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Did you know that kids’ TV viewing spikes by 150% in the summer? Goodness knows my children’s has even though they are also busy with summer camps, karate, baseball, camping trips, sleep overs, and summer reading programs.

To combat the spike in TV viewing, the Smart Television Alliance has just announced the OutSmart the Summer Spike! campaign to raise awareness about the need for busy parents and caregivers to make smart viewing choices and to use technology to control what their children watch.

The Smart Television Alliance believes that if you’re in control of what’s on the screen, you can actually bring educational time to a long summer outside of the classroom. How do you go about doing this? First, start is by signing a petition to TV producers demanding more educational and age-appropriate programming for kids.

Also, look for Smart Television Alliance’s Summer TV Tips blog posts to find out how you can use your kids’ favorite shows as inspiration for learning, while the show is on, and after it’s over. (And while you’re over there, check out the post I wrote for them - Remote Control: It’s O.K., Mom Said We Can Watch TV.)

If you don’t feel like going to the Smart Television Alliance’s blog ever day, you can sign up for Smart News to get tips and other great information sent right to you.

My article, Remote Control: It’s O.K., Mom Said We Can Watch TV, is now up on Smart News, the enewsletter and blog for the Smart Television Alliance, a wonderful site for parents wanting to explore smart and safe television programming for their family.

Here’s an excerpt:

Some experts say that television controls children’s behavior. As the parent, you can take control of the remote and use television as a positive influence on your family. For example, we use television to inspire our children’s potential career choices. As a regular viewer of MythBusters , Nathan has decided he wants to be a stunt man when he grows up. Unfortunately, Paul had to break the news to our son that very few people make careers out of blowing stuff up – even on TV.

Enjoy!

As my kids get older, it seems like it’s harder to find the time to read to them. By the time dinner dishes are put away, and backpacks are packed for the next day, it’s pass everyone’s bedtime and there is no time to read. While there is no substitute for a parent and child getting together to read, there are sources out there to help fill in the cracks.

The Smart Television Alliance
The Smart Television Alliance a great online source for parents and caregivers to easily find television programming that is educational and entertaining for kids, on the parents’ schedules. They’re also a committed supporter of the NEA’s annual Read Across America project. They even had some of our kids’ favorite TV characters give them reading suggestions.

The Smart Television Alliance has partnered with the Disney Channel to produce a Public Service Announcement to help impart the importance of reading to children everywhere. The Disney Channel asked Super Bunny, star of the new Playhouse Disney series “Bunnytown,” to read his favorite bedtime story to a friend - A Boy and His Bunny. You can see the video below.

kidthing™
kidthing released an animated digital version of Horton Hears A Who! by Dr. Seuss for Read Across America Day. It’s available for free exclusively on for download on kidthing. The pages come to life on your computer screen with animation, narration and sound effects. Parents also have the option to turn the sound off and read the book aloud. It’s very slick but as a parent you are totally in control to what books you’re downloading.

kidthing is a secure internet-based global learning platform for children, parents, teachers, family and friends that delivers the next generation Internet-based learning environment through its proprietary distribution, publishing and social networking platform. Parents and teachers can purchase, customize and personalize content for kids and can share this in private sharing groups. Publishers and content creators around the world can make their works available in the kidthing store in an enhanced electronic format. It’s sort of an online version of Kindle for children’s books with social networking features.

YouTube
There are many videos of books from Rosemary Wells to Curious George available on YouTube (probably bootleg versions, I’m guessing. I’ve created a playlist on YouTube of some kid friendly titles for my kids to watch. (I’d love to post a video here, but it keeps goofing up my blog.)

I was first exposed to the world of Baby Einstein videos when my friend - an occupational therapist - and her family stayed with us a for a few days. Her son was less than a year old and an extremely high need child . They took drastic measures from a darkened room with music and a special swing just to get him to sleep. (It ended up being severe GERD and the poor kid was in pain.)

One thing that always calmed their little boy down were Baby Einstein videos. They limited his viewing time, and only relied on the videos when they needed a break. My friend worked with many special needs children and knew that the videos were a great tool in getting her son comfortable and quiet.

