Reluctantly asking for your dvd recommendations - Page 2

[lucky_mia]

I find the Milo and Otis movie to be not annoying for me to listen to in the car and my kids love it. It is the story or cat and dog on an adventure.

[Lit Chick]

The Backyardigans are FANTASTIC. My son adores them, and so do we. He's also 2.5.
We have all 3 albums, because our daily commute is long too. I love that the songs are not dumbed-down for little ones (lots of words, complex rhythms, in other words real music).
"Tale of the Mighty Knights" was our first DVD of theirs, and it is still a favorite. It's a longer episode in the style of a rock opera. DS currently prefers the bonus episode "Garbage Trek", because he's all about waste management right now. And space. His 2 favorite things.

Also, the Disney/Pixar movie Wall-E is amazing. DS has been entranced by it for over a year now. He called it "the digger movie" when he was little. Wall-E looks like a little contruction truck (aka "digger"). The film has barely any speaking - it's all visual and lovely soundtrack. It's a great movie.

[Dreamy]

Originally Posted by Lit Chick

The Backyardigans are FANTASTIC. My son adores them, and so do we. He's also 2.5.
We have all 3 albums, because our daily commute is long too. I love that the songs are not dumbed-down for little ones (lots of words, complex rhythms, in other words real music).
"Tale of the Mighty Knights" was our first DVD of theirs, and it is still a favorite. It's a longer episode in the style of a rock opera. DS currently prefers the bonus episode "Garbage Trek", because he's all about waste management right now. And space. His 2 favorite things.

Also, the Disney/Pixar movie Wall-E is amazing. DS has been entranced by it for over a year now. He called it "the digger movie" when he was little. Wall-E looks like a little contruction truck (aka "digger"). The film has barely any speaking - it's all visual and lovely soundtrack. It's a great movie.

Those are my two all-time favourite Backyardigan episodes - love love love them! DS loves them and Wall-E as well. His favourite though is Diego because of all the animals. Even I learn stuff from watching that show - I was kind of freaked out to learn how crocodiles digest clams...

[kcstar]

DS likes:

Baby Signing Time
Clifford
Blues Clues (this took a little more time for him to like)
Sesame Street & Elmo's World (there's some dance ones, too)
Barney
Little Bear
Cars

The George of the Jungle live action from the '90's has been a real hit for the ~3+ year old set, my brothers loved it and now DS likes it.

[CrunchyChristianMama]

He would probably fall in love with the Bob the Builder On Site series. I think there are three of them. They show how all kinds of things (roads, bridges, houses, playgrounds, etc) are built. Lots of big machinery and such. It's nice because it's about half cartoon/half real life stuff. I was even mildly interested when I saw them.

[physmom]

What about getting a bunch of clips of things he likes off of youtube and making a DVD? There's a clip of the 10 best helicopters that DD goes NUTS for.

[Smidge]

My dd loves Bear in the Big Blue House and some random animal videos that I pick up at the thrift store. They're very toddler oriented with nothing harmful in anyway. You can usually find them for cheap too

She also loves Barney, Word World, and Dinosaur Train (I don't think that's on DVD tho)

HTHs

[blizzard_babe]

Originally Posted by Grace and Granola

I don't know if you or your dh are capable of this, but my husband looked up trains/construction videos on youtube and was able to save them onto DVD. You could probably fill an hour DVD with CROSSING GATE segments!!

This. We found a video of an "emergency vehicle rally," which was just basically fire trucks, ambulances, and police cars wailing by for like 10 minutes. We put it on an iPod, taught DS how to press "play," and BOOM. Instant airplane entertainment. He begs to "see the lots of firetrucks and ambulances."

And then we discovered the videos of planes taking off.

And construction videos.

And army trucks driving over bumpy ground.

DS has absolutely no need for "real" children's television when daddy is so darn good at finding vehicle clips on Youtube .

[babydanielsmom]

Caillou.

My Ds loves this show

[Baby_Cakes]

Another vote for The Backyardigans! I absolutely love the music and so does DD. We do watch TV (a lot..) and she often asks for it (we Tivo the episodes) and I can usually ask her which one she wants to watch and she knows by the songs/dances.

When we're in a hurry, I can sing, "We gotta go, go, go, go, go, we gotta go b/c we can't go fast if we go too slow!" and she speeds up and starts dancing and moving! (It's from the Race Around The World episode).

I find that it isn't repetitive, either. I don't know -- more than two episodes of Blues Clues and I can't get the darn songs out of my head, and something like Dora has a lot of repetition. Backyardigans doesn't have that.

