Feb 10, 2017

Our daughter Olivia is 7 and our son Felix just turned 3. I remember when Olivia was a baby I was pretty strict about not letting her watch tv (or at least not putting on a show specifically for her) until she was at least 2 years old. Which I’m sure didn’t really happen because by the time she was 18 months old we moved from Utah to Ohio and drove cross-country we had bought a travel dvd player specifically for the purpose of trying to keep her happy on the trip and when we made it to Ohio she was so addicted to watching Busy Town every time we got in the car that we had to bring her down off it slowly. Then fast forward to three years ago when I was pregnant with Felix and I remember being so relieved that Olivia knew how to work the tv and dvd player so she could put on a show for herself when I was laying on the couch feeling so so sick. The kids don’t watch that many shows now, but I’ve accepted it as a regular part of life. It gives them a break, it gives me a break, and sometimes we all just need that.

So I thought today I’d share a list of the shows we let our kids watch. I’ll keep it to just tv shows this time (not movies) for the sake of simplicity. To make it on this list, these shows have to not be annoying or have characters with voices that make you wish you didn’t have eardrums. All the better if they’re educational or well-written, but not all of them are. We don’t have actual tv in our house, just netflix and youtube and dvds, either that we own or that we check out from the library.

I’ll try and sort of go in age order (shows for younger kids at the top, shows for older kids near the bottom). If it’s on youtube I’ll link directly to it. If it’s only on netflix I’ll note that. Non-youtube links are just links to a description of the show on wikepedia in case you’ve never heard of it before. I’ll put a * next to the shows that are currently on netflix, but it changes so often, so I apologize in advance if this becomes outdated soon.

• Super Simple Songs (a youtube channel with lots of classic kids songs)
• Curious George
• Daniel Tiger
• Busy Town (we have this set of dvds we bought on amazon years ago)
• Clifford Puppy Days* (ok it’s a little annoying, but not terrible)
• Clifford the Big Red Dog*
• Ask the StoryBots* (kinda annoying, but Bryan started it with the kids and I’ve gotten used to it–netflix only)
• The Magic School Bus*
• Lego City* (can’t find it on wikipedia, but there are a few different versions on netflix and from what I remember they’re all good. The one on netflix just called “Lego City” is mostly just a bunch of little story plots of cops catching bad guys, but hardly any words, which can be great for younger kids or even kids who speak a different language since hardly anything gets said. The one with Clutch Powers is more of a full length film with a big long plot–such as it is)
• Arthur
• My Little Pony*
• Bill Nye the Science Guy*

Any you’d add to this list? What do you look for in kids shows?