Good children's programming

Use this thread to talk up shows your children enjoy that you like or that you feel are having a positive influence on their learning and behavior.

Where In The World is a great show -- just slice-of-life vignettes from kids in countries around the world. F loves it, and he chats happily about the stars and what they do/like

Likewise Do You Know?, a kind of "How is it made?" for tinies.

My twins are 3; these are the things we like for them to watch:

Current favorites from PBS/Nickelodeon/Youtube (unordered):

Wild Kratts
Super Why
Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood
Odd Squad
Peg + Cat
Word Girl
Nature Cat
Ready, Jet, Go!
Peppa Pig
Monica Toy (skip the zombie ones, though; they're cute for adults but WAY TOO SCARY for kids)
Super Simple Songs (this does require monitoring)
Kids Picture Show (ditto)

Of these, Peg + Cat and Odd Squad are the best "shows" and Monica Toy is by FAR the best Youtube discovery we've made

thanking you DJP, that's a great list for us to start with. Isolde is 3 1/2 now.

Odd Squad in particular is aimed at older kids but my attitude is that if they want to watch it, let them; the sooner they get acclimated to mathematical concepts, the better.

Mostly PJ Masks these days, but also Charlie and Lola, which was just put on Amazon Prime.

Also we did screens way before 2, judge away.

there's a lot of great Sesame Street songs on YouTube. my son is a big fan of the Usher and Feist ones. he recently made me play the Janelle Monae one like five times in a row, which made me proud.

oh duh PJ Masks

The boys even went as Gecko and Catboy for Halloween this year, lol

We also went through a Mickey Mouse Clubhouse phase but that ended when OnDemand paywalled all of the episodes.

Yep, we had a Halloween Catboy too. He was like a celebrity in the local park — loads of kids going "woah, it's catboy!" as he strutted along

We were an Owlette.

I don’t mind PJ marks, other than when you watch this stuff over and over, I keep wondering things. Like why are there no parents ? Why are the kids out all night? Are they getting enough sleep? Is it all a dream? Why don’t they put the criminal kids in jail?

We had Curse of the Were Rabbit on Netflix this morning - F was rapt and I was well entertained. Definitely going to try more Wallace & Gromit in the future.

The animated versions of the Gruffalo, Gruffalo's Child, Room on the Broom, Stick Man and We're Going On A Bear Hunt are all done brilliantly.

The Furchester Hotel, as mentioned on the Execrable thread, is amazing.

I forget how spoiled we are having CBeebies. No advertising, pretty good diversity, and mostly very high quality productions. And Bedtime stories read by the likes of Tom Hardy, Dolly Parton and David Hasselhoff.

^ and Josh Homme. That was a weird one.

He was pretty good, I thought!

He was! It was just the "Hi. I'm Joshua." that was a bit weird.

wallace and gromit has been brilliant for mine when he was really young as it's action-packed and only 30 mins. we've promised he can watch 'curse of the were rabbit' when he's 3. we tried him on Toy Story but it's actually quite talky at the start so he lost interest.

I haven't watched the whole thing, but I've seen enough good eps of the Netflix Puss In Boots series that its existence may be enough to get me to stop bashing Shrek, a tradition I have maintained with personal pride since 2001. The season that was released last week supposedly wrapped the series, so it's all out there now.

We just revisited Puss-in-Boots and I still like it.

Also really good is Amazon's Lost in OZ series. It suffers a little, to my mind, from the "big heads and giant eyes" school of animation. But despite its aesthetic differences, I feel like it does a good job of modernizing and serializing the world while maintaining to a reasonable extent the tone from the original film. There's great character development and the story takes you on an adventure you can care about.

The girl who does Dorothy's voice is Ashley Boettcher, who played the little girl in Aliens in the Attic, which I maintain is an underrated family comedy movie.

New series of Lost in OZ is out now.

Oh, it's "Season One Part Two". Very good. Bingeing the hell out of it thos morning.

There are wheelers, like in Return to Oz, but they aren't as creepy

The Shadow Gnome is super creepy though.

Just came on to mention Do You Know but see I am late to the party on that one! Really good, not just for kids. Although the 'fishcake factory' one has had my son asking 'how do water fish turn into eating fish?' (i.e. he's always known they are both called fish but not put 2+2 together before...)

My 5yo son is obsessed with Numberblocks. Wakes up, plays with Numberblocks toys (they seriously need to do a tie-in with Duplo), does some Numberblocks colouring/painting, watches Numberblocks, comes up with the concept of 'cube numbers' seemingly on his own, sings Numberblocks songs...

Numberblocks is great! And tied in really well with the way they introduced maths at F’s school.

My daughter has moved away from children's programming for the past couple of years, in favor of YouTubers but the past couple days she tuned in to Jurassic World Camp Cretaceous on Netflix and we've been enjoying that together.

Bluey is EVERYTHING.

i catch bluey from time to time. it's well animated and usually has a good message imparted gently. be more patient. share stuff. everybody gets ill. watch out for faeries...

today's episode had them making a video for youngest child who was in hospital and the awkward acting in the video, looks to camera, fluffled lines, was caught so well, subtley pointing out it was a thing within a thing.

My 11-year-old and I are really enjoying The Mysterious Benedict Society at the moment.

Yeah, we were watching it week by week and had to read the book because we couldnt wait

Looking for recommendations. A couple of years ago my kid's favorite show was Just Add Magic. More recently he was really into Secrets of Sulphur Springs and Mysterious Benedict Society. We tried Ghost Writer a while back and Evermoore more recently but neither stuck. Anything good out there along those lines for an 11 year-old?

This is in a different lane from the reference points you are giving but my 8- and 10-year-old are both really into the original Avatar: The Last Airbender. other than that, following the thread to see what others suggest!

Nothing compares to Avatar: The Last Airbender. We binged it at the beginning of the pandemic and I think my now 8 yo has watched the whole series 3 or 4 times since. The Legend of Korra is worth checking out if hungry for more. It's not at the level of Avatar, but it has its moments. On a far different note from Avatar, my daughter is re-watching Gravity Falls for like the third time as well.

my kids have been watching this show called "Ben and Holly's Magic Kingdom" lately, it's obviously made by the same people as Peppa Pig, same animation style and same voices, but it's a bit more grown up. I watched a few episodes with them and it actually reminds me most of South Park, back when it was more goofy than political.