Some generations believe that technology is detrimental to a toddler’s learning abilities, but that’s not always the case. In fact, in many instances, technology helps children. Here are a few educational shows that your young one will love to stream.
Sesame Street
Sesame Street is probably the most popular choice of not only this generation, but the last few generations as well. Sesame Street, now in its 43rd year, is based on characters from Jim Henson’s Muppets. As of 2009, more than 77 million Americans watched Sesame Street, and she show has won eight Grammy Awards and 153 Emmy Awards, which is more than any other children’s show.
The shows primarily revolve around education, but has expanded to include topics like relationships, emotions, and ethics. Most storylines were taken from personal experiences of the writing staff and crew. In one particularly emotional episode, they worked the death of actor William Lee, who played Mr. Hooper, into the storylines.
In one of the show’s most famous sequences, Big Bird is reminded of Mr. Hooper’s death after handing out drawings to members of Sesame Street. He looks for Mr. Hooper to give him his drawing, but a character on the show reminds Big Bird that they told him he died. Big Bird remarks that he’ll just give it to him when he comes back from being dead, and is told that he’s not coming back. The show spins the topic into an educational lesson on death.
Super Why
Super Why seems to be a recent favorite among children these days. The show’s main character, Whyatt, resides in Storybrook Village, an entire village made of fairy-tale characters. He’ll get a call that one of the other villagers has a huge problem, and he calls on the “super readers,” a group of three characters, Whyatt, and the viewer.
The episodes usually involve characters from different fairy-tales, which could explain why it resonates so well with children. For sheer number of episodes available on demand, DIRECTV beats cable by a large margin.
Team Umizoomi
Team Umizoomi is a cartoon that focuses on teaching children mathematical concepts, like counting, patterns, shapes, measurements, and more. The team comprises Milli and Geo, as well as a robot named Bot, and the action takes place around Umi City.
The episodes involve mathematical tasks. In each episode, Team Umizoomi breaks the fourth wall by asking children to get involved. The person being helped is usually a real child or adult, and the animated characters will help them.
The series has spawned a number of coloring and activity books. They’ve also released several math kits for preschoolers, all of which contain an episode on a DVD, a math activity book, and a storybook. The website even has several activities for your young ones.
Dora the Explorer
Dora the Explorer, now in its eighth season, involves Dora Marquez and her monkey, Boots, as they travel around and overcome obstacles that they have to solve. In addition to tasking kids with thinking outside of the box to solve a situation, the show also helps kids learn basic Spanish work.
The show is so popular, in fact, that they’ve turned it into a live performance. The productions remained true to the format of the television show and was conceived by the same people that were in charge of the television shows.
Dora the Explorer branched out into many educational books, DVDs, and games. Dora the Explorer isn’t just popular in America – the brand is known the world over.
Little Einsteins
This show, designed for preschoolers, integrates classical music and famous works of art into each plot or soundtrack of each episode. Like the other shows listed, it encourages viewer interaction, and encourages the viewer to check out the next episode.
Little Einsteins was produced by Disney and had a four year run. Despite not being on the air, the show remains popular. There were 12 DVD’s put out during its time on the air, and two more after it went off the air, with the final one coming out this past June. The DVD’s each contained three to four episodes.
There are many more popular educational shows for children, but these are just a few of the popular ones. If you have a young child in your family, some of these names may be familiar to you, and you may find yourself accidentally humming along to one of the songs from the show. If you have children, do they watch any of these shows? If not, what are some of their favorite shows?