Juanita the Spanish Lobster

 Juanita the Spanish Lobster

 

 Product:

This musical work from England integrates flamenco guitar music with bel canto opera. The story is fun to listen to and my daughter enjoyed singing along. "You’ll get a kick out of the high level of quality music performed by the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the dynamic storytelling and the multifaceted tongue-in-cheek humor." With the CD I also received a 24-page activity book which contains biographies, sheet music and words for an Elvis-style sing-along song, information on Flamenco and castanets, amazing facts about lobsters, and games. The story is also available in MP3 download from Maestro Classics website. The cost is $9.98. This option also includes the activity booklet in PDF format. The cost for the CD is $16.98.

Maestro Classics
P.O. Box 688
Falmouth, MA  02541

508-548-2811
toll free: 888-540-2811
fax: 508-548-2833

Experience:

My daughter and I were introduced to Maestro Classics by a friend. Our first CD was Swan Lake. My daughter really enjoyed listening to the love story. After our first CD, I wanted to purchase another one so I bought Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel. We really enjoyed listening to the story together and talking about it afterwards. The next addition to our collection was Juanita the Spanish Lobster. This story is about a lobster that is bored with living in the ocean. One day she sees a lobster trap and enters it without knowing what it was. The lobster is trapped and rescued by an admirer. After this experience Juanita the Spanish Lobster never wants to leave the ocean again. After listening to the story my daughter and I visited the Maestro Classic web site. We found a link that displayed beautiful artwork by famous artists that spent time studying and painting the ocean. Some of the paintings by Monet where: "Pointe de la Heve en Sainte Adresse", "Terrace at Sainte Adresse", and "Cliffs near Dieppe" . While viewing the paintings I was able to ask her questions pertaining to the usage of shadows, light and dark colors, and the different textures. Vincent Van Gogh is another artist who studied and painted the ocean. "The Stevedores in Arles" was one of the paintings that Van Gogh created. While admiring this beautiful piece of work I was asking my daughter to focus on the usage of different colors. How colors depict the mood of the painting. I also asked her why Van Gogh decided to use orange in the background. She said "because the sun was going down." She is brilliant. :)



Overall Thoughts: 
I love the CDs!!!! They are such a kid friendly way of introducing youngsters to Classical music and different instruments. My daughter really enjoyed listening to the story and learning about the different artist. She enjoyed making a drawing of a lobster on card board and then cutting it out. Completing the activities in the booklet was also fun. Maestro Classics not only introduces children to music but also many other subjects such as art, history, math, science geography, and language arts. I really enjoyed having the possibility of integrating other subjects into my lesson on Classical music. I would definitely recommend Maestro Classics!!!!!

I have received this product free of charge for review purposes.