Tot TV Watch

Personally I strongly dislike Hip Hop Music and certainly did not even imagine that was what Hip Hop Harry was about. I only tuned into it because I noticed it was a kids show on television and I had never heard of it. Plus, it was on Discovery Kids, which tends to have some of my favorite choices of kids shows, especially in its Ready, Set, Learn block of shows that this belongs to. This show annoyed me right away, but I stuck to watching it because I wanted to figure out what the educational aspect of it was. At least in the end it does have a learning aspect, however, I certainly would only recommend showing it to kids if you like Hip Hop music because otherwise the show is pretty intolerable to watch.

The main character of the show is Hip Hop Harry, who is a giant bear kind of like costumed characters you see at theme parks. The show is geared towards preschoolers, however, the kid characters in the show look like they are at least 8. This kind of makes it hard for preschoolers to really relate to the show, but if they like Hip Hop then they will get into the show and enjoy learning with the Hip Hop music. The show curriculum goals include social/emotional skills, cognitive/educational skills, physical/health skills, and artistic/creative skills. In the particular episode I saw the show taught about not challenging yourself and you can do whatever you want to do, such as the one kid’s desire to become a profession hip hop artist. Overall, I may not like this show, but I can see that it is a well-thought out program made to appeal the growing interest in hip hop and it does encourage kids to actively dance as they watch parts of the saw.

For those who can stand Hip Hop Harry it plays on both Discovery Kids and TLC. You can check upcoming episode times in your area here.

Welcome to this week’s edition of Beyond Watching the Show, where I give some ideas of activities for kids that enjoy a particular show that go beyond just watching the show. If you have more ideas of activities for this show please comment and share your ideas. Also, please comment here if you have a request of a show to feature in an upcoming edition of Beyond Watching the Show.

This week’s show is Blue’s Room. This show is a spin-off of Blue’s Clues and shows on Nickelodeon.

Blue’s Book Club: This Book Club listing of books is updated monthly on Nick Jr’s website. Each month there are five new recommended books. On the site there is a parent’s guide to doing the book club from a printable membership card for kids to a play date spinner for choosing which book to read to printable certificates for giving the kids for reading the books.

Blue Games: This part of the Nick Jr. website has several online games featuring Blue and other characters from the show, although it is more Blue’s Clues related, they still fit in pretty well with Blue’s Room as many of the characters are the same. This site also has several off line game ideas including outdoor, indoor, party, and car games.

Blue’s Banana Pops: This recipe is a fun healthy recipe for kids to help make. The recipe prints out on a page and is very colorful with images for the ingredients making it easier for kids with minimal reading skills to follow along.

Make Your Own Blue’s Room Calendar: This is a fun calendar for preschoolers to keep track of their activities and when their favorite shows are on television, such as Blue’s Room. There are printable calendar pages with a special Blue’s Room image. There are also printable date and event stickers that are Blue’s Room themed.

Dora the Explorer - Animal Adventures DVD contains four episodes of Dora the Explorer. This collection is themed on animal adventures Dora goes on. This makes it a good choice for preschoolers that do not just like the Dora the Explorer show, but also like animals. Of course, all episodes have animals in them. These episodes just have a little more focus on them.

The first episode is called “Save Diego.” In this episode Dora follows the Map’s directions in order to save Diego and Baby Jaguar goes along on the adventure. The second episode is called “Baby Jaguar’s Roar.” In this episode Dora and Diego go on an adventure with Baby Jaguar to find Baby Bear on the mountain. The third episode is called “Click” and in it Dora goes on a photo safari to find and photograph specific animals. The fourth episode is called “Hic-Boom-Ohh” and is about Dora and Boots trying to figure out what is making a strange noise.

The show is good and thus the DVD is good in that respect, but it is kind of disappointing that it does not have any good special features. The only special feature is a really short music video. This makes it not much better than just watching the show on television and nowadays a lot of people Tivo episodes, so a DVD really need something interesting added to make it worth purchasing besides being used as entertainment when on the go in a portable DVD player.

Activity Idea

Watch the Click! episode and then have the kids go on their own photo safari. Set up stuffed animals and/or pets around the house or yard and have the kids find them. Let them use a digital camera to photograph them or have them draw the animals as they find them. Hang their photos or drawing up and have a photo exhibit of their safari. Perhaps even award them a blue ribbon like Dora got in the show.

