating to watch.
- Quick Find Study Guide on the 50 States– (Think “flash cards” for this section. They have some for language arts, math, science, and geography. Those for foreign language and accounting are coming soon.)
We were out of town for a while during the middle of this review period. I thought it would be perfect for the kids to watch some of the videos when in our hotel room. Unfortunately, I couldn’t ever get the videos to load. I suspected it was the wi-fi that the hotels provided and emailed the SmartKidz company to get help. They emailed back the next day and said that the internet connection shouldn’t matter. But I was never ever to get anything to load outside our house. So, we only watched them here at home on my desktop computer, which worked just fine.
SmartKidz Media announced they are planning to expand their digital media catalog by adding over 100 hours of video content in the area of History, Science and Documentaries. This content will be available to their membership by July 1st.
They will also be adding several challenging educational online games in the Fun Zone in August and September.
They will continue to add digital media content to the catalog on a regular basis, and when they add content, they will inform their membership of the additions by sending out a monthly newsletter.
You can get a free trial membership so you can check out for yourself to see if the full membership will be good for your family!
Social Media:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/smartkidzhomeschool
Twitter: https://twitter.com/smartkidzmedia
