The third in a series of developmental videos for babies and toddlers, Baby Bach succeeds at delighting and stimulating young children. Designed for children aged 1 - 36 months, this video is filled with colorful "real" toys, objects, and scenes that babies truly love to look at, all to the sounds of selected works of Bach.
Research has shown that classical music has a gently stimulating effect on listeners, leading to improved physical and mental health. Baby Bach is meant to introduce babies and toddlers to classical music, as well as provide interesting visual stimuli.
The audio soundtrack contains selected musical pieces of Bach played with instruments like the vibraphone, celeste, glockenspiel, toy piano, music box, flute, and more. The result is a very pleasing soundtrack. Silly sound effects accompany many of the toys and scenes. Also included are 3 sets of scales that demonstrate a key musical concept — timbre — using 9 instruments.
In keeping with the idea that Baby Bach is meant as a "video board book", there are video page turns between scenes. An example short scene is a mouse popping out of the holes of swiss cheese. The scenes are very simple, but anyone familiar with babies will quickly see that they are carefully selected to be ones babies will respond to the most. Kids will delight as a real baby plays peek-a-boo on-screen, a large friendly-faced sun rocks back and forth, a toy bear blows soap bubbles, coins are placed in a toy truck bank, and more. This video features lots of spinning lights, lava lamp scenes, and interweaving items — all things that babies like to watch. In keeping with the musical theme, many featured scenes are of musical instruments. Kids watch a spinning top, and later that same top slows down, falls, and rocks to a standstill, perfectly timed to the end of a musical piece.
We love the trademark beginning, with the letters of the "baby bach" logo appearing one by one. Parents can watch the video with their young children and are free to name the objects they see because there are few vocals in the video. Our baby and toddler "testers" all thoroughly enjoyed the video — it brought lots of giggles and inspired one child to dance along.
Also available is an audio CD and cassette counterpart, named Baby Bach (see our review). The music is gently stimulating and can be played throughout the day while children are at play. Children beyond toddlerhood will enjoy listening to Baby Bach as well.
Baby Bach and other products in the series (Baby Mozart, Baby Einstein, as well as CDs and audio tapes of Baby Bach and Baby Mozart) are available by calling (800) 793-1454, or at the Baby Einstein web site.
