Yea, that’s no surprise at all, though I’ll bet you have some regrets about showing him that video, now that he’s pounding on all your furniture with sticks. When our girl watches the tumbling of Cirque du Soleil she’s usually inspired to leap off the couch and run about trying to imitate them. 
The boys been banging on all my furniture with sticks since he could stand up straight problem is he uses my kitchen utensils instead of sticks. Broke two today alone 
I need to get Cirque de Soleil for him, did you find it here?
[quote=“piwackit”]The boys been banging on all my furniture with sticks since he could stand up straight problem is he uses my kitchen utensils instead of sticks. Broke two today alone
I need to get Cirque de Soleil for him, did you find it here?[/quote]
FNAC, though beware that Cirque’s older performances may be inferior to their later ones. I bought Alegria at FNAC, by chance, and it’s great. I bought another one there and it’s somewhat of a dud. Of course, they’re also available through amazon.com, like everything else (and one has the advantage of reading reviews before buying there).
Amen. Absolute garbage. It’s simply a channel that shows off the adults and has very little to do with the children who they drag in. They make the kids act like the adults acting like kids instead of letting the kids act like kids.
If you can get your hands on Shining Time Station, KidsSongs, or Gula Gula Island those are great programs where kids and adults interact without either group overstepping respective roles.
If you haven’t gotten them yet, I highly, highly recommend the Preschool Power series. They’re videos of young children between the ages of 2-1/2 up to 7 or so doing all sorts of activities in areas of self-help, gross motor (dancing and silly faces are common “commercial breaks” between skits), fine motor (pouring, braiding, and using tongs and spoons, for instance), science, colors, math and numeracy, music, cooking, art, and lots more. My niece loves the videos and I have used them with my 2-1/2 year old class as ways to introducing a concept or recipe that we would learn or make in class. I also used them for my ESL preschoolers to elicit discussion and do some TPR. They’re like $225 or so each at FNAC with 8 videos (on VCD) in the series. They are in dual language with Chinese subtitles, one audio jack producing English and the other producing Chinese dubbing. I think the nicest thing about the videos is that the adults are merely legs or hands in the background while the focus is on the children working fairly independently.
There’s one called Chao-Hu I think is from Japan but has the Taiwan version. Each month you get a VCD and activity book…and some toys every few months. It teaches alot of stuff like washing hands, using the toilet, cleaning, brushing teeth etc… and of course dancing and singing.
You have to subscribe for a year.
My wife orders alot of stuff off of the internet (locally) at very reasonable prices.
She’s gotten some good English vcd’s that teach Abc’s, vocabulary and reading.
As for the garbage stuff,…no matter, they still learn to speak from it. My son likes dancing to the Yoyo t.v. and especially likes the craft making part–afterwards we then try to do our own crafts. I think it’s important to try and make it interactive with them instead of just letting them sit there inactive.
Last week we ordered some Bo Po Mo Fo vcd’s from the internet but they are crap quality in every way and difficult to watch. Anyway he still gets something out of it.
Anyone know where to get Taiwanese language vcd’s for kids?
What about Bagpuss ? Camberwick Green, Mr Men etc… ?
(I can get them for you)
Apart from the parents, where else can children get English stimulation from ?
When my boy was real little, he LOVED these:
[url=http://images.google.com.tw/imgres?imgurl=http://www.greattapes.com/pix/products/therefiret-2.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.greattapes.com/gt/product.phtml/therefiret&h=370&w=200&sz=26&tbnid=SXst2d_tKTGRfM:&tbnh=118&tbnw=63&hl=zh-TW&start=1&prev=/images%3Fq%3DThere%2Bgoes%2Ba%2Bfiretruck%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Dzh-TW%26lr%3D%26sa%3DG]Real Wheels Series
“There Goes a Truck” and other great children’s videos, starring Dave and Becky! These videos are slowly going out of print, to be replaced by DVDs, but we have almost all of them in stock.
