The Making of Little Pim DVDs 4, 5 & 6

Last Friday we loaded into a van and headed to upstate New York to begin our filming for the Little Pim DVDs 4, 5 and 6. We had over 15 kids join us, from New York, Connecticut, New Jersey and as far as Philadelphia. The location was a dream; a big farmhouse converted into a pre-school.

The atmosphere gave everyone the sense that they'd stepped right on to the set of Little House on the Prairie. There were even chickens and roosters walking around.

We filmed scenes that included magic tricks, climbing trees, planting seeds and other activities that will allow us to showcase a new batch of words in our upcoming DVDs. Our crew was totally on top of it, and the kids were amazing. They were very patient with all our lighting setups and the other not so fun sides of acting (like doing the same thing over and over again). While some were professional actors, others were just friends of friends.

They all seemed to especially enjoy the attic scene wherein we asked them to dress up in old clothes and play around in boxes (see picture of three kids popping out of a box). When it was time to close down the set, it was hard to leave the farm and say goodbye! It was a great kick off our filming and we can't wait to see it all again... in the editing room.

Stay tuned for more Little Pim in the making updates!

The Little Pim "Our Bilingual Life" Contest

The Little Pim "Our Bilingual Life" Contest

We at Little Pim want to be your multimedia partner in helping your tot pick up a second language, and we'd like to celebrate all you are doing to create a bilingual lifestyle.

Moms & dads, please send us a photo or video that expresses how living a bilingual lifestyle is fun for your whole family. Have a great photo of your child writing in Spanish, cooking up French crêpes or a video of him or her reading in Italian? Send it over!

Please include a few sentences about the language/s spoken in your family, and why you want to raise a bilingual child.

Two winners will be chosen to win a Little Pim Language DVD Gift Pack which includes your choice of 3 DVDs in any language and a Little Pim plush panda! Send your photos and videos to contest@littlepim.com by September 30th. Winners will be announced October 3rd.

View the DVD gift sets here: http://www.littlepim.com/store/spanish-language-for-kids/ To enter:

1. Become a Fan of Little Pim on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/mylittlepim 2. Send your photo or video tocontest@littlepim.com along with a short paragraph explaining why you want to raise a bilingual child.

Good luck!

With parental permission, the winning photos and videos will be published online at littlepim.com. Photos and videos will not be used or published without parental consent

Little Pim Looks For Its Next Little Stars

In preparation for the filming of Little Pim DVDs 4, 5, and 6, we held a casting call yesterday in our Manhattan offices. Our loft was flooded with the most adorable babies, toddlers and preschoolers. Toddlers, crawlers, and walkers mingled and drank juice boxes in our waiting area, turned into play room. As the kids waited their turn, they sampled our soon-to-be-released Little Pim flash cards and made works of art from Little Pim Coloring pages.

When it was time, the children and their parents took their turn playing in our mock set, outfitted with beautiful toys and furniture by PLAN Toys, one of my favorite kid companies.

Jolene, the production supervisor, has an incredible knack for getting kids to relax in front of the camera. A few minutes with her and the little ones were playing with blocks, throwing tea parties, making faces to express a number of different emotions (one of our new DVDs is called "Happy, Sad, and Silly") with adorable results.

So many cute and talented kids came out and we all had a great time. It will be tough to narrow it down for our shoot! Thanks to all the parents and kids who turned up.

Brad and Angelina, Fans of Little Pim and Multilingual Education

Brad Pitt recently said in an interview that raising multilingual children and spending so much time in France is making him wish he'd learned a foreign language (Parade, September 9th). While it's never too for Brad or any adult who wants to pick up another language, experts agree it is much easier to learn a new language before the age of seven. We've all seen how easily young children soak up information, and their brains are hard-wired to absorb up to three languages with ease.

The Jolie-Pitt children are all learning French and we're proud to be a part of their language education. Last November, Angelina Jolie told US Weekly that she was using Little Pim to teach Shiloh French.

Whether you're a celebrity parent or not, giving your child the gift of a second or third language is something you'll never regret. And they will thank you for their rest of their lives!

