Shalom Sesame DVD Club

Posted on December 5, 2012 at 8:00 am

The popular Shalom Sesame DVD series has announced a Shalom Sesame DVD Club. Grover the Muppet and Anneliese van der Pol (That’s So Raven, Broadway’s Beauty and the Beast) travel to Israel to meet new people and learn new things in this 12-part DVD series co-produced by Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit educational organization behind Sesame Street, and Israel ’s Channel HOP! Each 30-minute, live-action and animated DVD focuses on storylines drawn from Jewish cultural traditions, highlighting lessons on Hebrew letters and words, unique sites in Israel , and Jewish values. Through Sesame Street characters, celebrities and stories, viewers learn about Jewish traditions, culture and holidays. Guest appearances by celebrity talent include Debra Messing, Achinoam Nini, Mira Awad, Jake Gyllenhaal, Christina Applegate and Greg Kinnear.

The club is free and members can opt for purchasing the entire DVD series or single titles for a 15% discount , in a single shipment or on a monthly basis.

Shalom Sesame’s “Chanukah the Missing Menorah” episode on PBS this December. The 12 DVDs in the series are: “Welcome to Israel,” “Chanukah: The Missing Menorah,” Shabbat Shalom, Grover!,” “Grover Plants a Tree,” “Mitzvah on the Street,” “Be Happy, It’s Purim!,” “It’s Passover, Grover!,” “Grover Learns Hebrew,” “Countdown to Shavuot,” “The Sticky Shofar,” “Monsters in the Sukkah,” and “Adventures in Israel.” Each Shalom Sesame DVD includes over 20 minutes of bonus extras including trailers, sneak peeks of all titles, Grover’s Video Player (music videos), sing-alongs and Karaoke of favorite tunes like “Aleph Bet Song,” “Rosh Hashanah Hannah” (a spoof of Hannah Montana) and the famous “Rubber Duckie” song (in Hebrew) among others. A highlight of Grover’s Video Player on Adventures in Israel is “There Must Be Another Way” by Achinoam Nini, Mira Awad and Shalom Sesame friends – the song that represented Israel in the 2009 Eurovision Song Contest in Hebrew, Arabic and English.

Follow Shalom Sesame on YouTube and Facebook and watch “Chanukah: The Missing Menorah” on your local PBS station.

New From Veggie Tales: The League of Incredible Vegetables

Posted on October 27, 2012 at 8:00 am

The Veggie Tales folks at Big Idea Entertainment have a new DVD just in time for Halloween, to help kids who might have a hard time telling the difference between fun scary and scary scary. It’s called The League of Incredible Vegetables and it’s the first superhero-themed Veggie Tales story. Bad guy Dr. Flurry wants to freeze the town — with fear! That’s too much for just one superhero to handle, so LarryBoy, Thingamabob (Bob the Tomato), S-Cape (Mr. Lunt), Vogue (Petunia Rhubarb) and Ricochet (Junior Asparagus) have to work together and learn to understand and overcome their own fears in order to save the day. No one does silly stories with real lessons better than the Veggies. This one is a lot of fun and a good way to start some conversations about fear, faith, and cooperation. For a free craft and coloring sheet to go with the DVD, send me an email at moviemom@moviemom.com with Veggies in the subject line.

Halloween Favorites from The Movie Mom!

Posted on October 22, 2012 at 8:00 am

The FTC Helps Kids Understand Advertising

Posted on August 10, 2012 at 1:37 pm

The Federal Trade Commission has an excellent website to help kids be smarter consumers. It’s always a challenge to teach children to identify and challenge the bombardment of advertising messages they get every day. You Are Here’s West Terrace explains targeted marketing and evaluating the claims made in ads. There is also a section that explains how advertising can be helpful to consumers who are looking for products and brands and trying to understand their options. The Security Plaza teaches kids about the importance of protecting their personal information online and being careful about trusting messages that might not be from the businesses they claim. There are also resources for parents and teachers, who can use a reminder on those lessons as well.

Doc McStuffins Teaches Kids About Being Healthy on Disney

Posted on August 5, 2012 at 8:00 am

Disney’s delightful animated series, “Doc McStuffins,” is about a little girl who is inspired by her doctor mother to open up a “clinic” for her stuffed animals and toys. That gives the show a chance to talk to kids about making healthy choices. Kids can interact with the show and learn more with online activities and coloring sheets.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUjxjVNcLao&feature=relmfu

What makes this series especially welcome is the race of the lead character — she is African-American. The New York Times noted:

Despite a surge in multicultural cartoons, like Nickelodeon’s “Ni Hao, Kai-Lan,” designed to introduce Mandarin vocabulary words to preschoolers, and 40 years after Bill Cosby’s “Fat Albert,” black cartoon characters in leading roles are still rare. It’s considered an on-screen risk to make your main character a member of a minority, even in this post-“Dora the Explorer” age. Networks want to attract the broadest possible audience, but the real peril is in the toy aisle. From a business perspective, Disney and its rivals ultimately make most of these shows in the hope that they spawn mass-appeal toy lines. White dolls are the proven formula.

Encouraged by the reaction to multicultural casting in its live-action shows (“A.N.T. Farm”), Disney figured it was a risk worth taking. The company also spotted a hole in the market. The last major preschool cartoon to have a black focus was Mr. Cosby’s “Little Bill,” which ended five years ago on Nickelodeon. Race may have factored into Disney’s thinking in other ways. “Doc McStuffins” is mostly designed to entertain, a minus for parents of preschoolers, who typically want educational components (like the way Dora teaches Spanish and problem solving). A positive message about racial diversity helps fix that problem, as do messages about health and hygiene.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecfuNfCvFM0&feature=relmfu