My Best and Worst Children's TV

Children's TV can be tedious at times. There are some programmes I have watched over the past 3 years that have literally made my blood boil! Usually these have been the ones my son has grown so fond of...lucky me! Others are great educationally or just really easy to watch! Here are some of my best and worst children's TV...

Lets start with Little Baby Bum, with its endless variations of the same songs over and over. Within 10 minutes of watching it, you will want to turn it off. Just watching one episode is unbearable and wishing it to end doesn't make the time go any quicker unfortunately! For some reason, Little Baby Bum is the only thing I can put on the TV to calm O down, even now. If he is mega grumpy and has had a huge tantrum, Baby Bum fixes everything. If O is knackered, but wont sleep, I put Little Baby Bum on to keep him still and not waste anymore energy. So as much as I do hate it, it does come in very handy. It also really helped O learn numbers, which I know is tricky at the start. Luckily he doesn't seem to have picked up on the American accent too much either. 

Next up, is my not so good pal Blippi. The most childish grown adult ever to walk this earth! He cant sing, but the poor man who does gets none of the credit, I mean I don't even know what his name is for heavens sake! I also have Blippi to thank for teaching my son how to spell Blippi, B-L-I-P-P-I before he can even spell his own name! I generally think that my son would rather watch Blippi hang around in softplay than be in a softplay himself, how is that even possible?! There is a unicorn song though that I can never stop singing, if you want to get it stuck in your head too, go and check it out here. No need to thank me!

The Wiggles is my ultimate favourite, but not so much O's anymore! I am forever trying to persuade him to watch it, but he hasn't been in the mood recently. Which is a shame because I could watch it every day! Its Australian, so makes a nice change hearing a different accent. There is lots of singing and dancing, Emma being the showstopper! Throughout each episode there are clips of them performing live, which I quite like too. I am waiting patiently for them to come to the UK for a tour.   

Both Numberblocks and Alphablocks are fantastic programmes and a great educational alternative to some of the rubbish you can find on the TV these days for kids! Alphablocks teaches real proper phonics, and for each sound there is a little rhyme which is really helpful and can easily be memorised. After O grew to love Numberblocks, we bought some Learning Resources Mathlink Cubes and he now likes to watch and play at the same time, building the same amount of numbers that he sees on each episode. They are a great learning resource and I generally think he likes activities with them more because of having watched Numberblocks on the TV. Wanting to learn and being excited to learn is a wonderful thing. And if TV is partly behind that sometimes, that isn't a problem for me! 

Bing, Bing Bing, what are we going to do with you. Bing reminds me of a grumpy old man that gets the hump about everything. He is a bit of a whinge bag and hates not getting his own way. Programmes with main characters like this really get on my nerves. I know the whole point of each episode is that he learns his lesson, but ultimately he doesn't because he's annoying for every episode that follows after that! I always worry that O will watch Bing and think that the way he acts is acceptable. Maybe I am being too harsh, although its never been a favourite in our house, except for one episode. Ducks. This episode I have a bit of soft spot for. It is O's favourite episode and he has watched this one more than any of the others. The first time we watched it, I was reminded of my Grandad who passed away when O was in my tummy. What followed made O laugh out loud so hard, I had to rewind it back to record him so I had it as a memory! Little did I know it would tickle him so much still to this very day. So I have something to thank Bing for at least!