Saturday, December 30, 2006

Kid Friendly DVD's Suggestions

I know Christmas is over, but there are still all of those annoying birthdays around the same time. I just wanted to give some of you a heads up on some DVD's that my kids love and got from Santa and/or gift certificates.

First up, the obvious. Dora The Explorer and Diego. There are a few movies out that star both of these crazy adventurous kids. And they both have DVD's out with just a few of their TV shows from their series. The Dora/Diego movies and shows feature singing, questions for the kids to help out on and plenty of Spanish. I often find my 3 year old screaming for help in Spanish, something that is frequently done in the Dora/Diego flicks.

[Plenty more after the jump]

My kids are pretty young and we quickly began both receiving and buying DVD's for their small collection. One series of videos that was frequently on was the Baby Einstein's collection. We would often just put this in and just let it play. Most of them feature classical music, fun noises, art and crazy toys that go back and forth across the screen. And as our children got a bit older, they would start repeating the songs and what little talking there was. There are a few that have mostly talking, like some language ones or the Wordsworth one, where they go around the house and talk about 6 things in each room.

The next step up from Baby Einstein's for our family was Little Einstein's. This is a show about 4 adventurous kids that travel around the world on their rocket, who's name just happens to be Rocket, while solving musical and pictorial puzzles of all sorts. Every episode features one main song and one main piece of art work. All of the songs are classical and most of the pieces of art are classical as well. This is another fun one that the kids can help out the Little Einstien's when they are in a pinch, and the music collection is great.

The latest new-found addition to our kid's video collection is Kidsongs. Something that my mother-in-law found at the dollar store, believe it or not. This is actually a tv series that, I think, has been canceled for a long time. I remember it from when I was young, but I'm 25 though, so that is probably not too long ago. This show features a pack of kids that takes over a tv studio that was shut down. The kids operate the entire studio and do their own shows as well. They do it in a similar format to a news show, only they only do songs. The songs are pretty good. The do some pretty well known ones. And now that my 3 year old is doing songs at school, she has more than enough songs to sing to me with the great addition of the Kidsongs series. My 1 year old doesn't sing that much, but she does spit out random words all the time and it is very cute.

We watch the above quite a bit. My 3 year old asks to watch them all the time. If my wife and I think that we have had too much of one or all of the shows, we just say that the stars of the show were working too hard, due to the fact that we play the DVD's so often, so they are taking a nap. Which happens to be a perfect time to either hit up the park or for the kids to take a nap along with the stars of the show. We also tried some Sesame Street videos as well as some Pooh ones. But they were not as successful as the aforementioned ones. And the Disney ones have too much of a story line for either of my kids to sit still and watch the entire movie. But we are still slowly buying the older Disney flicks when they come out so that they can appreciate them when they are older. My 3 year old loves princesses but still can't sit through the entire movie of The Little Mermaid.

These are just my suggestions, however. I know that there are quite a few other great series out there for kids. And we would have never have found out about Kidsongs if it wasn't for my mother-in-laws neighbor suggesting it to her. So, please, feel free to suggest some more in the comments below. My family would love any great additions to our ever growing collection. Plus we often get tired of the same stuff over and over and over and over... You get the idea. We'll be grateful and hope that you go out and enjoy my suggestions.

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