My kids got the chance to enjoy the wonderfully educational Fascinating World of Insects DVD by Brain Food Learning.
WHAT IS IT?:
The Fascinating World of Insects DVD is a 43-minute video that both entertains and educates viewers of all ages on the amazing world of insects. If you’ve ever wondered how an insect makes its sound, how it lights up, or why it has a horn, you’ll find out all this and more in this delightful video.
This DVD is appropriate for all ages and includes multi-level reviews and quizzes at the end. This makes it idea for school or home.
You can watch this 3-minute clip from the video. This DVD is available for $14.99.
OUR EXPERIENCE:
At the beginning, it explained what makes an insect an insect and showed the various parts of an insect. Then it talked about the type of eyes they have and the differences between some of the different insects. We learned some interesting facts about each type of insect:
- grasshopper - how it makes its unique sound and what it emits to protect itself
- ladybug - its unique sets of wings
- rhino beetle - its ability to carry 850 times its weight
- firefly - its practice of lighting to communicate, but only east of Kansas
- mosquito – how only the female bites and the diseases they spread
- honey bee – how they spread pollen and help flowers grow
- water strider – how they are able to float on water and what they eat
- ant – their roles within the colony
- praying mantis – what it hunts and its ability to camouflage itself
- dragonfly – it can fly up to 30 mph
- butterfly – its life cycle
This video portion was highly informational with vivid images of each insect and video footage of each one in its natural habitat. This was great for keeping the attention and interest of my 9 and 13 year old kids.
Next, it went through a review. This began with flash cards of each insect that came up on the screen and repeated the name of each type of insect. The second portion of the review showed each insect up close and gave a multiple choice question about the name of the insect. This was perfect even for my 5 year old He was so excited each time he got one right! This portion really captured his attention. The next portion of the review recapped the portions of the insect’s body. The fourth review gave an interesting fact about a type of insect and offered multiple choice responses of which insect matched the fact. All 3 of my kids enjoyed this quiz type format. The older kids try to blurt out the answer before the answer choices were provided, and my youngest answered from the available choices. The final review covered the “big words.” This was also a multiple choice format and covered words like entomologist, proboscis, pollination, and metamorphosis.
At the end of the review period, the vendor notified us that they had completed a lesson plan to go along with the video which you can download for free. It includes a neat “choose the correct word” activity, a photo and insect name matching game, a vocabulary activity, and the quizzes from the end of the video. This makes a great supplement to the video itself and completes the lesson! I think this product would be a wonderful addition to a unit study on insects, as well.
Overall, all of my kids enjoyed this video, and so did I! I think it had something redeeming and interesting to offer all of us and satisfied a variety of age groups. I really liked that it quizzed the kids at the end to see what they had learned from the video portion, and it gave them time to respond before revealing the correct answer. I think this is a very high quality and educational video, and I’d definitely recommend it. I look forward to checking out other topics in this series in the future!
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