Keep summer boredom away with a DVD collection from NCircle

by Susan, editor and reviewer

It's no lie that our family enjoys watching TV together.  As a stay-at-home-mom of two active boys, we like to keep ourselves very busy with whatever we can; play-dates, walks to the park, gymnastics, tae kwon do, and even a living-room-destroying art project on occasion. Not to mention countless hours outside in the backyard dancing to our favorite songs. "Everything is AWESOME!!!" But on those days when we're pooped, it's nice to cuddle with my boys and watch some TV together. And it's pretty amazing to watch my two littles get completely wrapped up into the stories unfolding in front of them. With an education background, I often prefer shows that {not to insult a certain sea dwelling yellow sponge} teach something. And many of the shows NCircle puts out educate my kids!

NCircle Entertainment has released 6 new DVDs for kids, and they're pretty fantastic.

The first is Sid the Science Kid: Now That's Using Your Brain. We're obsessed! The DVD features 4 separate episodes that highlight four different parts of the body: muscles, bones, lungs and brain. Sid is a very inquisitive child who enjoys learning about how things works, and tends to employ the scientific method to get answers to his questions. My sons like to dance and sing along to the various songs in the show, and I like that they're really learning about the body. I also like that my 4 year old seems to be retaining much of the knowledge, and that's awesome.

In Octonauts: Meet the Octonauts, and Octonauts: Calling All Sharks, we get to see the Octonauts in action. Exploring the ocean, rescuing sea creatures and protecting our oceans and endangered animals. In Calling All Sharks, we get to learn about cookie cutter sharks, white tip sharks and Lemon sharks. Each episode teaches how unique these sharks are, which is a wonderful departure from the Great White Shark I usually think of when someone mentions "shark!" In Meet the Octonauts, we get to see the crew of the Octopod in full rescue action, while still learning about new sea creatures. The songs are certainly catchy "Creature Report! Creature Report!", but still completely entertaining.

The next DVD, The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That: Let’s Go on an Adventure, we see everyone's favorite chapeau donned feline and his human companions, Nick and Sally, "Go! Go! Go! Go on an adventure!" {Yes, you will be singing that afterwards.} The DVD features 5 separate episodes wherein we learn how to read a treasure map, about how salmon travel upstream to lay eggs, how trees use the world around them to pass on their seeds so more trees will grow, how stinky smells can actually be helpful, and we learn about the benefits of snail shells. Each episode is not without the hijinx of Thing 1 and Thing 2, and I personally love that Martin Short is the voice of the Cat!

Moving on, The Wiggles: Hot Potatoes! The Best of the Wiggles is quite possibly the best compilation DVD they've done. It features ALL the Wiggles, past and present. Greg, Jeff, Murray, Anthony, Sam, Lachy, Simon and Emma all sing the songs we know and love, including Big Red Car, Do the Propeller and so many more. Honestly, my favorite is the Monkey Man song they sing with Kylie Minogue, and I'll admit I got a little teary after a segment featuring the late Steve Irwin. While the songs are not exactly educational, they do get my kids up and moving {and me too} and dancing and singing. My youngest, who was diagnosed with a speech delay, totally gets into the Wiggles and sings along, and that makes my heart happy!

Word World: Hide and Seek is the 6th new DVD featured. If you've never seen Word World, all the characters, Bear, Ant, Sheep, Frog and Pig, are all constructed from the letters that spell their names, as are many of the structures in their world. Building things is often only a matter of finding the letters that spell what they need and putting them together. "Let's build it! Let's build it now!" This show is great for letter recognition and the beginning of early reading literacy for your kids.

All of these DVDs have a small selection of special features as well, that your kids might like to explore and even some of the DVD case inserts have pages that kids can color in.

NCircle is giving away  a HUGE DVD bundle – including all the DVDs mentioned above plus an additional 4 – Mike the Knight: Knight in Training, Sid the Science Kid: Backyard Campout {kids love this one}, The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That: Ocean Commotion {we LOVE this one too}, and Sonic the Hedgehog: Sonic Goes Green.

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A big thank you to NCircle for providing a movie pack for review as well as one to giveaway to our fabulous readers. As always, all opinions are 100% ours.