Meet Me At The Corner Review

MEET ME AT THE CORNER, Virtual Field Trips for Kids, is a dynamic, interactive site, which encourages individual expression and participation through video submissions from children worldwide. Through these video pod casts we hope to create a community of children, who learn the art of self-expression and storytelling through video.

In the beginning, the video pod casts highlighted the people, events and history of New York City. As this site grows through children’s submissions, we hope to highlight the people and events of other towns, cities and nations. To date we have video podcasts from California, Colorado, North Carolina, Texas, and Maryland. We are always open to the people and events in your corner of the world.

Geared to children ages 7-12, MeetMeAtTheCorner.org is a dynamic, interactive site, which encourages individual expression and participation through video submissions from children worldwide. Through these video pod casts, the site creates a community of children who learn the art of self-expression and storytelling through video. The site is free of charge.

MeetMeAtTheCorner.org currently offers more than 40 three- to four- minute episodes. Recent additions include interviews with famous artists and writers, trips to a variety of New York City historic and cultural landmarks, and introductions to unusual hobbies. New “trips” are added every two weeks.

My Visit To Meet Me At The Corner

I watched Natalia Paruz and the Musical Saw, the Featured Video of the week.

Natalia ‘Saw Lady‘ Paruz:

A New York City-based musical saw and novelty instrument player and busker. She is the organizer of the annual Musical Saw Festivals in New York City and in Israel, columnist of the ‘Saw Player News’ and judge at international musical saw competitions.

November 2007 marked her Carnegie Hall debut as a musical saw soloist and June 2008 marked her Madison Square Garden debut. Her musical saw can be heard in many TV commercials and she has appeared on numerous TV and radio programs around the world. Garrison Keillor of the Prairie Home Companion radio show has dubbed Natalia the shows ‘official saw player’.

Natalia often plays the musical saw in contemporary music, encouraging today’s composers to write for this instrument. She has busked (‘busker’ is a Shakespearian term for ‘street performer’) in New York City (USA), Paris (France), Prague (Czech Republic), Rome and Florence (Italy) and in Tel-Aviv (Israel). Her next planned busking trip is to Russia.

Natalia is considered the most knowledgeable about the history of the musical saw, and her home is a pilgrim age place for saw enthusiasts.

I had my daughter sit with me and watch this episode and in it we learned that the musical saw has been around since the colonial times here in America. When people came to America, they couldn’t bring their instruments, it was considered a luxury, but they could bring their building tools because they had to build their homes. Ministers used saws to make music for the hymns in churches. Lumberjacks used the their saws to make music around the campfire.

We were very impressed with this video, not only was it a educational video that taught us something we didn’t know, it was a great resource for me to use in my homsechool environment for my children. Each video is a mini field trip to places we can only get to through the Internet at this time.

On the educational front, my nine year old daughter loved the Video Podcasting Lessons and said that she can’t wait to try them all out. I am really impressed with Meet Me At The Corner, they have a great collection of podcasts from children. At the Learning Corner you can see interviews with children’s book authors and illustrators, see videos on Kids Inventors’ Day  and even spend some time with Meerkats at the Staten Island Zoo. At the Kid’s Corner you can check out all the contests that are going on all over the place like the Paws For Poetry 2009 contest, Jump Out contest and the Iron Man Visits Your Library contest.

Overall this is an amazing site for you and your children, full of great information. As a mom I am happy to see my kids watching the videos on their own, wanting to learn more. As a homeschooler I will be using this site as a “Mini Field Trip” to instill people, places and things into their knowledge base. I recommend Meet Me At The Corner to everyone!