BrainFood Learning: The Fascinating World of Mammals DVD (TOS Review)

 

I am always on the lookout for great educational DVDs to use with our homeschool. I have several visual learners so using DVDs is a great option, plus what kid don't like to watch a DVD! With that being said, we recently were sent for review The Fascinating World of Mammals DVD from BrainFood Learning. 

 

The Fascinating World of Mammals is a DVD that is appropriate for all ages.  It gives many fascinating details about all the different featured animals and their habitat that they live in. The animals covered are:

• Beaver
• Kangaroo
• Moose
• Dolphin
• Lion
• Giraffe
• Elephant
• Bat
• Chimpanzee
• Bear

As the animals are presented it gives information about the different kind of animals in that class. For example when they were presenting the information about elephants it showed the differences between the African Elephant and the Asian Elephant and then proceeded to show what is the same about the elephants.

 

Throughout the DVD different vocabulary words are shown on the screen with a thorough explanation of the word along with examples. At the end of the presentation is a review section where questions are asked and the child can pick the correct answer (multiple choice) before the correct answer is shown on the screen. These questions were very basic and presented in four different difficulty levels.

 

We all sat down as a family and watched this together.  I was worried at first that it may bore my older kids since we have watched quite a few documentaries about mammals. Though simple in it's presentation it had enough information to keep it interesting for all of us, plus there were a few tidbits of information that was new to us.

 

Delani (5) was fascinated by the babies, while the rest of us were soaking up random bits of information that was shown (such as how long a bat lives, which was too long for my husband's taste). When it was finished we went to the quiz section and Delani easily answered the questions from first level and Chantry (11) answered the rest and getting help from his older siblings if needed.

 

I really liked how the focus was on facts about the animals and their habitats rather than a lot emphasis being on the environment or evolution. While watched this I didn't have add my own commentary to correct the narrator's.

 

The Fascinating World of Mammals is a great information DVD or would also be an excellent resource to add to any study of mammals you may be doing. We did Apologia's Zoology III - Land Animals and read through The Burgess Animal Book by Thornton Burgess last year school year and this DVD presentation reinforced everything we had learned from those two resources. It would have been a great enhancement to have while working through those books.

 

The Fascinating World of Mammals is available on DVD for $14.99. There are also two other DVDs available: The Fascinating World of Insects and The Fascinating World of Birds both for 14.99 a piece. BrainFood Learning also offers free lesson plans that can be used with these DVDs.