Sunday, August 27, 2006
tv and creativity
I know there's a substantial part of the population that believes that television stiffles creativity in kids, and to some extent, I can see how that would be true depending on what the kids watch. We use the parental V-chip option (aka the "off" button) a lot and limit what we let the kids see. They love Zoom on PBS, and they learn a lot of "go do it" type stuff from that show. When they were 2 or 3, I overheard T or J telling the other, "I'm Steve; you're Joe. Let's play Blue's Clues." Then they grabbed their handy-dandy notebooks and went around the house looking for clues. It's a game they still love to play.
The newest creative play inspiring show is The Backyardigans. This is show they hadn't seen much until recently, but it's in between two shows I tape on CBS for them on Saturday mornings, so I've just let them watch it lately since they rarely see weekday TV anymore. They have really been inspired by it. The show is about a bunch of odd looking creatures who live in a neighborhood with a common backyard area where they use their imaginations to go on "adventures." One episode a couple of weeks ago was about hunting for dinosaur bones and gold. They thought it was great. The episode two weeks ago that they just adored was about hunting for a Yeti. In it, the characters do "The Yeti Stomp." There's a brief music video of it. So our kids last night decided to do the Yeti Stomp. They were going around the house singing, "STOMP, STOMP, STOMP, YETI, YETI, YE-TI!" And they were loud. Very loud. They were still stuck on this refrain this morning, too. I thought if I showed them a picture of a Yeti, it might freak them out and slow them down a bit, but no such luck. They are still very loudly doing the Yeti Stomp. If they were really hunting the Yeti, there's no chance they'd catch it. He'd have lots of forewarning that they were advancing!
And on a related thread, The Teletubbies were on PBS briefly the other day while T & J were waiting for me to get the DVD player working so they could watch The Muppets. The DVD player had suddenly died during Nanny McPhee. It turns out that Daddy-o had once again turned off the light switch in the other room that controls that electrical outlet, and so when it ran out of batteries, the DVD player quit working. Once we figured that out, we were able to use the DVD player again. Anyway, the Teletubbies were dancing around doing their strange Teletubby things. J noted, "Look, Tinky-Winky has his purse," and T noted, "No, he's a boy. It's a bag." J replied, "But really, it's a purse." Of course, they have no idea that there has been a national controversy over this bag-slash-purse, so I found the whole exchange pretty amusing to listen to.
The newest creative play inspiring show is The Backyardigans. This is show they hadn't seen much until recently, but it's in between two shows I tape on CBS for them on Saturday mornings, so I've just let them watch it lately since they rarely see weekday TV anymore. They have really been inspired by it. The show is about a bunch of odd looking creatures who live in a neighborhood with a common backyard area where they use their imaginations to go on "adventures." One episode a couple of weeks ago was about hunting for dinosaur bones and gold. They thought it was great. The episode two weeks ago that they just adored was about hunting for a Yeti. In it, the characters do "The Yeti Stomp." There's a brief music video of it. So our kids last night decided to do the Yeti Stomp. They were going around the house singing, "STOMP, STOMP, STOMP, YETI, YETI, YE-TI!" And they were loud. Very loud. They were still stuck on this refrain this morning, too. I thought if I showed them a picture of a Yeti, it might freak them out and slow them down a bit, but no such luck. They are still very loudly doing the Yeti Stomp. If they were really hunting the Yeti, there's no chance they'd catch it. He'd have lots of forewarning that they were advancing!
And on a related thread, The Teletubbies were on PBS briefly the other day while T & J were waiting for me to get the DVD player working so they could watch The Muppets. The DVD player had suddenly died during Nanny McPhee. It turns out that Daddy-o had once again turned off the light switch in the other room that controls that electrical outlet, and so when it ran out of batteries, the DVD player quit working. Once we figured that out, we were able to use the DVD player again. Anyway, the Teletubbies were dancing around doing their strange Teletubby things. J noted, "Look, Tinky-Winky has his purse," and T noted, "No, he's a boy. It's a bag." J replied, "But really, it's a purse." Of course, they have no idea that there has been a national controversy over this bag-slash-purse, so I found the whole exchange pretty amusing to listen to.
Labels: around the house, kid sayings, movies and tv
# posted by Elizabeth @ 10:07 AM 