DVDs
High Speed Adventures: There Goes A Race Car/Motorcycle/Spaceship: Three “There Goes A” adventures on one DVD ($10.00)
Land, Air & Sea Adventures: There Goes A Boat/Mail Truck/Helicopter: Three “There Goes A” adventures on one DVD ($10.00)
Mega Truck Adventures: There Goes a Bulldozer/Monster Truck/Tank: Three exciting videos with “Dave” show kids how big machines work ($10.00)
Rescue Adventures: There Goes a Rescue Hero/Police Car/Rescue Vehicle: Three “There Goes A” episodes with Dave, as he saves the day! ($10.00)
Travel Adventures: There Goes A Train/Airplane/Bus: Three “There Goes A” adventures on one DVD ($10.00)
Truck Adventures: There Goes a Truck/Fire Truck/Garbage Truck: Three popular truck videos on one DVD ($10.00)
Videotapes
There Goes a Boat: A fog horn blares, a tanker glides through the water! ($10.00)
There Goes a Bulldozer: Another live action tape with Dave and Becky! ($12.00)
There Goes a Bus: Something big and yellow comes around the bend – it’s a bus! ($12.00)
There Goes a Dump Truck: Another Real Wheels classic! ($15.00)
There Goes a Farm Truck: Spend a day with Dave on a farm ($15.00)
There Goes a Garbage Truck: A truck drives by, garbage cans are emptied, and a child points and shouts . . . ($15.00)
There Goes a Mail Truck: When the mail truck comes down the street, are you excited to open the mail? ($15.00)
There Goes a Motorcycle: The starting gate falls and you hear a roar as tires throw dirt into the air! ($12.00)
There Goes a Police Car: An entertaining and educational look at police work for kids ($12.00)
There Goes a Race Car: Vroom! Vroom! Drivers, start your engines! ($12.00)
There Goes a Tank: Watch Dave get lost as he learns about tanks! ($12.00)
There Goes a Train: Ride with Engineer Dave on a train! ($12.00)
There Goes a Truck: Most little kids love trucks – and they’ll love this video, too ($12.00)[/url]
Those look great Tigerman. I may buy a truck video for my brother’s new little boy. Lots of other good looking stuff at your links, too, narrated by folks such as Garrison Keilor, Morgan Freeman, Meryl Streep, Tracey Ulmann, etc.
We’ve had a couple of Sesame Street videos in our house for only a few weeks and they’re a big hit. How could a kid not love the muppets and all the great song and dance routines? I believe they’ll be very helpful in teaching numbers and the alphabet (to supplement books, etc.) and she loves them. They also encourage action and participation more than a lot of TV programming.
We still don’t want her watching too much TV, but I can’t see being a total prohibitionist as my parents were. So we’ve started offering such videos as a reward for good behavior: last night we told her if she ate all her dinner we could watch one of the videos, then we turned it off halfway through and told her after her bath we could watch the rest. Seemed to do the trick.
Recently our girl has a new favorite video: the Nutcracker ballet. Before buying it, I wasn’t a ballet fan at all, but I know the Nutcracker is a huge hit every Christmas and is loved not just by adults but by girls and boys.
I’ve known lots of kids who enjoyed the Nutcracker and I knew a family whose young boy was totally devoted to his ballet lessons and performed in the community production of Nutcracker. Of course he was teased by his peers, but he didn’t give a damn, because he truly enjoyed it. If I had a boy who enjoyed ballet, I’d hope to be big enough to dismiss such teasing and gender “issues” as mere fears of homophobes and the uneducated. But I have a girl, so I don’t even have to consider such issues. With a girl, it’s totally socially acceptable – heck, recommended – for her to enjoy ballet.
There are lots of versions of the Nutcracker on DVD, but I picked one with Baryshnikov, knowing of his reputation. Even to a neophyte, such as myself, it’s easy to see why Barshynikov earned that reputation. It’s just incredible the stuff he could do. And, ladies, I doubt you’ve ever seen a butt as fine as his (my daughter even commented on it, as did my wife). The rest of the cast is also outstanding (my version is by the American Ballet Theater) as are the costumes, set and great musical score.
My daughter has asked to watch it many times, she happily sits there watching without growing bored, and I too enjoy it. This video was a complete hit, so I researched the next ballet video to get her – Sleeping Beauty – and I’ve already purchased it for Christmas.
I know, one can get disney cartoons of both of those, but if you haven’t seen the real thing – the ballet – then you are missing out on a truly great and entertaining performance.
We’ve been watching lots of cartoons with our girl – Toy Story, Robots, 101 Dalmations, etc. – so I wanted to rent a non-cartoon that she would like. At her age, the obvious answer is a movie starring animals.
So we rented Babe: Pig in the City this weekend. What a great movie, especially for kids. No violence (except for vicious dogs chasing the pig, but they never actually bit him and it worked out ok in the end). Great plot, with lots of entertaining animals for the kids but sophisticated enough for adults (on the second watching I caught some clever things I had missed). Amazing how they get all those animals to act and match up the words with their lips so perfectly. And, they are really good moral characters – not just the decent hardworking farmer and his wife, but the pig, which is pure good and has a heart of gold.
They didn’t have the first Babe at the rental store, but I’ll have to look for it. As you can see, that movie scored great reviews.
rottentomatoes.com/m/1065598-babe/
Got another great musical for our girl.
By far the best movie for kids that we own or have rented is Wizard of Oz. If you have young kids and haven’t shown them that, do them a favor and pick up a copy. It’s outstanding. Great songs, dancing, characters, plot, colorful scenery, etc. My girl and I have both seen it well over a dozen times (at least key parts) and will enjoy it many more.
