I remember the days of Sesame Street and Reading Rainbow, these and others such as 3-2-1 Contact and Mr. Rogers Neighborhood were responsible for most of my good grades in school. I watched these shows with passion and hardly missed n episode. I learned so much from them that teachers were sometimes amazed at things I knew for my age.
But what about today? What cartoons do we have today to yield similar results to today’s generation of tots? Being a parent, I get a chance to watch and compare shows for kids today. There are a lot of great shows that are very educational and I can see it in my children. But there are some that I just find to corny but they like them anyways. They actually have so many choices that it’s hard for them to sometimes chose what to watch at the moment when there is more than one play on different channels. That’s another thing, I spent a lot of time of PBS where most of the educational shows were given, now my kids have PBS, Nickelodeon, Noggin, Disney, Toon Disney, Boomerang and Cartoon Network. 24 hours of never ending cartoons with a few educational cartoons in all those channels. Let’s not forget that some local channels like Fox, WB and UPN also have a few educational cartoons as well.
Some cartoons like The Wiggles (a European cartoon based on 4 men singing kid songs about animals, some religious characters and silly situations), The Doddlebops ( 3 people who were very colorful clothing resembling instruments they use to sing and play games), Blues Clues (a half animated half real show about a guy and his cartoon dog playing a game of finding clues to figure out what to do and learn on that day) and Higglytown Heroes (about some egg-shaped kids, the kind you can tip over and stand up by themselves, who find themselves in need of an adult to solve problems and the adult with the right skill is looked for and called a Higglytown Hero) are great cartoons, they teach respect towards others, how to use you senses to find things, to read, about animals and when to get an adult to do adult stuff.
Other cartoons that I just find plain silly are those like Barney (sorry, he is just way to silly but my kid loves him and yes he can be very educational) and The Teletubies (Lord save me from this pointless cartoon). I just can’t stand watching or listening to these and I feel that my kids will be turned into softies and in today’s world you just can’t bee too soft. That’s just me.
So what educational cartoons do your kids what? What cartoons would you recommend? Which ones would you not and why? Would you rather have your kids watching educational cartoon (not all day, just an hour or 2) or out in the streets? Keep in mind I admit that being outside is also a good this both physically and mentally, I just think that we need to know who they are hanging out with and what are they doing and many parents do not do this. JMO.