SteelyKid has some molars coming in, which led to some intermittent generalized fussiness this weekend. When she gets that way, she can sometimes be calmed down using videos on the computer, such as the “Wheels on the Buss” DVD my mom has. In order to spare the sanity of the adults in her life, though, we supplemented this with kid-friendly YouTube clips, eventually running across this:
I have very distinct memories of this when I was a small child watching Sesame Street– I hesitate to call them happy memories, because I think I recall being upset when the singers are carried off. But I definitely remember this.
What’s really striking, though, is how little of this clip will have any relevance to SteelyKid and her classmates. that. Operator-connected calls were on the way out when I was watching this, there are almost no pay phones any more, and phone booths had vanished well before the pay phone. And toward the very end, the singer says “It only costs a dime!” which, yeah, not so much.
This is, however, a nice reminder of how Sesame Street mixed kid-oriented educational material with stuff adults could find funny. We haven’t tried SteelyKid on the modern Sesame Street (she goes to day care before it’s on, and DVR’ing it to watch later seems kind of silly), but that day is not too far off. I just hope they still have some adult-friendly content, because I’ve been stuck listening to some other recent kid-oriented television, and I think I’d rather pound a screwdriver through my eardrum than sit through “Dora the Explorer” again.
Other classic bits from the Street:
And right at the moment, you can go to YouTube, and click the vuvuzela button to enrich the experience with the sound of a few billion angry bees.
There is kid-oriented TV out there that you’ll find more than tolerable. Try “Jack’s Big Music Show” for a starter – my older daughter was obsessed with it when she was 2 or 3. One of its many virtues, from a not-driving-adults-batty perspective is that it did not rely on the same bits in every program, as “Dora” and some other shows do. Other than the theme song and end-of-the-show song, it was different every time. The structure was the same, of course, but you could watch two or three episodes in a day and not feel like you had permanent earworms afterward. It’s on Nick Jr if you get that.
As for the current “Sesame Street”, eh. Too much Elmo, not enough of the stuff we fondly recall (and scour YouTube for) from when we were kids. I’m not unhappy that neither of my girls asks to watch it.
You can buy Sesame Street DVDs, which means you can repeatedly watch the same Sesame Street stuff over and over again until you want to hide the DVD and say it’s broken.
For the two year old I babysat in college, it was “Watch Bob” (the name of the video has conveniently been excised from my brain).
My daughter wanted either “Letters” (Learning about Letters) or “Numbers” (Learning about Numbers), despite the fact that we had several others.
One that I didn’t click until after I posted this: The Ladybugs’ Picnic.
I have spent an inordinate amount of time clicking “related” videos on YouTube. I haven’t thought of any of this stuff in years, but it obviously imprinted deeply.
Also, this hallucinatory stop-motion clip of an orange singing opera. Wow, my childhood tv shows were weird.
Chad @3:
Without even clicking that link, I can *still* sing “The Ladybugs’ Picnic” in its entirety.
And yet, I can’t remember where I left my keys.