CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

[perisoft]

Movies are great, but my impending baby has started me thinking: During my formative years, I learned a LOT from PBS shows like Nature and NOVA. I can't even begin to be grateful enough for my parents encouraging this, so now I'm thinking about things to show Draco (his name) when he gets to be old enough to understand things.

So, what's out there? I'm thinking things like 'Planet Earth' and 'When We Left Earth'. Series TV (NOVA and Nature) type stuff is interesting, too, but for some reason usually seems to be insanely expensive.

This could be expanded to general documentaries, but that's a really wide field and full of pretty bizarre, narrow-interest stuff, so mainly at this point I'm interested in straight-up educational stuff, and specifically movies and mini-series. Any ideas? I think it'd be neat to keep a list of this kind of thing.

[outwest]

Hi

Congratulations on the impending birth of your son! He is going to have a very interesting name. If you would care to, I'd like to hear more about its origin. I have a good friend here whose name is Drago. He is from the former Yugoslavia and got out of there to escape all the unplesantness during the break-up of the country. He is in aircraft maintainance and he took me into the hanger here one Sunday afternoon to look at a 737 that they were doing a major on. Most of the skin was stripped off and we walked through the cabin on the stringers. The floor was gone and all the controls were in plain sight. One could see right down to the baggage compartment.

Your question about documentaries comes at an interesting time. We just finished up the annual Public Radio record and video sale. On the last day of the sale videos are $5.00 for all that one can put into a cardboard box. True these are all VHS tapes, but while I do enjoy the technical merit of high definition, I get enjoyment out of titles and topics that I might not look at otherwise: Care and training your parrot--The Oregon Dunes--Tornado Video Classics--The Wright Stuff (Wright Brothers). I found one episode of Carl Sagan's "Cosmos". I really enjoyed that whole series, although your son may need some years before it has appeal. PBS had a series called "In Search of The Trojan War" The first two episodes were quite good, but I have never been able to find this on any medium. It inspired me to read a book about Heinrich Schleiman (amazing character-I am sorry that I am too lazy to look up the spelling) There are so many good "Nature" and "NOVA" shows. There are many that I thought were weak so a pre-screening would be in order. "Animal Planet" had some great shows that would be entertaining and instructional for kids. There were a few called "Growing Up......) Fill in the blank. I remember one about a rescued Panther kitten being raised by a family and living with them like a domestic cat. The channel also had a whole series about various stories of Humane Society operations. The PBS shows about Jane Goodall and the chimps at Gombe Reserve are classic.

Well, those are a few that appeal to my alleged mind. I hope that others chime in with some more!

[paw]

Congrats on you up coming son! They are fun but a LOT of work. Especially that newborn age. They just poop, eat, sleep and cry. They can't even smile. I don't miss that. My favorite stage started when they were mobile.

Don't plomp him in front of the TV or big screen too soon. Play with him and get him outside exploring. Hikes, bike rides, in the yard etc. The American Pedatrics (sp?) recommends NO TV for the under 3 set. There's plenty of time for TV. He may not be intereseted in this stuff until 5 or 6. There will be a lot of great documentaries produced in the next 5 years.

With that said, feel free to pick up whatever documentaries YOU like. If you watch it and are enthusiastic about them, he'll like them. Even if they are mainly over his head.

Sorry for the parenting advice. Hope you don't mind.

[emdawgz1]

My suggestion is get a Subscription to National Geographic.

It was my window into the world. For a poor kid from Phila, I never felt like my neighborhood was all there was.

National Geographic was the BEST!

They even have documentary specials and back issues on disc.

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=national+geographic&x=0&y=0

[jkruger]

When I was a kid I read all the Nat'l Geos from 1950 to 1964 and two sets of encyclopedias before I was 10 yrs old.....

Yeah.... I was wierd kid.

[emdawgz1]

[perisoft]

Heh.

I'm not about to have him watching TV very soon. But (for the moment) I haven't got much cash, so I figure I'll start building up a library of stuff now. I figure he'll start getting interested around 7/8/9 if he's anything like I was.

When he gets old enough to understand stuff, I'd really like to get subscriptions to NG, Science News (which is FANTASTIC), and at some point The Economist, though he'll have to be a real geek to like that one.

By the way, his name means Dragon; it's Latin in origin but the word's spread around quite a bit. He's going to have my wife's last name (It's a lot cooler than mine ) so there's alliteration going on, too.

[garyfritz]

Aw, her name isn't Malfoy??

[MYoung]

MST3K Shorts, volumes 1 and 2.

[perisoft]

[paw]

[Tom.W]

Lots of free documentaries here...

http://www.surfthechannel.com/cat/documentaries.html

[MYoung]