Little Pim on BharatBhasha.com!

We enjoy seeing Little Pim featured on websites of all shapes and sizes. A new review was just posted on the article sharing website, BharatBhasha.com.

Father, Little Pim reseller and author Ray Ritchey had this to say about teaching children Chinese using Little Pim:

"Little Pim DVDs are very useful for little children to learn to Chinese. A lot of learning-Chinese DVDs for children focus on individual words for children, like colors and numbers. Little Pim DVDs also feature these words, plus more. Little Pim teaches action phrases that small children use in daily life, such as “I am playing,” “One more time?” “Mama is sleeping,” and more."

Little Pim in American Baby magazine!

Pick up this month's issue of American Baby magazine for a peek into the family behind Little Pim!

Little Pim is Going to BlogHer 09!

BlogHer 2009 takes place this weekend in Chicago. The conference is arguably the biggest event for women bloggers in the nation. We're so excited to be represented at BlogHer by Melanie Edwards of ModernMami.com. Melanie, a Latina working mother, has received numerous mentions and accolades for her blog.

If you're going to BlogHer, look out for Melanie! She'll be distributing Little Pim goodies. Be sure to catch her before she runs out!

A Visit to a DVD Production Center

Sometimes my older son likes to find out How Stuff is Made, and he had a wonderful opportunity when we both had the chance to see the Little Pim DVDs being manufactured at our new replication and fulfillment center. We learned how the DVDs start as clear plastic discs and then a layer of silver - which contains all the content encoded - gets pressed onto the top of the clear disc with a hot press. About 1,000 DVDs pass through this system in a mere 10 minutes. It was pretty cool to see!

Constance Zimmer of HBO's Entourage loves Little Pim!

Sometimes when I am watching my four-year old and fourteen month-old squabble over cheese puffs or when I've been playing "come and get me" complete with crawling under dining room table one too many times, my mind drifts to my alter ego... an accomplished professional woman wheeling and dealing with the big boys in a Prada suit, who would never have a smudge of baby yogurt on her needs-a-dry-cleaning jacket that she tries to get out with a napkin at work. This alter ego looks something like... DANA GORDON, the beautiful no-nonsense studio executive on HBO's hit show Entourage who engages in hilarious love-hate banter with ARI GOLD (Jeremy Pivens). In the last season, DANA was the second in charge at a major motion picture studio, looked fantastic, and was at the top of her game. So imagine how thrilled I was to learn that Constance Zimmer, who plays DANA GORDON on Entourage, is using Little Pim with her daughter Coco! They were recently photographed at a Little Pim event at The Tree House Social Club in Los Angeles and Celebrity Babies picked up the story. Constance's daughter Coco is 15-months old, and Constance would like her to speak French, like her dad, Russ Lamoureux, so they have been watching the French DVDs at home. Constance says, "Little Pim is fun for her [Coco] and something we enjoy doing together.”

Merci bien Constance et Coco! And thanks Constance, for reminding me that behind some of those glamorous, perfectly put together stars we see on TV...is another mom like us!

Behind the Scenes Making Little Pim's First CD

We recently recorded songs for our upcoming Little Pim CDs in French and Spanish, which we'll be releasing this summer. As a filmmaker, I've had the chance to go "behind the scenes" on countless films, but I had never been part of a CD production. It was so much fun! We had kids (including my son Emmett, seen here with Adele and Adrian) do backup in French and Spanish and brought in two very talented singers, Violette de Bartillat for the French and Barbara Brousal to sing Spanish. We had three popular Milkshake songs for them to sing that the band adapted to include Little Pim vocabulary, and that we then translated into French and Spanish. Both Violette and Barbara have beautiful voices and perfect accents in French and Spanish. Their love of kids and music really came through when they sang and I felt like I had front row seats at a rock concert.

I also learned how you make harmony: the singers sing the song, then hear it played back in their headphones and sing harmony with themselves. On one of our songs, a beautiful lullaby called "When you are Sleeping", they actually layered in three different harmonies. Here is a little taste of the Spanish version. I hope you'll love the songs as much as I do.