For several months, Minnow has thought that Mommy's computer exists mainly to let her look at pictures and videos of herself. But now she knows it can also access Elmo at any time of day. It was rainy here this weekend, and we must have watched this clip at least 37 times.
Sometimes we mixed it up by watching this one.
And, when Mommy needs some math, sometimes she sneaks this one into the mix:
But, it doesn't feature Elmo, so it is not favored. When my daughter becomes an English major, I will blame Elmo.
At least I'm culturing a good taste in music.
(And, yes this is a shameless ploy to increase my blog hits by routing my daughter here rather than directly to youtube.)
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I can't imagine parenting before youtube. My daughter says, "I want to see X" and it's there.
freight trains, sheep, sheep shearing, goats, goats in trees, goats jumping on sheep, acrobats, acrobats jumping through hoops, ... I finally failed on "yellow acrobats jumping through hoops." Alas, the problems of increasing grammar and complexity of through.
Elmo is definitely painful (and the Nora Jones lyrics are slightly disturbing), but youtube is also full of a lot of good old-school sesame street. Keep pushing towards the old Bert, Ernie, & Cookie Monster clips and she'll eventually catch on. Sometimes we get her to watch some of the more refined tastes from the Muppet Show.
Z likes to watch Cookie Monster sing "C is for cookie" on youtube and we'll find Bob the Builder clips when we really need them (she loves Bob)
Also, hulu.com has Sesame Street for free and it's higher quality video than most youtube clips.
Thanks for the tip on Hulu. We'll have to check it out next time we get desperate.
I love Youtube for a little on-demand entertainment. Right now Zoe's favorite is to watch ice skating. We'll queue up some women's olympic figure skating and she's happy. We also love the classic Sesame Street shorts. And we have actually watched some old Rainbow Brite too!
Youtube is nice in the way that you can commit to only a few minutes instead of sitting through an entire TV show.
Oohh -- great idea. I hadn't thought of youtube as a place for "things to see" with my 3.5 year old.
We seem to have moved past Elmo, and are now enjoying "Sid the Science Kid" on PBS. I like it for a bunch of reasons:
(1) it's on PBS
(2) it's a Jim Henson Co. production (cartoon, not muppets - oh well.)
(3) it's about a 5-year old (Sid) who considers himself a "science kid." He's full of questions and everyone around him helps him investigate that day's BIG QUESTION scientifically.
(4) it's about doing good science (at the preschool level) and making it a fun part of everyday life. The kids at Sid's preschool do observations in their "super-fab science lab" and record their observations (drawing) in their science journals. They make predictions, do experiments, act things out, ....
(5) I can stand watching it with my daughter.
Has anyone else seen it? Do the scientists out there (I'm an engineer doing education research and so ... I think about science and science education, but I don't DO science) think that it models good (preschool) level science?
http://pbskids.org/sid/parentsteachers/slideShow.html
We love those in our house!!! Little Isis sang the Feist song on the plane for the light attendant yesterday..
"1,2,3,4, chickens just back from the shore..."
YouTube is a godsend. So far, thank heavens, my girl has not ventured out on her own, but is still ruled by my list of "ok" videos and searches. Right now, we're on a Chinese pop/rap kick, but previous iterations have included Bonnie & Matt in "Dancing on Ice" and other ice skating/dancing videos, and, of course, Sesame Street.
My daughter's psycho over Elmo, so you'll probably get more hits thanks to my daughter as well. if I have to watch 'Elmo's Potty Time' one more time, well, you know.
in response to Gillian- My dd is a bit younger (2.5) and will sometimes watch Sid the Science Kid (when she is having a rough time and I need to get ready in the morning). we don't try to watch it, but it happens to be on at that time of day. I like the idea of the show and I like some of the things the kids do, but I find the animation really creepy and the personalities of the kids are a little annoying. I think Z feels the same way ("I don't like this guy"), but it will hold her attention for the critical 10 min that I need to get us out the door on time. I really like the idea of the show, but I don't really like the actual show.
For toddlers, I highly recommend the YouTube videos Monkey Taunts Tigers and Elephant Jumping on Trampoline.
And what's with all the new Sesame Street content on TV being broadcast in widescreen? Our TV gets digital signals, but it doesn't convert, so things get cropped, which is weird when, say, the Count is counting objects and some of them are off-screen. (Shakes fist at furry Sesame Street gods.)
Ahhh... youtube! Bulldozers, fire trucks... we even found a fire truck simulator where they are putting out a fire on a burning airplane. Spaceships... rocket launches... And my son also likes to watch the girls spinning around on the "pipes" (uneven parallel bars).
My 4 yr old son loves watching model train videos on YouTube. Old guys make videos of their layouts and my little guy thinks they're awesome.
We also had a whole evening's worth of fun watching little bristlebot robots on YouTube after I made a batch of them for my kids' school Christmas parties.