Who Needs Cable TV?

Every now and then we bat around the idea of resubscribing to cable television. We have a really basic feed (hardly more than local channels and public access) that's required for our cable modem. We've had full cable before, but ditched it when the budget got tight.

We'd love the History Channel, the Food Network, the Sci-Fi Channel, and of course my #1 desire is Nick Junior and the Disney Channel for the kids. But it would cost us about $40 more per month just to add the standard package without premium channels. (I hear cable is cheap in the States, it sure ain't here!)

What is comes down to is that, even if we got a Tivo, there are simply not enough hours in the day to watch every show we'd like to. We spend a higher than average amount of time on our computers, me because of my job and Hubby because he uses shoot-em-up games to destress. We don't need more time slotted to sitting on our duffs.

And I don't like commercial television for the kids. Besides the barrage of impulse-driven consumerism, I just don't approve of some of the shows. I know, I know, we all grew up on the violence of Looney Tunes, and we aren't mass murderers (at least, I really hope you're not!), but Kiddo seems to love emulating the villains and scary animals and monsters, and call me paranoid, but it bugs me.

Pretty much all we watch around here during the day is PBS. And there's some great shows these days. Besides the classics like Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers Neighborhood, there's new stuff like Word World, which has Kiddo asking me to spell everything and Between the Lions, which has an award-winning focus on early literacy. Oh, and Word Girl, the 6th grade super heroine with the phenomenal vocabulary! And even I find these entertaining.

But I do miss the edu-tainment kids shows like Blue's Clues, Wonder Pets, and Kiddo really misses Go Diego Go. Sure, they're out on video, but you can $10 yourself to death doing that, might as well buy cable.

Hurrah for the internet!

Yesterday Baby and I were sick as could be. Kiddo fired up Nick Jr's video site and watched Dora, Blue's Room, Diego, and Wonder Pets videos all day. I showed him how to run the player one time, and to get it in and out of full-screen mode, and he was self-entertaining all day. It's not something I'd normally allow, but boy, we were so sick it was a blessing.

Also, most of these sites, especially PBS Kids shows, have games to play, that are quite often (shh!) educational. Kiddo's had a blast learning opposites and rhyming with Grover and doing click-n-color pictures on the Fisher-Price site.

So if you have the internet (and you must have some access if you're reading this), save the bucks on cable just for the kids and check some of these out. Kiddo's favorites are the Sesame Street games and Nick Junior Videos.

Videos:
Sesame Street Videos
Nick Junior Videos

Games:
Sesame Street
PBS Kids
Nick Junior
Fisher-Price
Disney