We talk a lot here about the pop culture we feed our kids. But what about, you know, food? It seems like a pretty basic thing to consider, but take a look at any random schoolyard in the country, and you’ll see that a lot of parents aren’t considering it enough. To be fair, it can be tough to maintain a healthy diet for ourselves, let alone our finicky little people — we’re surrounded by sodium, sugar, and preservatives, and any thirtysomething parent who still feels the residual tingle of childhood when walking past those brightly colored boxes of Trix and Cap’n Crunch in the cereal aisle should be able to sympathize with the junior set’s hunger for junk food. The Lunch Love Community Project is here to help. Will they make it so Pop
Read More »Remember when DVD players were mostly a luxury for the home theater crowd, and pretty much anyone who bought one also picked up a copy of Twister to test his system’s limits? Well, it certainly isn’t an audio/CGI workout on that level, but Disney’s Earth is so stunningly gorgeous that it might be the first true “gotta have it” purchase for Blu-ray owners. Yes, it’s just another nature documentary — and in an age when you can switch on Discovery Channel HD at almost any hour and see something that takes your breath away — but…wow. Just wow. Disney took some heat for the way Earth was assembled, and perhaps rightly so; it’s basically a boiled-down version of the BBC’s mammoth Planet Earth series, and though it uses some footage that wasn’t aired on the
Read More »Brady Rymer – Here Comes Brady Rymer and the Little Band That Could (2008, Bumblin’ Bee) purchase this album (Amazon) Kids’ music has come a long way from the says when its creators were expected to treat their listeners like tiny little mental patients, but even in this golden age of non-nauseating listening choices for parents, some of the old rules still apply. For instance, most kids’ album artwork is still done in bright colors, and filled with pictures of performers proudly displaying open-mouthed grins — and the songs themselves often tend to be overly sweet or self-consciously wacky. As adults, we often count ourselves lucky if we can remember our younger, sillier selves, but what we forget is that kids don’t always feel like acting goofy, and even though they think fart jokes are
Read More »Tired of listening to your kids’ same old CDs over and over again? Jitterbug is here to help! The site seems to be in something like beta right now, with just a handful of artists available, but the premise is awfully cool. In the site’s words: “Discover great independent music for kids. we hand pick the good stuff…you won’t find Barney here.” It’s a sentiment I can’t argue with, certainly, and I can personally vouch for Jitterbug’s appeal to one particular three-year-old who told me, after watching one video, “I love this site.” What would be nice is the ability to stream a Jitterbug radio station, or download a Jitterbug podcast — hand-picked content aside, the site is essentially just acting as a portal for embedded content that seems to be mainly hosted elsewhere. Once
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