Arabian Sinbad Treasure Chest

I bought this collection for my kids for Eid-ul-fitr about a week or so before Ramadan. When we finally got to try out the product, everything worked great except for 3 DVDs. I contacted the seller and they quickly sent me replacement DVDs within a few days of notifying them. My kids are having a wonderful time with the collection. It's only been one week and my kids are already saying about +30 Arabic words. Even my wife and I are learning Arabic as well. I highly recommend to families who want their young children to learn Arabic. They pick it up so quickly and when they imitate the characters it helps them to put it into practice. As for the musical content for those families that are concerned about the songs in the videos, to be honest if you talk to your kids they will understand in sha Allah. My kids understood not to sing along and that we allow it because of the benefits they will gain from the content. Great product with good quality and outstanding customer service.

Our son really enjoys watching the videos. He's picking up the language very quickly and we're pleased with the quality of the videos as well as the other learning materials. It's also a great value.

I bought this from ArabianSinbad.com and not from Amazon. However, looking at the description and the photos at Amazon, it is the same item as that on the ArabianSinbad.com site.Arabic is not my native language, but I have been learning Arabic for more than ten years, most recently pursuing an MA in the language. I had also started talking to my daughter in Arabic, and reading her some Arabic books, but she was not getting as much immersed in the language primarily because it is the third language in the house. An Egyptian friend referred me to Arabian Sinbad as I was discussing how to immerse her into the language. On his recommendation I bought this set.I was quite surprised both at the quality of the cartoon and the content, it exceeded my expectations. The clip that is provided on Amazon perhaps does not do justice to the movie which is full of songs, conversations, funny clips revolving around a story where Sinbad, and his sister go through a number of adventures. The series employs the language immersion skills well in that there is reasonable repetition of the concepts and vocabulary with different angles, and a lot of repetition of common vocabulary words, such as colors, numbers. This helps achieve the goal of those vocabulary items getting ingrained in one's mind. The setting is the modern Arabic setting, in which the characters behave and act as people do in Arab world, which is quite helpful from a language learning point of view.There is a CD with the games, which turned out to be very good for my daughter too. She just loves them because she gets to select some scenes, color them, put some artifacts (such as animals, humans, etc.) During this process, she gets to hear and identify the vocabulary items which gives her enhanced exposure. These days, she is emphatic about learning numbers in Arabic because without knowing those numbers, in one game, Sinbad falls from rocks into water and she doesn't want him to fall.I found the other things that came along, such as the flashcards and the songs CD, interesting that I could use later, but we never got around to it and it didn't provide us with as much value because we have to spend more time with English and Urdu which are her primary languages.There are some peeves I have about it too. The caricatures of horse and donkey are confusing enough for her that she can't recognize which is which in isolation. Similarly, many other animals and fruits are unrecognizable for kids simply because they are caricatures and sometimes beyond recognition. I have to overcome this challenge by having to use the vocabulary for those items in home, which takes away my time from her from other languages. There was one banner, which I didn't find as much useful. It would have been better if the poster were about human body, or solar system, or something else that kids find interesting.I still give it five stars because it is definitely worth the money. I have had it for about a year and we still have a lot of material to cover. The way the series builds up and introduces concepts, and the way the everyday conversations are presented expedite language learning. I think the curve is pretty fast for small kids, so we have to go to the next episode a bit slowly. For instance, we watched episodes 5-6 some 20 times before we moved to 7 as she was still grasping new stuff and enjoying it every time we watched it. For older kids (> 5 or 6 yrs) and adults, the progress should be quicker. Most importantly, there is an option to enable/disable subtitles in Arabic which is helpful if a word's pronunciation is not clear.In short, I am so satisfied with this purchase that I am also going to recommend this as a great learning tool for students to the director at the University. There are definitely some concepts about everyday Arabic that I learnt from this, and didn't grasp elsewhere. As they say, the more time you spend in a language and a culture, the more you learn.The biggest caveat for anyone buying this is that it will teach you Modern Standard Arabic and not the regional Arabic of various countries. After using this, do not expect to converse fluently in the streets of an Arab country, for that, you will have to invest into Rosetta Stone or Pimsleur or, better yet, take some classes with an instructor. I have myself bought Pimsleur Arabic CDs in the past, but I gave those up quickly (my experience with Turkish was quite better). Our goal is to learn Modern Standard Arabic because it is language of the print media as well as scholarship in the Arab world, and sets the basis for learning Classical and Medieval Arabic.

This is the best Arabic learning set in the market for kids and even older learners. I'm a language material designer so I know a good product when I see it:) My 3 year old enjoys it. I bought it so she can learn standard Arabic (we speak an Arabic dialect at home) and sure enough she started saying "eindi kanz - I have a treasure" :) after watching one clip.The cartoons, audio, selection of topics and the whole production are professionally done. There is one main story about Sindibad and the thieves who want him to help them find the treasure. The story is interrupted by short clips that illustrate the meaning of focus words/phrases, such as "I want, this is..", and other clips that present lists of thematically-organized vocabulary, such as a list of fruits, body parts, etc. Those intervening clips are actually my favorite part of the set. The story can be a little difficult to follow sometimes and learner will probably have to watch it several time. However, everything is accompanied by Arabic or English subtitles. The songs included are also very cute and help in memorizing the lists of vocabulary.I love that a lot of the vocabulary included and the sketches are for daily life items and situation. It is hard to find such a selection in textbooks. One place for development is by adding situations and activities to practice and recycle the huge number of vocab in the set. The vocabulary builder CD has all the vocabulary introduced in the set but no activities. I do not have the game CD so I do not know if it includes such activities.If you are in the US, make sure to email the company and ask them to send you the NTSC copy. Their default one is PAL which works fine on computers but does not work on all DVD players in the US. This happened to me but the company's customer support was great and they sent me an NTSC copy that worked great without any extra fees!In sum, this is a great set for learning Arabic. The company has 3-4 sales a year when they discount their products so you can look for these. I'm going to buy at least one set for my AFL students (studying Arabic as a foreign language). They are university age but they enjoyed the little Sinbad videos on Youtube A LOT when I played them in the class.Thank you Sinbad company for creating such a great product and wish you the best in making it better and better.