Toddler wants to watch movies

[gilamomma]

We don't have TV, and my toddler has recently discovered movies. She's always asking to watch a movie, and we only have two that are appropriate for her: The Jungle Book, and Fern Gully. I really want to get some good educational stuff for her to watch. Got any tips? We're starting out on learning numbers and letters, so I guess that would be a good start. any links would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks

[dharmamama]

I have not seen them, but my nephew has two TimeLife dvds called Animal Numbers and Animal Letters (maybe Animal Alphabet).

There's also a Richard Scarry video called The Best Alphabet Movie Ever, and Leap Frog has a Letter Factory video.

I have to be honest, though, and say that my real suggestion would be not to let her watch vidoes at all.

Namaste!

[eminer]

No ideas about letters and numbers, but far as educational-for-2-year-olds in general, goes, *Microcosmos* is a film showing insects and other creatures in the "small world" doing their interesting things, to a soundtrack. My dd was way into letters at that age, too, and found herself an ELMO (!) alphabet DVD at the library -- "Alphabet Jungle"? -- which I don't recommend and have tried to block out.

[nurnur4evr]

When my kids want to watch a movie, we usually watch an old musical like "Sound of Music" or "Brigadoon" or something like that. That way they are hearing different kinds of music in addition to just sitting there passively.

Like someone else wrote, I'd try to generally steer them away from screen time though. But, sometimes after we have read books, gone for a walk, etc. it can be a nice change of pace. I also tell them stories about when I or my sisters were in the plays in school.

[UlrikeDG]

SIGNING TIME! My two year old LOVES them! She sings the songs all the time. Volume 5 is the Alphabet one.

Avoid the Baby Einstein series. B-O-R-I-N-G.

Scholastic also has a series of books on DVD that Nadia likes. Her favorites are:
Click Clack Moo - Cows That Type & More Fun on the Farm
Chicka Chicka Boom Boom and Lots More Learning Fun! (alphabet!)
Corduroy... and More Stories About Friendship

All three of my kids like Veggie Tales. My oldest liked science & nature programs even at age 2. My younger two aren't into them, but he would have been thrilled with documentaries (especially fun ones like Walking with Dinosaurs), even then.

[jannjoe]

My kids love the
Leap Frog Letter Factory Video
and
that Chicka Chicka Boom Boom
one was a hit here too.

[Lillian J]

At the risk of making a pest of myself , I'd suggest not worrying about letters and numbers for some time to come. Those are tools for another stage of life, I feel, and they have no special value until then (when they can be learned a lot faster and easier anyway). I'd instead look for things that introduce the world in a way that stimulates the imagination and sense of humor. The film, Microcosmos, mentioned in this thread by eminer, is incredibly beautiful and educational in a different sense of the word. Fantasia would be a nice one too - all that beautiful classical music set to dance in fantastic animation... My son adored Winnie the Pooh - really sweet and funny - and The Wind in the Willows was a beatiful film we both loved when he was a bit older (NOT the cartoon, but the claymation version!). There's a fun film called Where the Toys Come From for a slightly older child too - it's kind of hard to find - an adventure about some of those little windup plastic toys that get to wondering where they come from, and go off and find the factory that made them.

Article worth reading: Much Too Early, by David Elkind. Lillian

[gilamomma]

[QUOTE=dharmamama]
I have to be honest, though, and say that my real suggestion would be not to let her watch vidoes at all.

QUOTE]

I really do agree. Until now I never considered plopping her down in front of the TV. But we watch movies occasionally, so she of course wants some that are at her level. I understand that inclination.

I had suspected that the Baby Einstien wouldn't be very good. How about Leap Frog? I hesitate to teach her any of these highly commercialized characters.

I did add a few that were mentioned to my amazon wish list to be e-mailed to family for potential holiday gifts.

And yeah, thanks for reminding me about Microcosmos - that is a great idea!

[hsmamato2]

mine liked the disney sing along song videos when they were younger, and I liked that the words sort of bounce along with the song, so they're "reading"(not really,just making myself feel better)
Well, neither one read exceptionally early from this, but they did enjoy them -

[grahamsmom98]

We do not have TV either. However, we enjoy using the box for videos and DVDs and have bought an huge collection over the years. Our home library is extensive (well over 200 titles) but we also live in a very rural area w/o a nearby video store!

We have mainly "classics" as we don't much care for many of the newer films (hate too much violence and bad language). Our 7 year old ds loves Hitchcock and other films from the 40s-60s. We only have a couple of Disney (original Fantasia and a couple of the early Winnie the Pooh). We don't like the new Disney films (find most of them offensive) and won't buy any.

Here are just a few "educational" titles you might want to check into! All should be available from B&N, Amazon, Borders and other sources. All these are absolutely incredible and you'll watch them again and again, learning everytime. We'd recommend them for ANY film library. Just fabulous!

