I'm not a fan of most media aimed at children. It seems as though creators think they need to move at a frenetic pace to hold a child's attention, barraging them with a constant stream of words and colors and movement, such as Storybots on Netflix, for example. I don't hate Storybots, it's fine, and it actually is informative, but the major issue that I take with it, is how frenetically it moves from scene to scene to song to song at a lightning pace, so fast that I highly doubt the developing children it's aimed at will actually absorb any of the information they're being bombarded with.
Tumble Leaf, on the other hand, is very unique in that regard. It has the confidence to move at a very relaxed pace. Every episode ts main character, Fig the Fox, is presented with a new object. He takes the new object that he finds, he goes out with his friends, and he plays with it. Through his play, he gets into various situations with simple problems to solve. He takes time to trouble shoot, he comes up with ideas, and through trial-and-error, he finds solutions to the various problems that he encounters, and that's the basic setup for almost every episode, which is simple, but deceptively ingenious. Instead of bombarding its young audience with facts and information through songs so fast paced there's no conceivable way they could actually absorb any of it, Tumble Leaf takes its time, it lets concepts sink in, it walks through simple problems and allows room for error in its problem solving, all the while lovely, relaxing little tunes hum along in the background. This show really sneaked up on me when I realized just how genius its setup really is, and its varied, beautifully orchestrated music.
This all goes without even bringing up how much my toddler gets out of it. She actually learns new words from it, she recognizes the real world objects that Fig encounters in his playtime and immediately knows what they're used for, she gets new ideas from it to try out in her playtime, she quotes Fig's exclamations when she solves problems she encounters, and she discovers new ways to play with real world objects. This is a heck of a lot more than I can say for Storybots or Daniel Tiger or any of the other educational media I've let her watch, and like I said earlier, shows like these are fine and harmless, but they are so preoccupied with trying to hold a child's attention that they put hardly a thought into whether the children watching are actually absorbing any of the information, and as a result, I haven't observed my toddler actually using any of the information she's supposed to be getting from those shows in the real world. They don't seem to really impact the way she plays, learns, or problem solves, or at least, not anywhere near to the extent that Tumble Leaf has.
So, if you have a child aged 2-5, and you're already a subscriber to Amazon, I can't recommend Tumble Leaf highly enough.
Tumble Leaf, on the other hand, is very unique in that regard. It has the confidence to move at a very relaxed pace. Every episode ts main character, Fig the Fox, is presented with a new object. He takes the new object that he finds, he goes out with his friends, and he plays with it. Through his play, he gets into various situations with simple problems to solve. He takes time to trouble shoot, he comes up with ideas, and through trial-and-error, he finds solutions to the various problems that he encounters, and that's the basic setup for almost every episode, which is simple, but deceptively ingenious. Instead of bombarding its young audience with facts and information through songs so fast paced there's no conceivable way they could actually absorb any of it, Tumble Leaf takes its time, it lets concepts sink in, it walks through simple problems and allows room for error in its problem solving, all the while lovely, relaxing little tunes hum along in the background. This show really sneaked up on me when I realized just how genius its setup really is, and its varied, beautifully orchestrated music.
This all goes without even bringing up how much my toddler gets out of it. She actually learns new words from it, she recognizes the real world objects that Fig encounters in his playtime and immediately knows what they're used for, she gets new ideas from it to try out in her playtime, she quotes Fig's exclamations when she solves problems she encounters, and she discovers new ways to play with real world objects. This is a heck of a lot more than I can say for Storybots or Daniel Tiger or any of the other educational media I've let her watch, and like I said earlier, shows like these are fine and harmless, but they are so preoccupied with trying to hold a child's attention that they put hardly a thought into whether the children watching are actually absorbing any of the information, and as a result, I haven't observed my toddler actually using any of the information she's supposed to be getting from those shows in the real world. They don't seem to really impact the way she plays, learns, or problem solves, or at least, not anywhere near to the extent that Tumble Leaf has.
So, if you have a child aged 2-5, and you're already a subscriber to Amazon, I can't recommend Tumble Leaf highly enough.