Here is this week’s edition of new releases of DVDs that feature kids shows. Some are previously seen episodes from television while others are straight to DVD episodes or movies based on kids TV shows.

The Backyardigans: Tale of the Mighty Knights: The Backtyardigans is a show for preschoolers that is about a group of friends that have adventures in their backyard by using their imaginations. The show incorporates a good amount of sing and dance, as well. This DVD contains the Tale of Mighty Knights movie that previously aired on Nickelodeon. This Backyardigans movies is about Uniqua and Tyrone being knights and babysitting King Pablo’s egg. The egg grows legs and runs away resulting in them having a knightly adventure to get the egg back.

Caillou - Caillou’s Family Favorites: This PBS show is a about a young boy with a great imagination. The show is easy for preschoolers to relate to because it presents Caillou in what is created as his everyday life. This DVD has the following episodes: Caillou’s Surprise, People I Love, Captain Caillou, and Knowing How.

Max and Ruby: Berry Bunny Adventures: This DVD contains episodes of the Nickelodeon television show, Max and Ruby. The show is a good show for Easter in that the main characters are bunnies. The show is a great show about the Max and Ruby playing together as siblings (Max is 3 and Ruby is 7) and learning to work out their differences.

The Smurfs: The Smurfs come to DVD for the first time ever with the release of Season 1, Volume 1 today. This 2 disc set of DVDs contain 19 episodes of the little blue guys and makes this loveable cartoon easily accessible to a new generation of kids (or just those kids at heart that want to watch them again).

Ni Hao, Kai-lan is a relatively new Nick Jr. show for preschoolers (~ages 2 to 5). It was originally supposed to start back in October 2007, but it did not first air until earlier this month on February 7, 2008 (Chinese New Year’s). The main character in the show is Kai-lin, who is a 5 year-old Chinese-American girl. The show presents Chinese culture as well as incorporates some Chinese Mandarin words. The show encourages viewers to interact and help develop their problem solving skills by helping the characters find solutions to their dilemmas. This show builds on Nick Jr.’s other shows that show multicultural children (Dora the Explorer and Go, Deigo,Go) and presents it in a new context of Chinese American culture. This show focuses a lot on emotions such as understanding emotions and how to control your emotions. This emphasis is based on the Chinese cultural tradition that it is a good thing to be calm and content. The context of the show’s characters being preschoolers and the episodes events being relevant to preschoolers today makes it easy for preschool viewers to relate to the characters and learn about emotions and relevant social skills.

The Nick Jr. website for this show also has some great activities to do with your preschooler to have fun beyond watching this show, such as Paper Lantern templates and a Paper Dragon craft.

The show airs weekdays on Nickelodeon at 11am Pacific and Eastern time.

Episode List as of 2/15/08:

Episode 1: Dragonboat Festival
Episode 2: Twirly Whirly Flyers
Episode 3: Tolee’s Rhyme Time
Episode 4: The Ant Playground
Episode 5: Wait, Hoho, Wait!
Episode 6: Kai-lan’s Campout
Episode 7: Happy Chinese New Year!

Welcome to this week’s edition’s list of kid’s television shows that have new episodes airing this week. I try to make this as complete as possible, but I may sometimes miss something. Please comment and let me know if I forgot to include something that has a new episode airing this week. All times are listed as Eastern time as given by TV Guide, but may vary depending on your location, especially when the shows are on local stations like CBS.

3-2-1 Penguins: This Bible based show from the makers of VeggieTales features out of this world penguins. A new episode of this show airs this Saturday on NBC at 11:30am Eastern Time. This episode is called “Invasion of the Body Swappers” and is about the penguin gang attending a beauty-product convention.

Bunnytown: A new episode airs this Saturday at 11am Eastern Time on the Disney Channel. This episode is called “Bunnytown Pets!”

Handy Manny: This Disney preschool cartoon is about Manny Garcia, a repairman, that fixes things in Sheet Rock Hills with the help of his tool friends. This show airs a new episode on Monday (2/25) on Disney Channel at 9:30am Eastern Time. This episode is called “Tools for Toys/Manny’s Mouse Traps.” The first part is about Manny fixing a swing set and the second part is about Manny trying to trap mice in a bakery.

