As a child of the 1980’s in North America, I was brought up in front of the many kid-oriented educational television programs that turned me on to math, science, and learning including:
Mr. Wizard’s World
3-2-1 Contact
Newton’s Apple
Square One
??Strawberry Square?? (help me out on this one)
and to some extent Sesame Street and The Electric Company
That’s just to name a few. Later on, shows like Bill Nye, Beakman’s World, Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? (particularly guilty pleasure of mine, even though I thought I was a bit old) ruled the world of kid’s educational programming.
As the prospect of parenthood looms for my wife and me, I 'm kind of interested in what the good shows for kids are these days. I’m not looking for the dumbed-down and infantile shows such as Baby Einstein or Bob the Builder, nor am I looking for the general audience stuff (albiet interesting and informing) that appears on Discovery, Animal Planet, and National Geographic. I just want to know what the good **kid’s ** math and science programs are today, if there are any.
I was pretty amazed when I saw a marathon of Mr Wizard on cable a few years ago, I would say that those programs are just as good or better than anything you can get right now. They still sell DVDs of the old program, why not get those?
This is for very small children, so maybe it’s not what you’re looking for, but *Peep *was developed to introduce preschoolers to science concepts. So the birds will find a decoy duck, and figure out the ways to tell if something is alive, or they’ll learn different ways to measure things, or how baby birds come from eggs. Plus it’s hilarious. It’s one of the shows I don’t mind watching with my kid.
I’ll second Peep. One of the things I like about it is that there isn’t a character telling everyone the concepts, they start from a position of curious ignorance and figure things out for themselves. The one character who “knows” things is a buffoon who’s generally wrong.
Reruns of Beakman’s World are back on the air, too.
I can’t stand The Magic Schoolbus. I don’t have specific cites, but it seems like there’s always at least one place in each episode where I feel the need to pause it (thank you, Tivo) and explain to my daughter why the science is wrong, ask her what alternate plausible conclusions could be drawn from the presented data, etc.
I know, I shouldn’t expect high standards from a show about a magic schoolbus. Maybe it’s because I’m annoyed at the show’s heavy-handed preaching about things like recycling and rain forests.
If you can ever find Bill Nye’s early work, from when he was still on Almost Live in Seattle, check it out. You may want to keep the kids away from Speed Walker, though.
If you can get them, check out the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures . Typically five lectures broadcast around Christmas. Maybe not the regular thing you are looking for but well worth recording if you have a chance.