This is a video from yesterday of Allie (20 months) running interference for her brother Jacob (4) who is playing with six-year-old Ryan's LEGO train while he is at school.
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Category: Video
We have enjoyed the 5 minute Sesame Street podcasts. In each episode, they teach a vocabulary word–“The Word on the Street.” You can download them free and easily with iTunes. It is a nice thing to have on your laptop if you need to give the kids something to watch in a pinch. We have sometimes watched them on my laptop at breakfast. There are maybe 100 back episodes you can download for free.
We would recommend the “What’s in the Bible” DVD’s. We have watched the first three DVD’s (6 episodes) with our three and five year old. They seem ideal for elementary school kids–maybe 7 is the ideal age as some reading capability is useful though not necessary. It is a project of Phil Vischer who created VeggieTales. The first three DVD’s give an overview of how the Bible is structured, Genesis, Exodus, and (amazingly) Leviticus. We have checked out the DVD’s from our church library. I guarantee that adults would learn a lot as well.
You can also watch the same characters online at JellyTelly–which hopes to be edifying television streamed from the internet–“easily-accessible, high-quality, Biblically-sound online entertainment.”
Back in 2000, Westmont College theology professor Telford Work wrote a nice piece called “VeggieEthics” on VeggieTales back for Theology Today in which he generally recommended the early VeggieTales stories. “Evangelicals are learning to be “fiddlers on the roof,” conserving both their christological center and their commission as God’s ambassadors to a world that needs redeeming. VeggieTales are a sign that they are beginning to get the hang of it.”
He mapped them this way:
Faith: Rack, Shack, and Benny; Dave and the Giant Pickle.
Hope: Where’s God When I’m Scared?; Josh and the Big Wall.
Love: Are You My Neighbor? God Wants Me to Forgive Them? Madame Blueberry; King George and the Ducky.
Prudence: Dave and the Giant Pickle; Where’s God When I’m Scared; Rack, Shack, and Benny.
Justice: God Wants Me to Forgive Them? Are You My Neighbor? Larry-Boy and the Fib from Outer Space; Larry-Boy and the Rumor Weed; King George and the Ducky.
Temperance: Madame Blueberry; Rack, Shack, and Benny; The Toy that Saved Christmas; King George and the Ducky.
Courage: Rack, Shack, and Benny; Dave and the Giant Pickle.
See also Vischer’s memoir for the story of how, “Big Idea,” the company Vischer started, went bankrupt and was sold to Classic Media in 2003 so that Vischer lost editorial control of VeggieTales.