Johnny & the Sprites: A new episode of this show airs this Saturday (3/1) on the Disney Channel at 7:30am Eastern Time. The episode is “Lily’s Hair/Ginger and the Cloud” and is about Lily wanting her hair to be longer and Ginger befriending a cloud that becomes homesick for the sky.

Mickey Mouse Clubhouse: This preschool show takes kids along on adventures with Mickey Mouse helping his friends with Mouseketools. A new episode of this show airs this Saturday (3/1) on the Disney Channel at 9am Eastern Time. This episode is called “Mickey’s Big Band Concert” and is about getting the band all playing to the same beat.

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Care Bears: Adventures in Care-a-lot is the updated graphics version of the 1980s Care Bears. It brings back many of the same characters from the original Care Bears in much improved animation for a new generation of kids to enjoy. It airs on many CBS stations as part of their Saturday morning cartoons. This Saturday, February 23, the episode is new. The name of the two mini episodes are “Two of a Kind” and “Stand Up and Cheer.” Check your local TV Guide listings here to find if and when it airs on your local CBS Station (for most stations it airs at 7am or 10am).

Care Bears continues to be an educational show that kids can love, especially girls. The show teaches about a specific emotional or social concept in every episode, such as sharing. The new Care Bears’ show website for parents even has some Teaching Moment guides for past episodes. These guides have a video clip of the episode and a PDF guide with an episode summary, learning objectives for the episode, an activity or craft, and discussion questions. The Teaching Moments video clips and links to download the teaching guides can be found here. These are especially helpful when the Saturday episode is a repeat because you can plan ahead to watch the whole episode (much better than only basing the teaching moment on a video clip) and then do the activity. You can see what episode is airing by checking TV Guide listings for the show here. For example, March 1st the episode is a repeat of Ice Creamed and Heat Wave. There is a Teaching Moments guide for the Heatwave part of the episode that involves coloring a whale and learning about fears and overcoming them.

Fetch! With Ruff Ruffmann is an interesting kids game show on PBS Kids. This shows game host is an animated dog name Ruff Ruffmann. The contestants are real kids, though, and the game show is also real. In the episodes Ruff Ruffermann sends them the kids on different challenges and the kids earn points as they complete their challenges or answer trivia. For the most part the challenges are related to science and experimenting. It is geared towards kids ages 6 to 8.

One of the series goals is to “introduce children to science and the world of scientific inquiry.” The show also shows kids that it can be fun to learn problem solving and team building skills as demonstrated in the fun activities the contestants participate in such as creating their own good tasting ice cream flavor using vegetables in one episode. The show is formatted so that the contestants work as teams, but from episode to episode the teams change, so it shows that it is more about the experiences and not winning or losing, i.e. it is for the fun of playing and not all about winning.

Check the TV Guide listings of upcoming episodes here to see when this show airs on your PBS station.

Also, for a hands on Fetch! experience check out the locations of Fetch! labs at science museums across the U.S. Perhaps one is near you or near a future vacation destination for your family. A list of locations can be found here. If you are not near one, though, you can still enjoy some great science activities based on the Fetch! episodes. The activities are meant for kids ages 8 to 10 and can be found here.

This week is Sing a Song with Annie Week on Playhouse Disney. The Little Einstein episodes featuring songs and Annie play at 9am Eastern time/8am Central time on the Disney Channel. This week ends with a new episode airing in the time slot on Friday, February 22. This new episode is called “Annie, Get Your Microphone!” This new episode is about Annie competing in a song contest and Big Jet stealing and ruining her music. The Little Einsteins try to get her music back together in time for her to perform.

For those unfamiliar with The Little Einsteins show it is a show geared towards preschoolers that is part of the regular Playhouse Disney set of weekday morning shows. The shows main characters are four children (Leo, June, Annie, and Quincy). The four children all have special musical abilities including conducting, singing, playing instruments, and dancing. This show introduces kids to classical music as well as famous artwork.

Top 5 Shows to Get Your Preschooler Singing and Dancing