David Attenborough:

Life On Earth
Life Of Birds
Secret Life Of Plants
Blue Planet
Life Of Mammals
Trials Of Life
Living Planet


NOVA:

Japan's Secret Garden (David Attenborough)
Garden Of Eden (on the Seychelle Islands)
The Unknown World (microscopic life)
Treasures Of the Great Barrier Reef
Miracle Of Life (in the womb)

IMAX:

The Great Barrier Reef
The Living Sea
Coral Reef Adventure
Galapagos
Blue Planet (different from the David Attenborough series above)
Origins Of Life

PBS Home Video:

Secrets Of the Ocean Realm


Winged Migration
Microcosmos

BBC:

Walking With Dinosaurs
Walking With Cavemen
Walking With Prehistoric Beasts
Allosaurus
Chased By Dinosaurs
Prehistoric America

Discovery:

When Dinosaurs Roamed America
Dinosaur Planet

National Geographic:

Any of the Really Wild Animals videos designed for children (set of 10 available, any and all are terrific for kids AND adults!)
any National Geographic specials

[USAmma]

What about the computer instead? My 1yo loves Starfall.com's ABC page. Almost daily my 4yo will sit with her in the computer chair and 1yo will request certain letters by name, and then 4yo clicks for her. She has learned nearly all of her letters because of this. Toddlers LOVE repetion and she's getting attention. Sometimes I sit her on my lap and we do the Starfall.com thing together and we talk and laugh as we are going through them. It's much better than TV-- we interact more.

Just for the record though, both my girls have watched TV from a very young age. Carefully selected videos for fun and learning. Some of the Sesame Street ones are nice, Baby Einstein's "Baby Dolittle" ones (both Neighborhood Animals and World Animals). Once we were listening to classical music and a song came on, and my dd1 who was then about 2, said "That's Giraffe music!" She recognized it from the World Animals video. We have Leapfrog's Letter Factory one.

Honestly most toddlers are not ready for longer movies unless you play them in segments. That's a long time for TV to be on. I like the 30 minute videos instead because they are just the right length for her attention span. My 4yo gets longer movies now. She loves animal movies like Milo and Otis, Black Beauty, Finding Nemo and so on. There are certain ones that she can only watch when dd2 is napping because they can be scary to a toddler. They only get about 1 video each per day, too, unless someone's sick.

[boysrus]

I was going to suggest Signing Time as well. We just started watching that and my kids are picking up so much.
YMMV, but none of my 2 yos would have sat through Nova! Reading Rainbow is great, as is Magic Schoolbus, but I think a lot of it is lost on a child that young.

[UnschoolnMa]

My kids liked pretty short stuff at that age. We often went to the library to get movies for them. It was free too!

[UlrikeDG]

Originally Posted by Lillian J

At the risk of making a pest of myself , I'd suggest not worrying about letters and numbers for some time to come. Those are tools for another stage of life, I feel, and they have no special value until then (when they can be learned a lot faster and easier anyway).

I agree that there's no reason to push them on children, and quite frankly, I didn't even realize how much exposure my DD was getting to letters until I was composing my response to the OP, because I wasn't doing it on purspose. Nadia does know the letters of the alphabet and can count to 10, and she enjoyed herself while "accidentally" learning them.

grahamsmom98's list is excellent! We've gotten a number of the movies she recommends through Netflix and most of the others are on my Queue. My old library had the Really Wild Animals series on VHS. Netflix has the original 4 on DVD, but National Geographic just released a new set of 5 DVDs, which they don't have yet.

[4evermom]

I am not familiar with many of the videos suggested but I really did NOT like National Geographic's Really Wild Animals. It was much too fast paced. I did see some Richard Scary videos which I thought were fine except sometimes the animation was a little jerky when there was "panning" shots. At that age, my ds would have liked something with lots of songs.

[excitedtobeamom]

grahamsmom98- thanks for the list!

[raleigh_mom]

BTW, if you go with Chicka Chicka Boom Boom, the DVD includes several portions that the VHS tape doesn't have. We lost our DVD and replaced it with VHS and were very disappointed to discover how much was missing.

[phathui5]

Leap Frog videos annoy me.

My kids like the Magic School Bus and Veggie Tales videos.

[WastedGlamour]

Thank you grahamsmom98 for the suggestions! It is greatly appreciated !!

[muttix2]

The Winnie the Pooh ABCs and 123s (two different dvds) are ok. They have some singing which my ds loves. His favorite one is a Sesame Street dvd, "Kids Favorite Songs". That has him counting backwards from 10, its cute. Its not a learning dvd though, just a bunch of kids' songs.

I agree with the starfall recommendation, my ds (2) loves it! Every time I go to the computer he falls over himself to run to me so we can do "his" website.