[fancyoats]

i don't see these mentioned here yet. my daughter loooooooooves these movies by hiyao miyazaki:

my neighbor totoro
ponyo


she also loves:
free willy
the black stallion
mary poppins
make way for ducklings
the arisocats

[QuestionGal]

we love Signing Time

[tbone_kneegrabber]

Pingu
Little Bear
Dr. Seuss movies (cat in the hat, green eggs and ham, lorax etc) they are animated and you can find them on youtube.
Signing Time
My Neighbor Tortoro
Reading Rainbow

We let ds watch stuff on our video Ipod. You can download stuff from YouTube and convert it to play on the Ipod. Then ds will watch a video on the ipod with headphones and dp and I can listen to something else over the car stereo.

[elleystar]

We are also mostly TV free and DS hasn't seen most shows, and never watched a movie. If we were in your situation though, here's what we'd do:

Max & Ruby--when he was around 9 mo we started reading DS the old 80s board books handed down from when my brothers were little. So, to him, they are not TV characters but primarily book characters. He gets to see the show occasionally and really enjoys it. I like it because it is split into segments about 10 min long for each story, so we can watch as little as we are comfortable with. We get tons of the books from the library now and it's an extra treat to him when he sees one of those stories appear on the TV show. There are more advanced books involving counting etc. that he loves right now and we get a lot of mileage out of them. My point being, in a long car ride, we could alternate reading books along with short doses of the show and he'd be entertained for a ridiculously long time.

Originally Posted by Evie's Mama

He would probably fall in love with the Bob the Builder On Site series. I think there are three of them. They show how all kinds of things (roads, bridges, houses, playgrounds, etc) are built. Lots of big machinery and such. It's nice because it's about half cartoon/half real life stuff. I was even mildly interested when I saw them.

Agreed! I stayed away from Bob for a long time because I wanted to avoid the commercialism. My DS's main obsession is construction vehicles though, so we have acquired some of the books and he adores them. (And there is a kitty involved.) He has seen the show 2 or 3 times now. I watch it with him and find it really enjoyable. Bob the Builder is such an old show, that for the most part you're not going to find any merchandise in stores. This removed my worry about DS developing the 'gimmes' for tractors with eyeballs (lol).

Originally Posted by babydanielsmom

Caillou.

My Ds loves this show

This would be my other vote. DS hasn't seen it in probably half a year but used to really like it. He liked seeing a little boy going through a lot of things that he could identify with, plus it had a kitty.

[2cutiekitties]

Little Bear, thankfully DS started enjoying this when he turned 2.5
Kipper
Finding Nemo

the above three replaced Elmo and Teletubbies. He wont even acknowledge Elmo/Sesame St. now.

Now at 3 we have added Wonder Pets, Blues Clues, Max and Ruby, Backyardigans.

Dora and Diego were hits for a few months but had no staying appeal. He likes Curious George, but only on the computer.

When I go on drives with him we take Little Bear and Nemo.

[lorelei]

My girls (or did when they were younger!) like Miffy, Max and Ruby, Little Bear, Backyardigans, they also really like Discovery channel stuff. Like slow motion shots with a macro lens- really close up nature. Crocodile hunter, man vs wild are big hits with my older two.

[LCBMAX]

Wow, y'all! This list should get us across the country and back again with everyone in good humor!

Thank you!

[eleonrauis]

My 28 month old DS loves Blues Clues (I prefer the older episodes with Steve as the host, the Classic Clues dvd is all Steve, most of the others are two Steve, two Joe), the Curious George series that runs on PBS (there are multiple dvds with eight 15-min episodes each, we've rented about six of them and they've all been equally good) and old Pink Panther cartoons (we watch them on Hulu). But, the music from all of these will get stuck in your head. He also really liked the Scholastic series Strega Nona, but didn't care for the other two stories on the dvd.

[showurhorns]

As an Early Childhood educator I recommend Wee Sing Videos. It brings music into other interests. My favorites are Wee Sing Train and Wee Sing Big Rock Candy Mountain.

Also if you can find either Joe Scruggs or Greg and Steve concert movies.

[lmk1]

Leapfrom Letter Factory, Leapfrog Math Circus. My son is about the same age and he LOVES those, and they did help him learn the alphabet and count.
We also like Caillou and Pingu. One thing to think about that I already messed up is that if you get something very commercial, like Thomas the Tank Engine (and my son LOVES that ), then ds will find everything with the picture of Thomas and want to buy it. My ds picked up wallpaper one day in Walmart because it had Thomas on it, and we now have a Thomas toothbrush, etc. That's why I'm very cautious about introducing any other commercial characters (like Bob the Builder). If your son likes trains though, there's a GREAT video called "Real Trains for Kids" (http://www.amazon.com/Real-Trains-Ki.../dp/B000KN7E1U) -- my ds likes it but once he got introduced the talking trains like Thomas, it's not as interesting for him.
Ds also likes Dora the Explorer (thanks to my Mom), but again, it's very commercial.