The Old Schoolhouse® Product & Curriculum Reviews
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Nest Entertainment Review by Tina Rice
http://www.nestlearning.com/Nest Entertainment produces numerous videos, DVDs, and audiotapes that teach timeless values. I agree with their catalog, which claims that they provide entertaining, inspirational, and educational tools that will help loved ones share with each other their values, morals, and wisdom. The Nest company motto is, "Changing Lives." Their collections include Animated Stories from the New Testament, Animated Stories from the Bible, Animated Hero Classics, Inventors and Artists, Jay Jay the Jet Plane, and The Visual Bible. Many of their video products have an accompanying activity book for elementary age students. The activity books are designed to help the student learn and understand more about the topic they watched on video. The activity books include coloring, word games (hidden words, word puzzles and word scramble to name a few), picture puzzles, math puzzles, spelling mistake puzzles, and other activities. For the teacher/parent there is a discussion guide with questions and answers to use after the "fun" pages are done. The activities are rated on a one to three difficulty scale and coded with the related academic subject. My family watched Marie Curie from the Animated Hero Classics Series and John the Baptist from the Animated Stories from the New Testament Series. The videos were humorous, instructional, entertaining, and high quality (I would enjoy having the full collection of each of these series). They are a welcome alternative to Hollywood's anti-family offerings, and will appeal to a wide variety of ages (in my house it is two-years-old to 41-years-old). At about 30 minutes each, the videos were just the right length for an after school treat. I predict that these videos will not sit on a shelf and gather dust at our house. My five-year-old loved the activity books, although many of the activities were too complex for her to do on her own. My 10-year-old liked doing almost all of the activities. Some were challenging, but none were too difficult or her to do on her own. The answer key and the correlation of activities to academic subjects make the Nest Entertainment activity books and videos powerful teaching tools, not just first-class entertainment. Nest gives permission to reproduce the activity pages, so one activity book is all you need for your family. Videos can be purchased individually or in sets. To learn more about Nest, visit www.NestEntertainment.com/cgerber or call Claudia Gerber at (888) 531-3984.
