So- irishbaby is now at an age where TV amuses her.
She watches CBeebies (the BBC channel for pre-school kids) occasionally.
So far she loves the music for Chuggington and Zingillas and enjoys In the Night Garden and Tellytubbies.
What do your kids like, and what kids’ TV makes you want to poke your eyes out? We’re a Barney and Waybuloo free house because they annoy me too much.
Based on earlier experience, ours is a Barney- and Wiggles-free household. Little Miss is too young to enjoy TV yet, but I seem to recall that I didn’t mind Bob the Builder when the older ones were at the early viewer stages. Sesame Street will always be OK by me, too. Yo Gabba Gabba is also just weird enough that I don’t mind it. (The last is subject to change, though. I haven’t been exposed very much - only a couple of times when friends’ kids were over.) I don’t know whether it’s still on air, but I found Oswald to be rather charming when my older daughter was a part of that demographic.
Our daughter watches a mix of CBeebies and Nick Jr., although Nick has adverts which a lot of my friends won’t allow for their kids. She goes through phases, definitely.
On CBeebies, she loved Teletubbies, Lazytown and Night Garden but seemed to grow out of them quite early. She followed them with Tweenies, which is bearable for me too. That’s the one with the overgrown costumes where they’re at a nursery - bit messagey but not too bad. There’s a couple of cooking shows on there - Big Cook Little Cook, which is a bit gimmicky and I Can Cook, which I really recommend, if you can stand Katy the presenter. The recipes are quite good, and the kids do everything themselves - so even though they’re a bit older than mine she is always very keen to try to do it too.
Mister Maker is ok for crafty stuff, but again the presenter is a bit grating. She also likes Get Squiggling, which is a drawing-comes-alive thing, although that one drives me mad.
I’ve mentioned before that my daughter has a very low tolerance for peril and for people misbehaving, so there’s a surprising number of things she won’t watch: Grandpa in My Pocket, Something Special (there’s a bumbling clown in that one), Numberjacks etc. although they all seem fairly innocuous to me.
On Nick she likes Dora and Diego, which I found hard to sit through at first, but they have good messages and I’m no longer irritated by them! She also throws random Spanish words into conversation, so it’s doing some good :). I’d thoroughly recommend The Wonder Pets - you have to see it to really get it, but it’s about a guinea pig, terrapin and duckling who save animals in trouble. It’s actually amusing in places, certainly not unbearable and full of wholesome messages. She also likes The Backyardigans which is meh, but doesn’t make me want to throw things at the tv.
We avoid anything with Barbie involved at all, and the one I really really hate is the pigging Fairies, which she loves for some reason. Unemployable second rate ballerinas in an unconvincing grassy knoll, acting out trite stories with rictus grins plastered across their plastic faces like some post-modern 9th circle of hell. I’m not keen.
ETA: how old is irishbaby now?
Boobah ( or however you spell it) is the sign of the Apocalypse. Thankfully when I spied it on tv, my children where too old for it because I was going WTF is this.
But, I did like Teletubbies. So take that with a grain of salt.
I adore SpongeBob.
She’s almost 11 months- it’s the theme tunes, music segments and bright colours she likes.
She goes properly mental clapping along to the Chuggington theme- I don’t think she actually cares much for the programme.
The kids in the hospital where I work all love Something Special because he uses Makaton sign language and it has special needs kids on it, they all love Kerry the CBeebies presenter too.
My daughter loves Yo Gabba Gabba and so do I. They have good songs and it has her dancing and singing now. Oswald was nice when she was younger and Blues Cues with Steve she liked. It calmed her down. At 21 months now she likes Barney/yo gabba gabba/ wiggles. And she likes Elmo but can’t get into Sesame Street that much, I think in a few months perhaps. Basically she asks to watch yogg most of the time but is okay with the wiggles as well.
Josie loves Sesame Street and the Baby Einstein videos. The Wiggles and Barney bore her.