The next musical I got her was the Sound of Music and that too was right on. Nice happy woman (Julie Andrews), lots of kids, singing and dancing in the Austrian countryside. What could be better? Yes the whole plot is too complex for her and even includes dark and incomprehensible nazis, but so what – when she’s older she can figure that out; for now she just enjoys singing “Doe a deer a female deer. . .”
And this weekend we got another great one in Mary Poppins, with Julie Andrew and Dick Van Dyke. I’d never seen that before, but read on Amazon.com that everyone loved it. In a way it’s very similar to Sound of Music: Julie Andrews is a great nanny who transforms a home. But the setting is totally different and so are the songs, which are as catchy as those of S of M. I’ve always liked Dick Van Dyke, too, and he does a great job in this film. Old? Yes, it’s from 1964, but it’s a Disney film and must have been widely applauded back then for what were probably then ground breaking animation and special effects. Anyway, our girl really liked it.
Three good clean movies that can be watched repeatedly and should linger in your child’s consciousness.
I believe the next movie I’ll get, along similar lines, may be Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang.
While YoYo may not be the most educational show, my daughter of 1 1/2 loves it. She loves any singing/dancing show - be it YoYo (DianDianMing), the Wiggles or the show on that newer MoMo Channel. It’s good to see her getting up and (attempting - it’s more like bouncing) dancing to the music instead of just sitting in one spot watching.
She also loves Chao-Hu (the tiger) which is educational, and her equal favourite with YoYo~ It has singing and dancing too, so that’s good. Dora and Teletubbies too~ I personally hate the Teletubbies, but the missus insists. So she only watches it if I’m not around.
Also, on Saturday (I think), YoYo TV has a show with Brother Banana and some puppet-kid. It’s slightly educational, though my daughter can’t learn much from it yet. They go and look at different things - for example, there was one episode where they visited one of the ocean parks and were talking about Porpoises (or were they Manatee?)…
Oh. She also (for some reason) likes watching snooker. She thinks it’s really exciting when they hit all those colourful balls around the table.
Good point. I detest YoYo, but who am I to judge? If it gets kids up and singing and dancing, that’s got to be a good thing (although I suspect there’s lots of obnoxious advertising and other crap thrown in for good measure).
Yea, my girl loves Chao-Hu too. I wasn’t aware that it’s a tv program, but we get hand me down Chao-Hu magazines from her cousins and she loves them. As you said they’re educational – how to take a dump, how to wash your hands afterwards, how to share, etc – but she loves it.
What she doesn’t like is how I always refer to him as Chao-Hu LaoHu, causing her to strenuously point out to her ignorant dad 
, “bu SI Chao-Hu LaoHu, si Chao-Hu.”
The Chao-Hu TV Show is not so good. It’s more like a normal cartoon, and the little one gets bored of it in 5 minutes.
What is interesting is that she is allowed to watch TV whenever she wants, yet she often prefers it just as background noise. If she’s off playing with toys, turn it off and she will come running over and complain until you turn it on~
Oh, the Baby Einstein are OK~ but not very educational. More hypnotising than anything else~
x08,
My son is almost 3, and he loves the Chao Hu DVDs. It is also interesting to see how the shows influence him. He will be watching with grandma while I do some work here and he will run to me and say “I want a banana” or “My teeth have germs on them. Brush them for me.” Actually just now he came up to me and announced, “I need a bath,” and he is in the bathroom getting ready…
At 27 months I can recommend the following:
Balamory. bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/balamory/
Peppa Pig. peppapig.com/
Charlie and Lola. charlieandlola.com/
Blue Cow. bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/storymakers/
The roly mo show. bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/rolymo/
The fimbles. bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/fimbles/
Tikkabilla. bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/tikkabilla/stories/
Bob the builder. bobthebuilder.com/uk/index.html
I don’t work for CBeebeies I swear, but my niece ‘little moo’ is also 27 months, and she swears by them.
The only one I know from that list is Bob the Builder~ :s
My brother gave us a three-DVD box set of Mr. Bean a few years ago. My daughter has really been enjoying it lately. She needs some explaining of the plot, but his absurd slapstick humor is perfect for a 4 year old. 
MT,
My son (4) enjoys the cartoon Mr Bean. I enjoy hearing his questions and explanations of the plot. I also enjoy his explanations of dance videos, like “Riverdance”. There is a part where the dancing girls start with long dresses then rip them off to wear just hotpants and a top. “The ladies are turning into hot things so they are dancing in their underpants and turning into mummy’s. They won’t take their tops off because then they will have babies and they don’t want babies right now, they just want to be dancing mummy’s…”
Does anybody know where I can buy Chao Hu online? When I google Chao-hu all I find is the lake in Anhui, China. :s
My son (2½ Y.O.) LOVES that tiger, as well as Mr Bean, little Einsteins, Pororo but his favorite above them all is this swedish cartoon called Alfons Åberg http://www.alfons.se/html/sprak/alfie.htm
I admit, I really like Alfons too 