One of the things I used to like best about staying home from school sick as a kid, was I got to watch all of the programs they had on during the day for kids on PBS. I’m not talking about Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers, but rather more educational shows meant to be shown in schools. They were usually very interesting, and often funny as well. There were shows teaching almost every kind of subject.
I think my favorite was an animated show called Eureka!, which was probably about five minutes long explaining concepts in math and physics. Anyone remember it?
There was also a news program called Assignment the World, which I think was filmed in Rochester, NY, where I lived at the time.
Another show - and I can’t remember the name, or much about it - had the phrase “palabra jot”.
Read All About It - it was actually two series, but the first was all supernatural and sci-fi and the kids got hauled off to the planet of Maze (which geeked me silly) where they had to solve riddles to get off.
The Metric System - when I was very young, I enjoyed this. First glimpses of parody I recall seeing (they had something similar to, but quite different from Big Bird)
Mulligan Stew - actually this was one we watched in school, but we got a booklet that went with it and it had an awesome board game with it (well, it sucked, but try telling that to a first grader).
Write Club - (I THINK, I pulled the name off of Google) featured Palabra Jot. I loved seeing the punctuation move around and the letters changing from lower case to upper. The story set ups were fun as well, with one in particular being a bit scary.
There was another show, math related, that I liked, but only because it had a rich snobby kid named Lionel, and at my age, that was the only other Lionel on the face of the earth.
Letter People - well, this one actually pissed me off. It had Super Socks, Tall Teeth, etc., but Super Socks, the hero covered in socks HAD NO ARMS OR FEET?!?!?! What were they thinking?!?!
Jeez and I thought Letter People was only local. Well maybe confined to the south east. I hated that show but I’d watch it anyway just to see what letters were featured. I still like Horrible Hair (“MeEeEeEeEeE!”)
I just thought…on that show, if the consonants are all male, and the vowels are all female, does that mean that Y is secretly a transvestite?
“The Letter people” was required watching for me in kindergarten. We watched it once a week and every time a new letter was introduced, we had a whole lesson built around that letter, complete with a blow-up doll.
My all-time favorite PBS kids show was Square One TV, especially “MathNet” at the end. It was a very very hip show with lots of cool gags.
One that I liked to watch when I was in college and feeling lonely was “Puzzle Place.” I liked learning about the kids’ different cultures
