Good ones: Maisy, Miffy, Jack’s Big Music Show, most* all the ones on PBS.
Bad ones: BooBah (aka The Brown Acid Show), Teletubbies, Max and Ruby (see above, nails it).
I hated Backyardigans, but I can see how kids might like it. My kid is 10 now, so its been a while since I’ve seen any of these shows.
Yup, I can’t stand M&R for these reasons, but my kids love it. What’s worse, since they are girls, they automatically take Ruby’s side. I try to engage with them and point out how rude Ruby is being most of the time, and how she would be be better off listening to Max, but they sometimes can’t get over the “girls are perfect and are the stars/heroines. Boys are silly and disruptive” mindset. (See also Phineas and Ferb. They seem to think Candace is the protagonist.)
This sort of repetitive dysfunction is why I have such mixed feelings about Mike the Knight. On the one hand, as a fan of the fantasy genre, I’m glad to see them watching something with dragons and trolls and vikings and wizards. (and I was so proud when my daughter first said she was looking up a spell in her spellbook!) But on the other hand, every episode is basically this:
Mike: I know what to do, and I’m doing it the Knightly way!
Everyone else: uh… Mike? Are you sure that’s the best way to this?
Mike: Doesn’t matter! I’m being a Knight!
<Mike makes everything worse>
Everyone else: see? why didn’t you listen to us?
Mike: sorry… now I’ll do it the right way and fix things!
Everyone else: Yay! Mike fixed our problem! (that he caused in the first place)
I understand that repetition is comforting for toddlers, but repetition of the same sociopathic behavior followed by a false apology really irks me.
I’m actually sorry that my kids don’t want to watch Backyardigans anymore.
Wonder Pets and Kipper are others they’ve outgrown that I miss.
They still like Shaun the Sheep.
No love for Lazytown? I hope no one I know in real life ever finds out my Doper identity and reads this but: I spent last night watching Lazytown music videos on youtube and I don’t even have kids.
Lazy Town’s music is pretty cool. (I’m quite fond of Cooking By The Book and You Are a Pirate.) The show itself makes me want to run screaming from the room, though. (Luckily the niece doesn’t watch it, it was a cousin that I was trapped with some time ago.)
Curious George is easily the best one, perhaps because it’s non-interactve.
Team Unizoomi is quite tolerable in the genus of shows that ask a question and wait for a response. Plus, at the end of the ep, whenever they solve the big problem, they “crazy shake,” which is hilarious both to watch and to do.
–Cliffy
The only new ones (that’s been new since I was a kid) that I could get in to have been It’s A Big Big World (now off the air but you can get DVDs), Yo Gabba Gabba and Shaun the Sheep.
My niece is all about the Sesame Street, tho. I think that’s the only one she watches.
I hope you watched the Cooking By The Book and Li’l Jon mashup.
Anyway, my preschooler loves Mythbusters more than Dora or the Wiggles. I consider that a win.
Ditto that. And Dirty Jobs.
Out of the age range of the OP, but my school aged girl is now the world’s biggest Mary Tyler Moore fan. She also loves the Dick Van Dyke Show and MAS*H, although the last one we *always *watch with her to provide explanations and context. Thank goodness for MeTV.
Hey, I’m gonna throw this in here, since I think it’s almost related…
I was watching TV with my 2.5 y/o last week, and he was kind of half paying attention and playing at the same time. Ad ad for a Shirley Temple collection came on, and he was riveted for the duration of the commercial.
I’m not overly familiar with anything S.T., so I was half tampted to snag something and see if he liked it…any suggestions?
Mine also loves Dirty Jobs and Mythbusters, and has crazy love for Billy The Exterminator on A&E.
My 2 year old watches the Sprout channel. The Sunny Side Up Show every morning with Chica is fun and at night he goes to bed with Nina and Star and the Good Night Show. His favorite show has always been Driver Dan’s Story Train. They read a book in every episode and the characters are cute. Also, once you get over her huge eyes, we like Dirtgirl World. The songs on that show are actually really good. I find myself singing them. As he’s getting older, he’s starting to like Caillou.
My 3-year old watches a lot of Caillou and Dora, which I find barely tolerable. He also watches a lot of Thomas the Tank Engine / Thomas and Friends, which is much better. He also used to watch a lot of Clifford the Big Red Dog, which wasn’t bad at all.
There’s a Canadian show called 4 Square, which is fantastic.
We’ve only seen a little bit of Bob the Builder, Toopy and Binou, and Mike the Knight, but those have all been good.
I wanted to echo this:
For various reasons, we don’t have a TV we watch, but my son does watch a lot of shows on our laps, online or on DVD. Even on my 13" MacBook, there’s enough space for him to watch a video on half the screen and me to surf the web and email on the other half. (Typing one-handed is an acquired skill, but eminently feasible.)
YouTube has a lot of content online, with a huge fan community for Thomas videos. (Beware the “fan”-created content for Caillou and Dora – it is NOT tollder-friendly.) Most of the networks and shows have their own sites, too, with a good amount of content – that may or may not be restricted by the country where you live.
I actually started watching Arthur the first time I had PBS Kids, and I’ve watched it ever since. The funny thing is, Arthur actually has more than a few older fans. The writing is very clever, especially one where Arthur’s little sister D.W. learns a curse word.
Sesame Street is always good (even with the Elmo overkill).
Dinosaur Train looks cute. My older cousin has a 3-year-old son who began watching this a few months ago. He’s obsessed with it.
While Dora the Explorer is annoying, it isn’t really objectionable. It does teach kids stuff, but it’s just not usually the brightest thing.
