Good tv!

[~*heket*~]

Do you find ABC educational programs (on every weekday morning) to be good? What age are your kids if so.

What do you think is "good tv" or "bad tv".

I let my kids watch tv when they want, they're really not that into it. Stylish spends most of her time with her bugs or bunnies, and Spikee is more into toy cars.

She is way into docos about animals, bugs, or anything by David Attenborough. The shows on ABC in the morning seem a bit young for her unfortunately, but she never watched morning tv anyway.

I actually really enjoy the social commentary of The Simsons, and I watch it with my daughter, but my son is too little to enjoy it for more than recognising the characters ykwim?

[Aurora]

DS loves Playschool, he's 3. He loves the ''Through the Window'' section, craft and storytime especially. He also enjoys animal doco's, although his attention span doesn't withstand the entire length of the program he'll watch snippets. We have Foxtel which is excellent for docos. Recently we watched one on apes, it was fascinating, the social order etc. He loved it for the movement, and their behaviour... he thought the provoking lip-flip and chatter from the alpha males was quite funny!

I definately think there's good and bad tv, and at this time I do deliberately protect him from rubbish tv. As DS isn't old enough to really choose what to watch (eg he can't work the remote) I just put on what I deem suitable for him, and if there are several programs on at once, I'll ask him to choose. I don't watch anything violent etc, especially when he's around, I don't leave rubbish on as background noise... but the shows I enjoy (Project Runway, Shear Genius etc) he's not that interested in and will go off to play.

He does really like tv and videos, he has his favourites (Playschool, Maisy, Active Kids etc) but only generally watches them in the morning as he's waking up properly. Once he's fully in reality, he prefers to be outside doing stuff, eg riding his bike, painting, drawing with sidewalk chalk, helping me hang the washing, watering the plants etc.

[Hera]

Reviving since I am a newbie :D

We watch In the night garden, Playschool and sometimes we also watch the educational shows after Playschool.

They can be really great and I have found excellent discussion starters with dd.

A little while ago they did one on bread and took a tour through a bread factory, in a bakery, in someones home and went through the process in each place. We then made our own bread.

Today they talked about schools and some of the things that have changed. They had an old fella on their talking about what school was like ages ago in comparison to his grandson. They spoke of the cane, the boy girl sport segregation, Aboriginal discrimination. Dd and I had a chat about it all and she was very interested in why Aboriginal people were'nt allowed to go to the same school as white people.

Anyone else seen them?

[~*heket*~]

The educational shows on ABC had a great series on writing that I enjoyed :D

[Ceres]

There's a lot of fluff on tv and my DS loves watching it :lol but he also loves docco's. We don't watch many of the ABC educational programs because I normally turn the telly off after breakfast but maybe as he gets older he'll be more interested in watching them.

[~*heket*~]

Stylish LOVES animal planet since we got foxtel. She's even getting into cooking shows like Hugh Wittingstall - shame there aren't more of them!

[Hera]

Yeah we usually turn off after playschool as well but sometimes we miss it all together and turn on to watch the educational programs instead.

Our kids love docos too. We bought the Planet Earth collection and they never get sick of it! Dd used to fall asleep every night watching the planet one that Sam Neil did (cant remember the name of it).

We also have the Bruce Parry Tribal one that dd has watched a few times which is really cool to see how other cultures live. Some of them are'nt really suitable though eg female circumcision in one.

[GreenGully]

When J was sleeping in until 9-10 he used to watch those shows and he really enjoyed them. He liked the maths one especially.

[~*heket*~]

I guess, depending on age, female circumcision could provoke an interesting discussion iykwim.

[Hera]

yep definately heket, dd is 4.5 and while some may feel ok with thier 4 year old knowing about that I dont feel that she is in the right place yet.

I agree with you though we have probably discussed stuff that may not necessarily be considered 'age appropriate' by many but that we have considered appropriate based on dd as an individual yk?

[~*heket*~]

4.5 is a bit young to be witnessing it ;)

[Eir]

a while ago we caught a bit of a program on abc after playschool that was about how the human body worked -- m thought it was fascinating as she's really into skeletons and blood and what they do. but it was pitched above her age and she grew a bit tired of it really.

we don't seem to be watching any tv atm... we're going through a(nother) stage of having finding nemo on repeat. at least that's sparked discussions about sharks, whales and barracudas and gives us stuff to explore in the library :S

[~*heket*~]

We do Cars on repeat :lol I should dig out Nemo and see is Spikee would like it. He'd probably love Bruce.

[Hera]

oh yes dd whent through a MAJOR cars phase and I have a feeling we may be heading back into it after she begged me to buy the cars pj's at Target the other day :lol Why the hell is cars stuff only in the boys section!!?? :rolleyes oh and madagascar! What the hell a penis likes more than a vagina about cars and animals is beyond me.

[~*heket*~]

:lol

oh! you have boys and girl's sections at your local dept store do you? We don't .... since I stopped being able to see them :blueroll It's a challenge to dress your children when you get over colour coding isn't it ;)