El and Gar love to watch cartoons. Here are a few of their favourite ones.
Pingu
I love Pingu! Pingu is a penguin that speaks penguin language, so everybody can understand the story without the need for translation. What I do with Gar and sometimes El when he is there, is to be the narrator. I will describe the scenes, the things, the actions, and come up with dialogue for him. This will help him to pick up a language better.
One of the favourite episodes Gar likes to watch is Pingu The Mountaineer. What I did was to talk about the items in the house, such as the bag where Pingu comes across an old photograph of his father climbing a mountain with a cairn, or a stack of stones. At the funny parts, such as Pingu’s rope was stuck between two rocks, I added some sound effects to get Gar to laugh. At the part where he was scared to cross the crevasse, I pretended to be very frightened, and then added words of encouragement from the father.
Educational Benefits: Moral values, Life skills, problem solving
Barney
Barney is an all-time favourite. Gar is obsessed with Barney, and wears Barney shirts, carries Barney toys, and does actions to the songs. When he spotted picture of BJ on the floor at United Square, he squatted down and kept pointing at them, every time without fail. El likes Barney too, as he is able to understand them better.
Compared to El, Gar’s attention does not last that long, so even though we were watching Barney and friends live on stage, he would want to leave. However, he watched a lot of times because of the amount of time we spent there. When it comes to El watching Barney live, he was glued to the purple dinosaur. He danced, sang and did all the hand actions. He likes many songs.
Educational benefits: Language, social skills, mathematics, science, nature, singing, character building
Thomas And Friends
I thought I had watched Thomas The Train before, but it was acted by real people, with large engines. That was more than 2 decades ago. The latest type is 3D animation. Gar likes to watch them over and over again, but is somewhat scared of the Fat Controller. There are many stories, but I am not that attracted to the stories. Gar likes to wave whenever the theme song comes on and there is a boy waving at a bridge at Thomas. We went to watch Thomas and Friends at City Square, but Thomas could only puff in and out, while the rest of the show was carried by two workers, whom we are not familiar with.
Educational benefits: Moral values, character building
Bob The Builder
El had only recently started watching Bob The Builder. He loves to sing the theme song. What I like about Bob The Builder is there is usually a moral behind the story, and some lessons to be learnt. One example was to listen to what people need, and not do what you want, when an over-eager Scoop brought Sumsy all over the place to introduce the place to her. Other lessons included simple sums, as Sumsy could add up 3 and 2 to make 5.
Educational Benefits: Social skills, Mathematics, Engineering, problem solving
Octonauts
I have not really watched much of Octonauts, but El discovered them on youtube. They are a bunch of animals and vegimals (mixed) in the underwater world going on adventures on aquatic vehicles. They try to rescue people. They introduce real sea creatures.
Educational Benefits: Science, problem solving, adventure spirit
Peppa Pig
Peppa Pig is a female pig with a younger brother and her family. There are story books available in the library. The stories are simple, but I heard that many children like to speak like Peppa Pig with a British accent.
Educational Benefits: Language, social skills
The Magic Schoolbus
I might have caught one or two episodes of The Magic Schoolbus when I was younger, and all I could remember about it is that the magic schoolbus could expand and shrink as the teacher takes them on excursions. I did not know El had watched it until just a few days ago, when we were on our way home, he started exclaiming that there was a magic schoolbus right beside our car. A van had the decals of the magic schoolbus on it, with a pretty large picture of Ms Frizzle. That was when he told me he had watched it on youtube. The series teaches students about science in an interesting manner.
Educational Benefits: Science, Problem Solving
