New Educational and Entertaining TV Shows For Toddlers and School Age Kids

You can’t beat your child’s imagination and what they can learn from watching the right TV shows.

With the long summer holiday in full swing, kids get bored easily and begin to explore all sorts of things. As parents, we want to be sure our kids are spending their time at home well. Parents enroll their kids in summer school but what do they do when they return home?
Most of them turn to the TV and the internet. For the older kids, it’s an avenue to get into all forms of activities. It is important to make sure they are watching the right channels on TV and browsing the right sites if you will be leaving your gadgets with them.

For our little tots, animated TV shows/cartoons don’t bore them. They can watch same episodes over and over. Pre-school TV is fun and has a lot of informative, educational and social usefulness. From Learning new words and the use of English language, to developing useful social skills, creativity and so on and so forth. You can’t beat your child’s imagination and what they can learn from watching the right TV shows.

Though Parents always have different reactions to their kids watching TV. Some believe it has bad effects on children, others believe it has some positive effect on children. This post is not about judging whether it’s good or not (That’s a post for another day). The truth is a lot of parents rely on the Television to keep the kids busy, to let them do other house chores or occasionally have their ‘me’ time. What is important is to ALWAYS monitor what they watch.

For me, once school home work is done, they can watch TV for some time before going to bed. I sometimes do find time to watch with them and even find myself enjoying these animated series.

Here are My 7 Mum approved children’s programs on TV to entertain and educate your toddlers, preschoolers and school age kids.

Bubble Guppies

It’s time to LEARN! ‘It’s time for bubble guppies’. The show is like a real life class room. Just think of all the topics that can be taught in school from science, art, mathematics, history to drama. With a jolly, jolly theme song, this show features some fish tailed preschoolers attending school in an underwater classroom. A wide range of topics is taken on each episode. The class teacher, Mr. Grouper discusses the topic of the day with the kids, then they act out a story about the topic, have a fun musical session and even go on a field trip (sorry, underwater trip) in their community to put more highlight on the topic. If you watch this show once, you will let your kids watch them over and over. It’s my no.1 on Nick Jr. Even though it is recommended for Ages 2-5, older kids will enjoy it too. The plot is wide and the animation is so colourful, your kids will not just gain loads of knowledge but get captivated.

Network: Nick Jr.

Paw Patrol

No job is too big, no pup is too small. Paw Patrol is about a group of 6 sweet and polite super hero rescue dogs led by computer tech wiz kid, Ryder. He assembles his pups to help solve problems in the neighborhood teaching kids the importance of helping people and team work in problem solving. The kids will also get some laughter moments to cheer them up. My son (Teni) thinks Ryder is the coolest kid on earth.

All the dogs have different special skills; one of the dogs, Rocky (a recycling dog) shows how to reduce, reuse and recycle unwanted things in our environment. “Why thrash it when you can stash it”.

Network: Nick Jr.

Blaze and the Monster Machines

My son loves this one because of the ’racy cars’ moving on blazing speed but its mum approved. While blaze is speeding, your little tot can get early introductory lessons on basic science, high-tech, logic, maths and even engineering. Each episode introduces different concept in these areas and also include something for the kids to cheer about while watching.

Network: Nick Jr.

Team Umizoomi

They are the smallest mathematics super heroes ever; Bot, a friendly robot , Geo and his sister, Milli. The 3 of them can fit into the palm of a grown man but what they do not have in size, they make up for by engaging the viewers in a range of activities working with numbers, shapes, measurement and patterns to help kids in their community to solve everyday problems. Kids learn maths in the most fun way.

Network: Nick Jr.

Dora and friends

There was Dora, the explorer and now, the new ‘Dora and friends’ show featuring grown up Dora as she goes to school in the city. As your kids enjoy the fun adventure with Dora, they learn to give back to the community, learn some new words in Spanish and improve their imaginative skills by helping Dora and her friends solve mysteries using new technology. Her old paper map in former Dora the explorer is now been replaced by a map app on her smartphone to navigate their way round the city.

Network: Nick Jr.

Shimmer and shine

This show is actually a fun one that leaves giggles on my little daughter, Tiwatope every time. Little girls will love the beautiful eyed characters in vibrant girly colored outfits. If you enjoyed enchanted carpet rides and genie stories as a child, you can start off your kids too on a magical adventure to improve their imaginative and creative skills. They will enjoy watching twin sisters genie (in training) granting wishes to their best friend, Leah in the real world even though they mess up and manage to cause some catastrophe while they make Leah’ s wishes come true. It’s a funny and interesting one and kids get to learn some basic math concepts and good virtue of patience from Leah.
Network: Nick Jr.

Peppa Pig

The series feature a family’s fun adventure as they go through everyday life. If your child has got a sibling, Peppa, a lively little pig shows us how to foster the best sibling relationship with his younger brother George by teaching him stuff like learning to communicate, getting ready for school and even overcoming fear. Your kids also get to learn about family bond and friendship.

Network: Nick Toons.

Louie

Louie, draw me a butterfly! Your kids can develop an early interest in drawing by learning from Louie how to easily sketch items and paint pictures using different shapes and colours in a matter of seconds.

Network: Nick Jr.

Images Credit: Nick Jr. /YouTube

With over 10 kids channel on satellite TV, This is part 1 of the educative and informative kids’ channels I have screened and selected. There are other kids’ channels I shall be posting in my subsequent post.

Tips on how to use TV effectively to complement what kids learn in school

Moderation: TV should be in moderation, set the time for TV viewing in the house and let kids do other activities apart from sitting down in front of the television all day.

Blockage: You should select the channels you want your kids to watch on Cable TV, Not all the innocent looking animated shows on television are harmless, some TV shows have violent pictures, use of bad language, etc. Block all channels you think are not appropriate for your kids.

And finally, Please share your thoughts about the TV shows you approve for your kids to watch.

For more ways to let your children get the best of their summer holiday. Check out ways to keep the kids busy this summer, a post by Naijamumsonline, an awesome website for mums by mums.

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