TV Time

Man so much to say about TV time, but I am going to keep it short and focused only on TV time in MY house in regards to Elem Zane. Since the day Elem was born, actually since I was in college, I learned all the sides of the effects of TV on children at an early age. And although some shows or tactics rather are proven to aide in the learning skills of your child, for the most part, plain old one on one interaction and teaching works best! Dont get me wrong, I have seen the articles where the little 18 month old girl learned to read because she watched some video along with working with her parents, but still, I believe in just getting in the floor and working with your child. With all that said, we do let Elem watch some TV, but not much. Currently, he only watches Barney, and although he picked it out to be a true love of his, we did purposely show him Barney because it does have good teaching in it. And pretty much the entire show, every single one of them, are education based (having something to do with letters, numbers, shapes, colors, manners, etc.) A normal day for us will include him getting up in the morning, eating breakfast with mommy and watching one episode of Barney. Then since we have the DVD player in the car, he usually watches a little more Barney on the way to and from school-but not usually in between in the middle of the day. And then I dont let him or any of the other kids EVER watch TV at school, unless they have been couped up for about a week because of the weather, and they really need something to just chill to. And then I am pretty sure he watches another episode of Barney when he goes to visit Grammy and Poppa. So thats a whole lot of Barney for one day, so I am pretty sure that is enough for one little bitty boy! I originally had planned on sticking to just 30 minutes of TV a day, but with the DVD player in the car, that is next to impossible :) and usually when Barney is on, he isnt really watching it for the whole time. Barney time is usually playing with the basketball goal or coloring or something like that while Barney is on in the background. So thats not too bad.

Now all that said, Elem has recently seen something new-a show I had no idea about...da da da da....THE Backyardagains! And more so than being really interested in the show-he is totally obsessive about the intro song. And more so, so is Cecilia. As soon as the show comes on Elem and Cecilia both start running circles and doing this insane little dance. I have no idea where he learned this, but it is an automatic as soon as he hears the music. And once the music is over he says, " more agains" meaning more backyardagains. Hahah it is so cute. I had a great video of them, but I cant locate it on my computer, so I got another one a couple of days ago. Please disregard Elem's outfit, it was right before bed and we were at Ali and DUstin's house. No I do not let him go out in public like that!

Here you have it, in Elem's words..."agains"