Would this entertain and educate your children?

[TheBurbles]

Hi, a friend and me have spent the last 18 months trying to create a new teaching resource to help educate and entertain preschool children and I would really appreciate it, if you have the time, if you could give me your thoughts on it. It would be great to have your insight, just to know if you think it's rubbish or how you'd improve it, would your children like it, or what you'd like to see in a future video.

Here's a link to it on YouTube...

Thanks for taking the time.

My kids are grown up now but would probably have sat and watched that when they were younger. Assume there would be some "characterisation" of the different burbles in future episodes? My kids liked identifying with aspects of the characters when they were small ( so each had a favourite character).
Two points I did pick up on "s is for sugar" but sugar actually is pronounced "shugar " not "sssugar" -maybe snake or sock or something would be better.
Secondly the song is about the phonics but for x the name is given "ex as in box" rather than the sound.
Hope this helps - there is so much already out there I imagine it is a very difficult market to break into.

Thanks so much @Squiginawig, that's a really big help.

We'd definitely like to develop their characterisations a lot more and hearing you suggest that as an area to focus on is good news for me because I quite enjoy figuring out that part and it sounds like it's worth the effort to do it.

I do agree with your thoughts on the letters, it's a tricky one to get right. Snack would be better for S, I agree. We'll change this for the next song. X is particularly difficult also, there are a few schools of thought on it, we chose to use 'box' because it showed the X making the 'ex' sound as a stand alone letter without the need of an E in front of it. It is confusing!

My child is also too old for this now, but he would probably have enjoyed this. It’s extremely similar to a video he used to love aged around 2: m.youtube.com/watch?v=BELlZKpi1Zs

However, I’m not sure I would have showed it to him as it currently stands. One thing I immediately noticed is that, for example, you say ‘duh’ rather than a cut-off ‘d’ sound. Same with some of the other letters. If I remember correctly, this is discouraged as children learning to blend can find it hard to see why ‘duh-o-guh’ should become ‘dog’. Much better for the letters to clearly sound out ‘d-o-g.’ Also, for t’ I wouldn’t have chosen train, but would chose a simpler cvc word, e.g. tap or top. If I recall, the ‘tr’ blend is taught at a slightly later stage. Agree with PP about ‘sugar’ - sock or sun would be better (again, cvc is best). It just would make me think that you’re not up to speed with the latest phonics teaching in UK schools (apologies if not the case and of course it’s been a while since DS was this small).

The characters are sweet though, and their background/personalities could be built on, I’m sure.

I'd agree with the previous poster and wouldn't currently show this to my children as many of the sounds are not correctly pronounced (as they learn at school). It might be worth doing some research into current phonics teaching - the jolly phonics songs are good and there are various guides as to how to pronounce the sounds. Generally sounds are short - so not duh, guh etc.

I do like these kind of videos and have a few we watch like this, and I do seek them out, rather than those that use letter names or capitals. So the premise of the video is fine, but unfortunately it's not just a couple of sounds that are wrong with this but the vast majority are way off, so I definitely would not show my 3 year old this one. Phonics sounds aren't 'buh' 'cuh' 'duh' etc. It took me a long time to get my head around the correct, more clipped phonics sounds myself.