Professor Pocket Review & Giveaway!

When I compare the toys available to children today to toys available when I was a child, I am amazed (and slightly jealous). Luckily, being a childcare provider, I have the opportunity to play with all these great new toys! The number of quality educational toys and activities that are available for children continuously impresses me.

Professor Pocket is a great new company that focuses on teaching children to speak and sing Spanish through a number of CDs and online activities. Since I believe that bringing up bilingual (trilingual, etc.) children is so important in today’s multi-cultural society, I figured that many of my readers, as well as me, could benefit from this product.

Professor Pocket’s Mission
Professor Pocket believes in the importance of helping children gain a lifelong passion for learning languages. Professor Pocket strives to offer a number of bilingual learning products that entertain and engage both children and adults. Professor Pocket believes that their products are extremely diverse and are great for anyone, whether you are fluent in Spanish or just starting to learn it.


Besides the CDs, Professor Pocket sells character puppets and shirts to make the whole process of learning Spanish even more fun! In addition, on the Professor Pocket website, you can find several Spanish learning activities that you can download for you and your child. Some examples include, coloring pages, matching and memory games, and much more! These activities can be downloaded here. Finally, you can find cute videos of children singing songs from the Professor Pocket CDs here. Turn on the video and let your child join in singing one of Professor Pocket’s fun songs!

Review
The owner of Professor Pocket offered to send me both of their CDs (‘Our Silly Farm Adventure’ and ‘Our Hawaiian Hula Adventure’) plus a set of their matching character puppets. Here is a bit of information found on the Professor Pocket website about each item I received:

Our Silly Farm Adventure (sells for $15.95*)
“Follow Professor Pocket, Desi the Dinosaur and Chico the Chicken on a bilingual musical adventure to visit the very unique and magical farm where Chico was born. Listeners will be delighted to learn that pigs drive tractors, cows make chocolate milk and horses fly at this farm, where nothing is what it seems! A silly bilingual storyline, 5 original songs and a remake of the popular Latin American folk song, “Los Pollitos”, are sure to get the whole family singing and speaking along in Spanish. For kids of all ages! A Dr. Toy Best Products award winner.”

Our Silly Farm Adventure has received the following award:
-Dr. Toy Best Products Winner 2007

Our Hawaiian Hula Adventure (sells for $17.95*)
“Join Professor Pocket, Desi the Dinosaur and Chico the Chicken on another bilingual musical adventure…this time to the Hawaiian Islands! While at the beach, they surf with the Big Kahuna (played by Parents Choice award-winning family artist Billy Jonas), dance the hula, and visit a volcano! A silly bilingual storyline, 6 original songs and a remake of the popular Latin American folk song, “ Sana, Sana”, are sure to get the whole family singing and speaking along in Spanish. The CD also comes with a companion booklet that includes song translations and key vocabulary words. For kids of all ages!”

Our Hawaiian Hula Adventure has received the following awards:
-Dr. Toy Top Ten Audio Winner 2008
-Parents Choice Approved Award for 2008.

Puppets (all three sell as a set for $18.95*)
“Professor Pocket has worked with a fair trade organization to bring our lovable and silly characters to life! Now your children will get to create their own bilingual adventures with their very own Professor Pocket, Desi the Dinosaur and Chico the Chicken finger puppets. Professor Pocket has ensured that a significant portion of each puppet sale goes back into the very hands of the local indigenous Peruvian artisans who hand-knit them!”

I had a chance to listen to each of the Professor Pocket CDs a couple of times and I have to say, I am very impressed. Even though I already know some Spanish, I was happy because by the end of each CD, I had learned even more Spanish words. In addition,…by the end of listening to each one a second time, I knew even more. I am sure that after listening to each one a few more times, I will have mastered a majority of the words!

The way that the CD is organized makes it extremely easy to follow, understand, learn, and enjoy! Each CD goes through a sequence like this: song – story – song – story – and so on… I think this set-up is great because it allows you and your child to enjoy a fun interactive story and listen to music, all at the same time.