Shows I do object to:
Oobi - This is geared towards autistic kids, and yet the hands have the most idiotic way of talking. As someone with autism, I find that concept insulting - what I mean is it’s like they’re implying that all autistic kids are incapable of proper speech.
Max & Ruby - This show is so annoying! Max is a total Karma Houdini who gets away with torturing his older sister! And why is Ruby, a 6-year-old, solely responsible for him? Where are the parents? Heck, if the show’s grandma lived with them, wouldn’t that make more sense?
Caillou - The older episodes in particular portray Caillou as a spoiled brat who whines about everything. My old TV didn’t have PBS Kids, so I didn’t see it until a friend told me about it in 2007.
(Note that I’m only including preschool shows. I’m not including shows like SpongeBob, which I was not allowed to watch until I was 7.)
My four, six and eight year-old all think Big Babies is hilarious and I watch it whether they’re around or not. The funniest kid’s show I’ve seen, but there’s only thirteen episodes.
Glad someone else mentioned Dinosaur Train… it’s my 2.5-year-old Squirt’s favorite at the moment. Other than that, most of the ones that are shown on PBS Kids around here are pretty good, in my opinion:
Super Why- I like that this one has multiple characters that relate to kids at different reading levels. Alpha Pig is the most basic, mostly only requiring knowledge of what order the alphabet goes in and what the letters look like, Wonder Red does rhyming words, Princess Presto does phonics (letter sounds including digraphs) and drawing letter shapes, and Super Why himself changes the meaning of sentences by knowing what words mean and substituting new words in the sentence. I don’t particularly like Woofster, but his superpower is his Doggy Dictionary, where he looks up word definitions.
Wild Kratts- Martin and Chris Kratt, as cartoon characters, put on their animal power suits and get animal powers by touching them. They then use those powers to help the animals out of some danger the bad guys have put them in. The brothers seem to have a genuine excitement about the animals, and the show has some slapstick elements that makes Squirt laugh. There are live-action segments where the brothers play animal guessing games or take a group of kids on an animal expedition, and they encourage conservation through their actions and words.
Sid The Science Kid- It’s been mentioned already, but this one’s all about trying to get kids interested in (mostly physical) science. Sid has a toy microphone that he carries everywhere, and he conducts interviews about science-y questions and subjects, like “What happens to food in my stomach?” and “Why did my banana go all brown and mushy?” Sid’s mom or grandma (annoying laugh on that one) or Teacher Susie help the kids conduct experiments to show them the answer and let them figure things out for themselves. I like that this one has two girls and two boys in the group, which gives little girls someone to identify with and hopefully keeps them interested in science further into their school years. Sid talks a lot about how his favorite science tool is his magnifying glass, cheap to buy, and most of the science experiments are easily duplicated at home with supplies you likely already have.
Dinosaur Train- Probably my favorite too, but I’ve always loved dinosaurs. Buddy the *T. rex *is adopted by Mr. and Mrs. Pteranodon and hatches at the same time as his three (pteranodon) siblings: Tiny, Shiny, and Don. Most episodes have them heading down to Pteranodon Station to ride the titular train to someplace like Stegosaurus Forest, often in another part of the Mesozoic Era. The train’s conductor is a troodon who is very smart, so he’ll tell the kids about the dinosaurs they’re going to meet, and then they’ll have some kind of adventure when they get there. Buddy is a fun character… he likes to form hypotheses (and the show uses the word hypothesis a lot and usually explains, “it’s an idea you can test”) about the dinosaurs he’s preparing to meet, and then modifies them when they turn out to be wrong.
I could go on all day about this show, honestly. There are lessons about manners (in one episode they meet a Quetzalcoatlus and one of the Pteranodon kids, Don I think, is very rude to the Quetzalcoatlus dad and son because Don always thought his dad was the biggest thing in the sky, so Mr. P lightly scolds his son) and acceptance (the Pteranodon kids have friends of many different species, and they try to modify the games that they play so that everyone can participate, such as when Tank the Triceratops has trouble finding hiding spots in hide and seek). The adoption angle is nice, too: in one episode the family goes to meet other Tyrannosaurs, and when they ask Buddy if he wants to stay with them, he says, “No, why would I want to do that? My family is back at Pteranodon Terrace.” It reinforces the idea, important to my wife Sunny and me, that family isn’t about blood as much as it’s about the people/dinosaurs you love.
Also, Dr. Scott the Paleontologist comes on and talks about things that he and other paleontologists about the dinosaurs in the show. Sometimes Mr. Disclaimer will come in and say stuff like “Point of fact: dinosaurs did not play dinoball,” or “sing in rock bands,” or whatever, but Dr. Scott talks about bones and tracks and even plants that have been found.
I guess I’ll shut up now, but other shows that we’ve found that we like at least a little bit: Sesame Street, obviously (the best segment is Murray Had A Little Lamb); *Mickey Mouse’s Clubhouse *on Disney; and WordWorld. *Word Girl *would probably be good for older preschoolers, but we steer clear of Caillou, Barney, and Martha Speaks.
Squeaky (3) and Spike (5) Love the Dinosaur Train. Even Fang, who’s eight will stop and watch. Spike has been saying, “I have a hypothesis,” for about two years now. Dinosaur Train is done by Brian Henson, and occasionally shows a (little) bit of the Muppets’ irreverent humor. In all, it’s a good show, I don’t mind the boys watching.
There is something different about Maurice Sendek’s Little Bear that I really like. I can’t really say what it is, or why I like it. There’s a certain subtlety to it, I guess.
Also, I really enjoy the indie music of Yo Gabba Gabba. I took my kids to the concert last year, and it was just a fantastic day.