Disclosure: As a member of Netflix’s Stream Team, it’s my media-happy pleasure to share the best of the streaming (and curated) best each month. Even though I’m compensated for my posts, all thoughts, opinions, and loud children are entirely my own.
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Netflix makes kids smarter. No, really. Sure, there are the zombie-inducing, brain-breaking shows (you know, like some of the ones we grew up with?) but it always feel so good for my brain (and conscience) when my offspring bust out with educational facts and a life skill or two.
According to my kids:
If you get stung by a jellyfish, you put vinegar on it. A lot, they tell me. (See? And here I was still thinking people should pee on each other by the seashore in the event of jellies. Bless you, Octonauts, for helping me see the error of my ways.)
Science.
Monsters aren’t real. They’re always- always- people in costume. (And, if you hadn’t yet guessed that Scooby Doo was involved, I was about to mention how they’re usually discovered by some meddling kids.)
If your mouse/puppy/kitty is eating all of the food you’re setting out for your friends, make sure to feed your pet first. (I’m pretty sure there was a lesson in that Lalaloopsy episode about cleaning up after your pet too, right? Right?)
“Blends” are groups of special letters like bl, sw, sh, tw, cr, etc., etc., etc., that form special words like black and swish and short and twin and crater and so many others in songs that we sing in the bath and at the table and in the car and THANK YOU, LEAPFROG.
Ode to Joy, a.k.a the ninth symphony, was written by Beethoven. This was proclaimed, out loud, in public, in front of people. I don’t care if they learned it from Little Einsteins (which they did) or the kid down the street (from whom they’ve learned loads of less impressive stuff), I am sold.
And I learned something new, too; Word Party, the Netflix original series from the Jim Henson Company and Thirty Million Words Initiative, is geared towards creating a vocabulary-palooza for littles (while taking time to promote teamwork, friendship, and the celebration of differences). But no, that’s not the bit of knowledge that surprised me.
The factoid that I came away with was the realization that- yet again- Netflix managed to find a show for all three of my kids to simultaneously shout answers at the screen. At 6, 4, and 2, that’s no mean feat.
(Is ‘Netflix and Yell’ a thing yet? It totally should be.)
Netflix devotee? What knowledge bombs have your smarty-pantses dropped on you so far?
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