Top 10 TV Shows for Toddlers

You have certainly heard people say that letting your child watch TV is as bad as letting them eat candy before bed. In a way this is true, and in other ways it isn't true. Some of the best educational shows for toddlers on TV today are actually helpful to the developing brain of your toddler.

Some of the latest shows for toddlers, mostly found on Nick Jr. can not only help educate your child intellectually, but also help build imagination, teaches them about caring and sharing, and how all of this can be fun for the child. Of course, it is best to sit and watch these shows with your toddler, by being with them while they watch the shows, you can interact with them better. You can help your toddler answer the questions being asked by the characters and help reiterate whatever those characters are talking about as well.

Top Shows for Toddlers:
(in no particular order)

1. Team UmiZoomi

2. Dora the Explorer

3. Go, Diego Go

4. Max and Ruby

5. Little Bill

6. Sesame Street

7. Sid the Science Guy

8. Dinosaur Train

9. Wow Wow Wubzy

10.Olivia
_{Check your local listings for times and channels.}

One of my favorite toddler shows at this time is Team UmiZoomi and I consider it to be in the Top 10 Shows for Toddlers. This show has four characters, Millie, Geo, Bot, and YOU. These three characters go on adventures to help friends find things and they use numbers, shapes, colors, and various other descriptions to help solve each obstacle they come across. Team UmiZoomi is on Nick Jr. in the mornings and again in the afternoon, you can also see it on the Nick Jr. channel if you have extended cable or dish.

Team UmiZoomi is colorful, which engages the young toddler, is chock full of repetitive music which helps the child with memory, and they do lots of counting, forward and backwards counting. My two year old loves this show and I can tell he has learned so much from it. We watch it together and he gets especially pumped up when the three characters begin counting down from 5 during one of their signatures songs.

One show that I have found to be the least helpful in educating my toddler is Yo Gabba Gabba! This show which features a man, dressed in orange, overlooking a cardboard cut out at characters in Barney-type suits. The funding for this program must be low because one episode involved the characters riding around in a golf cart and calling it a train. Shows such as this, I find, only confuse the child, I know Yo Gabba Gabba! confuses me! I wouldn't recommend this be a show your child watches, it is about as educational as Teletubbies were several years back. A very young child, such as an infant may appreciate this show simply because of the colors, but so far as the child learning anything from it, that is debatable by me at least.

Dora and Go, Diego Go are two other shows that are highly educational and I am sure, unless you live under a rock, you have heard of Dora. They most certainly belong on the Top 10 List of Shows for Toddlers. These two shows teach the child directions, help with their memory by having the child remember the way to get to a certain destination, and also help teach English speaking children some Spanish.

At first I frowned upon this. My child was learning English, which is hard enough for a child to learn words that you can comprehend, but to add Spanish on top of this learning adventure seemed a little too much for me at the time. I still have some reservations of my two year old watching a show that teaches him a second language while he is trying to learn one already, but he loves the show and the amount of Spanish in the show is fairly minimal. Dora and Diego basically use Spanish when counting or with colors, so it is just giving my toddler another way to count, I cannot argue with that. Plus, my little man loves Dora and Diego and it is a very educational show.

Max and Ruby are two sibling rabbits and also part of the Top 10 Shows for Toddlers. Ruby is the older and very patient sister of little Max. Max is always off in la-la land somewhere not listening to Ruby, but by shows end, his trips off into la-la land are how Ruby is able to figure out the best way to solve a problem or get a task done. It is a cute show and it definitely teaches a lot about patience.

Sesame Street is and probably always will be one of the most educational shows you can let your toddler or preschooler watch and therefore belongs on the list of best shows for toddlers. As you know, the monsters and people that live on Sesame Street teach numbers, letters, colors, sharing, caring, compassion, and on and on they go. Sesame Street has never failed to amaze me with their ability to captivate my child's attention and imagination and he has learned so much from the show with help from me.

If you are reading this and your child also watches Sesame Street, I can almost bet that Elmo's World is your child's favorite part of the show. Generally Elmo's World comes on in the last half of the show and by then my toddler is chomping at the bit to get to see Elmo, I have to constantly remind him that Elmo "will be on in a minute." Sesame Street is also good at showcasing children with disabilities. I have always been proud of shows like Sesame Street that do this, it helps children to better accept those that are different from them because they have seen them on TV already.

Many of the shows found on PBS, such as Sesame Street, and shows found on Nick Jr., such as Team UmiZoomi, Dora, Diego, Max and Ruby, and Little Bill are generally best bets for television watching for your toddler. You shouldn't use the TV as a babysitter for your child, but allowing them to watch these shows with you can be very rewarding for the both of you. It will help give you pointers on teaching your child and will also entertain and educate the toddler at the same time.

Not every cartoon is created equal and you should pay close attention to viewing ratings (that little box at the top of the screen). Yes, Spongebob Squarepants is a colorful cartoon that has the ability to entertain the littlest baby to the biggest kid on the block, but it is far from educational. In fact, this show has the ability to de-educate a child, if that is even a word! If memory serves me correctly, the rating for Spongebob is 7 and up, sometimes I think that rating should be higher considering some of the attitudes and content in the show, but it is up to you as a parent to decide what is appropriate for your child. I would not suggest it to toddlers as they are just now learning some of the basic fundamentals of life, such as sharing and behaving correctly. These are two things that SpongeBob does not teach on the show, in fact, it is generally the opposite.

Family Guy, The Simpson's, King of the Hill, and any other show that comes on Adult Swim should never be watched by your child, no matter what their age is. Toddlers do pick up things they watch on t.v. and the last thing you want them to be learning is some of the crass things shown on these shows.

As with anything, you should only do things in moderation and that applies to toddlers as well. Strike a healthy balance between watching educational programming with your toddler, play time with their toys, arts and crafts, and outside play. Television should not be the only means of educating your child, but it can be a fun and easy way to spend time with your toddler while he gets some supplemental learning on his colors, shapes, letters, sharing, etc.

Sources:
Personal experience and mother of a two year old boy that knows all of his colors, shapes, and numbers.