Ah, OK then, that is a bit different then. Show Me Show Me is another good one, it’s the Playschool replacement, so it has a number of different segments. She probably doesn’t need a coherent narrative structure then, eh? Show Me Show Me is good then, as you could tape one episode and just keep going back to the next bit, rather than watching it through. It’s presented by Chris and Pui, who (apparently) were the favourite CBeebies presenters but got bumped to presenting a programme rather than doing the links.
Agree with the sign language on Something Special, it’s also great to see a progamme where kids with disabilities are included without anyone making a big deal of their disabilities - I don’t think Niamh has even noticed yet. I just wish she’d watch it more happily - we have to switch over as soon as Mr. Tumble is imminent.
I wanted her to see Sesame Street, but I didn’t find it beging broadcast here at all.
My 17-month old loves Yo Gabba Gabba and LazyTown on Nick Jr. Another one on Nick Jr is Little Bill, that one has really cool jazz music and the characters are very calm and reassuring.
The yelling on Dora and Diego get to me sometimes but she enjoys them just fine as well. I don’t understand why those characters have to yell all the time.
We have started watching the Disney Kids channel more that one has some good shows, too. Special Agent Oso, The Imagination Movers and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse are all pretty good and keep her entertained.
I prefer Nick Jr and the Disney Kids channel because neither one of them have commercials for toys or sugary cereals and treats. They are on cable though so they’re not available everywhere.
My 18 month loves the Backyardigans. So far, that and You Gabba Gabba are the only ones that can hold his attention for any real length of time. He loses interest in the others after about five minutes. Backyardigans is alright. The episodes have plots and he really likes the singing and dancing in each episode.
The one show that really gets on my nerves - Max & Ruby on Nick Jr.
Here’s how the typical episode plays out:
Max wants to do something (that is either inconvenient, irritating, stupid, or just outright naughty)
His eternally patient older sister tells him NO. He doesn’t listen.
He does it anyway and gets away with it.
Everyone’s happy. The end.
An awful mess of a show. I have actually programmed my TV to auto-tune to some other channel any time it is being broadcast. Decent children’s shows that I actually don’t mind too much - Word World, Sesame Street, Sid the Science Kid & Martha Speaks (all on PBS)
Amen to avoiding commercials, because your average toddler is VERY susceptible to advertisements. My oldest (4.5 yo) is just starting to want to watch the non-toddler stuff (SpongeBob, Fanboy & Chum Chum, etc) and those shows DO include commercials for the most irritating things. Overly expensive sneakers, sugar cereal, warmongering toys - and infomercials!
My son is older, but he still watches a few of the preschool shows. Backyardigans are definitely a favourite (mine too, I’ve watched it a time or two when he wasn’t around because even I enjoy the music which can be fun to puzzle out familiar tunes and have amusing bits. Austin in a mystery theme one uses the oath ‘Great Caesar’s ghost!’ quite a bit.)
Avoid Caillou, that brat is so annoying. Worse than Max of the aforementioned Max & Ruby.
I do my best to limit what my son watches so I think the most older aimed cartoon he watches is the occasional Johnny Test… He also loves Cyber Chase, Electric Company and Fetch with Ruff Ruffman.
Mr Maker is akin to Mr Dressup in some ways, but I vastly prefer Mr Dressup so he watches the videos for him.
The little one in our house is almost 3 and a half; his taste in TV shows hasn’t changed much over the past year and a half or so. He particularly likes Dora and Diego, Backyardigans, Barnyard, and especially Spongebob. I don’t know what it is about Spongebob, but it can hypnotize him for hours.
He’ll watch Max and Ruby, but I can’t stand it. Ruby irritates me to no end.
ETA: He’s also very fond of old-school Tom and Jerry via OnDemand. Who knew those cartoons would hold up for 40+ years?
Another Backyardigans fan checking in here. And neither I nor my kids can stand Max & Ruby.
Charlie and Lola is adorable and funny. Plus they did one of the funniest songs in ages.