Thursday, March 15, 2007

Thumbs Up Thursday - Busy Mama's Guides

This week's Thumbs Up Thursday goes out to Kristy Shreve Powers - she's definitely a Busy Mama! She provides Busy Mama Guides as blog posts. They come in small increments so they can be read and digested easily and quickly - before the baby has time to pull that lamp down on top of himself!

One particular post that caught my eye was this one:
Kristy Shreve Powers: Busy Mama's Survey Question: Do Your Kids Watch TV?
Thought provoking stuff - check it out and also check out the comments left by quite a few people.

You want my take on TV for kids? Well - I grew up watching TV. Sesame Street had just come out...Mr. Rogers was very popular...and who can forget the ever-popular Electric Company? Love Morgan Freeman to this day! All of these shows I mentioned are educational shows too. I think there can be fair balance between the good stuff and the crap on TV.

We limit our older 2 kids to one hour per day on their own - they usually make choices like That's So Raven, Digimon and the like. The rest of their TV time is spent with us as a family. We'll watch American Idol, Survivor or some other popular Reality Show.

The younger one takes delight in watching Sesame Street (love it!), Dora and Barney. When she was 2-1/2 years old, she started counting to me in Spanish. We're not a bi-lingual household, so I know she learned it from Dora. That's pretty cool! I can appreciate the things that she learns from these educational shows - like counting (in English and Spanish), colors, letters, songs and some good solid values. A lot of us are not fans of Barney, but you've gotta admit he does teach a lot of great stuff!

Let me know your thoughts on TV watching - I'm curious to know what you do in your house!

p.s. - I'm still up on the Top Momma site - thanks to all of you who have been voting for me :)

2 comments:

PetiteMommy said...

My 6 year old who is not yet in school probably watches a couple hours a day simply because when its cold he cant go outside and he finally settles down and watches a movie or a couple cartoons. Our 2.5 year old, maybe 1/2 hour every other day or something like that. He's not really interested.

Kristy Powers said...

Thanks for the mention! My mom was pretty strict with us when we were kids, but she did always let us watch Mr. Rogers. She thought he was one of the greatest influences kids could have. I agree there are things kids can gain from TV, as long as they have a life full of other activities, too.