Cooking made Fun! (Big Cook Little Cook - We Love To Cook (DVD))

Member Name: sewbizzie

Product:	Big Cook Little Cook - We Love To Cook (DVD)
Date:	03/03/09 (286 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Educational and children love it

Disadvantages: The songs annoy me!

What a lovely start to the week I had when my eldest's school phoned and told me they were closed due to a burst pipe. Therefore my boys decided that they would spend the morning watching some of their DVD's, this one being the first. Big Cook Little Cook is a show which is on the Cbeebies channel. It features Big Cook Ben and Little Cook Small who run a café and each day they have one customer and spend the show making a special meal for the customer.

During the beginning of the show when the customer arrives we get a story from little cook Small's story book which involves him helping the customer and then we go to Big Cook Ben's cook book for a recipe. After the ingredients are sorted out there is usually one missing or the cooks want to find out more about on of the items they will be using so Little Cook Small flies off on his spoon to teach us more about it. When he returns they finally start their cooking and the customer finally gets to eat and after the cleaning up is done the empty plate comes back and always has a note with it. Throughout each show there are rhymes which the cooks say and these are used in all of the episodes so the children get to know them and can say them and sing along to the songs.

The show always follows the same routine which I think is good for children as they know what is going to happen and how the show works. Each episode runs for about 10-15 minutes which is a great length as my boys don't start to get bored with it and do actually sit watching the whole thing. I also find that my boys do learn from this show from the trips Little Cook Ben goes on to find out how food and ingredients are made and grown.

The DVD which we have does contain 5 episodes which include:-

Footballer - Franco the Footballer visits the café.

Clown - Charlie the Clown arrives at the café where Ben is dressing up as a clown.

Dentist - Denis the Dentist is treated to a melon and fruit smile

Disco Dancer - A J the Disco Dancer arrives much to the cooks delight

Bonus Episode - Racing Driver - Robert the Racing Driver arrives to be filled up with food

The DVD does also have some bonus features which include :-

The Bonus Episode
Sing a Long to the Cooking Songs
Play Small's brilliant game
Enjoy Fantastic Menus

We have watched the bonus episode but none of the other bonus material as the game would cause too many arguments over who's turn it was and who had be playing it for longest. Also we do not need the sing along song as my boys already know them all so well.

Inside the DVD case we did have a small cook book which does have some interesting and fun things to cook. We have not tried them out yet but we do quite often visit their website for other recipes which have always turned out well and they are very easy to follow.

The DVD was released in 2005 and has a total running time of 75 minutes. This is now available for only a few pounds on both Amazon and EBay.

I do recommend this DVD to all fans of the show as my boys love watching it and learning how food grows and is made. They also like the fact that it is short episodes so they don't have to sit and watch the whole DVD if they don't want to they can just pick and choose which episodes they want to see. From my point of view I can handle the daily episode on the Cbeebies channel but watching them back to back on this DVD did get to me slightly and after a bit the songs did become annoying and to make it worse they got stuck in my head and I was humming and singing them all afternoon!

Highly recommend fun and educational DVD which my boys love!

Summary: Ben and Small make cooking fun for children in these 5 episodes