These CDs enhance learning by defining different terms at the beginning of each CD. These words are then used throughout the CD multiple times. In addition, other words (and phrases) are introduced throughout the CD. These words (and phrases) are stated in Spanish and then are translated in English to ensure success in learning the new words (and phrases). Professor Pocket also has a section of their website that allows you to download the lyrics for each song. This makes it even easier for parents and children who are old enough to read, to follow along. The Professor Pocket lyrics can be downloaded here.

Overall, I thought both of CDs were fantastic. I loved the music and the stories and I can definitely see how these CDs can help children (and adults) learn Spanish in an easy and fun way!

I also had a chance to review the puppets sold by Professor Pocket. These puppets are extremely cute and very well made. I love that each one is knitted by hand. I was very impressed with how much these little puppets looked like the characters shown on the front of each CD. I think these puppets make learning Spanish even more fun for children. The puppets are great to use as entertainment during the stories and the songs on the CDs, as well as in normal daily play.

With all the Professor Pocket tools available, it is sure that you and your little one/s will be speaking and singing Spanish in no time!

Because I loved these products so much, I have to pass on a hopeful suggestion to Professor Pocket. I would really love to see them introduce these CDs for a variety of different languages such as French (for us Canadians), Japanese, Italian, Mandarian, etc. I am sure the addition of these languages would make these CDs an even bigger hit.

Finally, I can’t wait to hear about Professor Pocket, Desi, and Chico’s next Adventure!

*prices are reflected in US dollars and are based on the Professor Pocket web shop prices.

What can you win? One winner will receive an ‘Our Silly Farm Adventure’ CD, an ‘Our Hawaiian Hula Adventure’ CD, and a set of Professor Pocket’s matching character puppets.

To enter, Sign up for the Professor Pocket newsletter (more important information below).

To sign up for the newsletter, go here. Then, fill in all your information and where is says ‘How did you hear about us?’ write 'Everything Up Close'. Finally, come back here and leave a comment telling me that you signed up for the newsletter. Please make sure to tell me which email address you used to sign up so I can verify your information. This must be done to gain an entry in the giveaway.

Each of the following will give you one extra entry in the giveaway. Please make sure to leave a separate comment for each thing you do:
-Listening to the sound clips on each CD, then coming back here and telling me the name of the sound clip you enjoyed the most.
-Subscribing to my blog (email or RSS okay).
-Adding my main button to your blog sidebar.
-Following me on Twitter (ihchicky). Please leave your Twitter name.
-Tweeting about this giveaway (with a link to this page) on Twitter. Please leave a link to your tweet. You can do this once a day.
-Blogging about this giveaway on your blog. Please leave a link to your blog post in your comment.

Important Entry Details: The above entries (main and bonus) can only submitted once per person (except for the tweet entry, which can be done daily). Please do not use more than one blogger account or add additional anonymous comments to gain extra entries. This is not fair to everyone else and this practice is strictly prohibited. If a person is found to be using more than one account to enter the same giveaway, they will be disqualified from that particular giveaway, as well as all future giveaways.

This giveaway will end on Saturday, April 25th at 11:59pm (Central Standard Time). After the giveaway has ended, the winner will be picked randomly using random.org. EMAIL RULES: In order to win, you must provide a valid email. I will be notifying the winner by email only. Please make sure your blog profile includes your email address and make sure that it is visible. If you do not have a blogger account, please make sure you have included your email address in your post. If there is no email address provided, to contact the winner, another person will be chosen. The winner will have 48 hours to respond to the winning email notification with their complete mailing address (I will be forwarding all this information to the sponsor), If this information is not received within 48 hours, a new winner will be chosen. This giveaway is open to everyone Worldwide!

Good Luck!

Receive free shipping on any order placed on the Professor Pocket website when you use the promotional code ‘upclose’. When shopping, you can submit the coupon code on the top of their shop page.