Green Product Review: Curiosity Quest

I know we just had a product review yesterday, but I’m up to my eyeballs in green goods, so we’re gonna roll with one more review this week (no more tomorrow I swear).

Product: Curiosity Quest DVDs – Sanitary Landfill and Steinway & Sons Piano (both Telly Award Winners).

Cost: You can purchase these DVDs for about $20.

Reviewers: Eight year old Cedar + me.

WHAT IS CURIOSITY QUEST:

Curiosity Quest is a nationwide PBS television program that explores what viewers are curious about. In each show, host Joel Greene (a fun and likable fella), ventures on a quest to answer viewer’s letters of curiosity.

The show is not currently on my local PBS station (Portland, OR) but one, it’s summer, and two it may be on where you live – check here. Additionally there are two sorts of Quests, the original and the going green series, which of course, is likely of key interest to tree hugging families. The show has won numerous awards and is totally family-friendly.

What we think…

Cedar and I reviewed a recycling episode where Joel heads out on a Curiosity Quest to learn what happens to all the trash that doesn’t get recycled. We also reviewed an episode where 9 year old Dorothy (a young piano player) joins Joel at the Steinway & Sons factory in New York to learn how pianos are made.

The perks:

I loved the Sanitary Landfill show and actually learned a lot of stuff I never knew about landfill which was a nice surprise. Cedar is a little green head (he’s way better than me about green living), so I figured he’d like it too. He did somewhat, but said it was too dull to watch again. He did however learn some cool new facts from the show because I heard him relating them to his school pals the next day.

Cedar surprisingly REALLY liked the Steinway & Sons Piano episode. I was shocked because he’s obsessed with electric guitars so I thought pianos would bore him. However, he watched this one more than once and said, “I can’t believe that’s how they make pianos!” and, “This show is funny and cool” which he did not say about the other episode. I liked this episode too, but not as much as the green landfill show.

If I had to guess, I’d say that Cedar liked the piano episode better because they showed a project vs. a daily job process. Cedar is a huge fan of building and creating new objects and if your child is like Cedar I’m betting they’d love some of the more active series titles like the piano show, skateboards, Habitat for Humanity, green toys (the company) and more. A major perk of this show is there seems to be a quest available to suit just about any kid’s taste.

The negatives:

The cons of this product are mainly cosmetic. First of all the DVD case does not say which episode you’re getting. I mean you know which one you ordered hopefully, but it’s a little frustrating because one DVD case had Joel playing a guitar on the cover plus what appears to be a hot air balloon plus roller coasters – all of which my son was super excited about. BUT when we opened the case the DVD was the Steinway show, which as noted we liked, but my son was all, “Where’s the guitar show?”

The DVD is also a little funky. Ours had weird menu options that did nothing and the format was bizarre. There was also no scenes available – the shows are short, but at least a halfway split would be nice for smaller kids with shorter attention spans. Cosmetic baddies really aren’t so bad though since the shows are quality.

Overall score:

Four out of five happy little trees!

We thought this was a good show overall and while we had a few cons, they huge selection of different quests means lots of opportunities for new learning experiences and fun. Plus with the addition of the green quest series this is one DVD series that actually caters to green kids (rare).

You can buy copies of Curiosity Quest at the Curiosity Quest website shop.