In August 2007, Frederick J. Zimmerman, PhD., Dimitri A. Christakis, MD, MPH, and Andrew N. Meltzoff, PhD. came out with a study published in the Journal of Pediatrics that supposedly found that among babies ages eight months to 16 months, every hour spent daily watching programs such as Baby Einstein translated into six to eight fewer words in their vocabulary.

The media picked up on it immediately and Disney asked for an apology. Yet, no one pointed out that the study was preliminary and not very scientific. In fact the researchers were very biased since Dr. Christakis had a reputation for blaming TV for a variety of behavioral problems in children  and had been targeting Baby Einstein videos since 2005. I was so ticked off that I wrote “The Real Scoop on Watching Baby Einstein (just because you have a Dr. in front of your name doesn’t mean you’re right).”

I’ve been a big defender of QUALITY videos and television ever since. In fact, I support groups like the Smart Television Alliance, a coalition of nonprofit organizations committed to helping parents use technology to find and watch quality television programming. With this in mind I whole heartedly support parents use of Baby Einstein videos so they can take a break to shower, eat a snack, answer the telephone or make dinner.

Videos like Baby Einstein - Baby’s First Moves are meant to be shared with your child. In fact, the Baby Einstein website gives parents tips on ways to use the videos. Here’s one:

Make it a Family Affair
Consider using DVD time as a way to interact with the whole family. If baby has an older sibling(s) around, you can invite them to watch the DVD with you. (Nathan enjoyed watching videos like this with Lucie when she was a baby.) Encourage your older child to point out the names of the animals, say the colors or even make animal sounds. They will love playing with baby and will be excited about showing off how much they know!

Also, it’s not about your baby sitting like a big lump in front of the TV watching a video and drooling. With Baby Einstein - Baby’s First Moves, which was sent to me by Baby Einstein/Disney to review, it’s about getting up and moving! The video is an interactive “celebration of babies’ movement milestones.” This includes walking, clapping, jumping, and dancing.The purpose of the video is to get parents and their children discovering movement together. So grab a copy of Baby Einstein - Baby’s First Moves and get your jiggy on!

Recently in school, Nathan had to write the story of his ancestry. It was part of what his class was learning about the United States as a nation of immigrants. Since Paul and my families’ backgrounds are complex - we have ancestors from England, Wales, Scotland, France, Denmark, Germany and Greece who immigrated as long ago as the 1600s and as recently as 1960 - the paper ended up being two pages. Needless to say this was a fairly intense assignment for a second grader. (It’s part of the Core Knowledge curriculum - see What Your Second Grader Needs to Know.)

Nathan had a hard time understanding that my father, who was born in England, was both English and Jewish. It was even more confusing that my dad became a citizen when he was a kid and was more American than English having grown up in Brooklyn in the ’20s and ’30s and serving as an American soldier in World War II.

Exploring through TV and video

Just around this time, PBS was showing their wonderful documentary, The Jewish Americans. If Nathan was older, I would have had him watch watch it with me to understand more about Jewish immigrants and how they contributed to American society. I only caught the first marvelous episode, so I was happy to receive a review copy from Click-Comm.com of the newly released DVD so I could watch the episodes I missed. The description:

The Jewish Americans is a three-night (6 hour) documentary that explores 350 years of Jewish American history. Written and directed by award-winning filmmaker David Grubin, The Jewish Americans is a journey through time, from the first settlement in 1654 to the present. It is about the struggle of a tiny minority who make their way into the American mainstream while, at the same time, maintaining a sense of their own identity as Jews. Focusing on the tension between identity and assimilation, The Jewish Americans is quintessentially an American story, which other minority groups will find surprisingly familiar. Louis D. Brandeis, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Henry Morgenthau, Hank Greenberg, Betty Friedan, Molly Goldberg, Carl Reiner, Sid Caesar, and Tony Kushner are all interviewed for the documentary.

PBS’s The Jewish Americans website also has video outtakes, links to the history of being Jewish in America, and a place to share your own story.

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