Our Favorite (Kid & Adult) Shows

Happy Monday!!  Hope you had a lovely weekend.  It's finally starting to feel like Spring in Indiana.  That means we're playing outside as much as possible, doing yard work, going on walks and riding our bikes.  It's been so nice.

We love to play outside, but we also like to take it easy and watch some shows inside.

TV gets a bad wrap in some parenting circles, but I disagree with that.  I think there are SO MANY wonderful, educational programs on TV for kids these days.  There are tons of interesting shows for children out there.  But there are also junky shows featuring characters with major attitudes/sassy behavior from the characters (Barbies, My Little Ponies, Miraculous, etc).  So just be sure to watch the first episode of a new show with your kids and then veto anything you don't approve of.  My kids know that we aim for fun, learning shows that are family friendly.  We have favorites and I'm happy to share them with you.  For reference, we have an almost 3 year old and an almost 6 year old.

Here's a list of our favorite shows - be sure to leave a comment telling me the shows that you love:

Adult Favorites:

NETFLIX/Amazon Prime Streaming:

Friday Night Lights
We are obsessed.  We were looking for a new show to watch together for date nights at home and this one was the winner.  We are just a few episodes in and LOVE it.  It is challenging to just watching an episode or two at a time.  We don't want to turn it off.  It's a show that men and women would enjoy watching - I promise.  Kevin and I both look forward to watching this together.  There's a great mix of love stories, heartbreak, drama, football, marriage, high school angst and life in the South.

Super Market Sweep
We all enjoy watching this game show.  We like Wheel of Fortune and this has a fun game show feel where you guess products, guess amounts and get to make predictions. 

Minute to Win It
The whole family loved watching these fun minute to win it challenges.  They were funny, interesting for everyone and was a good family friendly show.

Arrested Development 
A quirky show about a family with all kinds of drama in their family business.  It's hilarious, strange, relatable and we both enjoyed it.

DVR:
The Voice
Hometown
Counting On
Grey's Anatomy


Kid Favorites:

DVDS
My kids would tell you that the single greatest feature of our van is that it has a DVD player.  It's been SO nice for trips and I really think it's helped so much with distracting the kids from getting car sick.  We've had far less car sick problems since getting the van.  I'll give you a little description of each DVD and then put a link to them at the very bottom of the post.

Word Factory
Letter Factory
Olive's teacher recommended both of these Leap Frog DVDs.  They were a little pricey, but I am amazed at how well both kids are picking up things like letter names and sounds, how vowels work, sounding out words and both DVDs have catchy songs.  These are the perfect DVDs for learning on the go.

Cars
Both kids love the Cars movies - Cars 1, 2 and 3.  They're great racing movies that feature both boy and girl cars.  They're interesting and really capture the kid's attention.  

Minions Movie
This is a silly show featuring the minions from the Despicable Me series.  My kids think it's hilarious. 


NETFLIX
We go back and forth having a Netflix subscription.  We currently have one and the kids watch shows on this the most right now.  We rotate through these shows and the kids usually watch a show in the morning and then here and there the rest of the day.  It's a great way for O to relax while she's enjoying an after school snack and then we move on to playing with toys or playing outside.  We don't have strict TV rules.  Just try to enjoy it in moderation.

Story Bots
This show is so much fun!  They ask questions and then work together to figure out the answers.  They are very science filled and educational.  They're interesting for kids and adults.  The information really sticks with the kids.  Mine regularly reference the show long after we've learned about something new during an episode.

Magic School Bus
Another great, educational show.  Miss Frizzle and her students are always up for an exciting field trip.  They travel, explore and teach about all kinds of interesting topics.

If I Were an Animal 
This is a really great show with real animal footage.  It features animals in the wild and teaches the kids TONS of fun facts about 4 or 5 different animals in each episode.  The kids LOVE it.

YooHoo to the Rescue
Vroomiz
Robocar Poli
Super Wings
DinoTrux
Octonauts
These are all fun shows that have a theme of resucing, helping, saving friends from difficult situations.  They work together and are cute shows.

Motown Magic
This is a show filled with tons of classic motown hits.  Olive loves the music and hearing kids sing these iconic songs.  This isn't a show I would have guessed they'd love, but they do.

Veggie Tales 
Bible stories from vegetables.  This show has catchy songs and helps teach your kids about Biblical truths.

Peter Rabbit
This movie is perfect with Easter quickly approaching.  The kids love the updated story of Peter Rabbit and it's cute enough that adults will enjoy watching it, too.  Peter is a trouble maker that works to help his family and friends.  He gets into mischief and the animals critters are really funny.  It's easy to dislike Mr McGreggor and root for all the animals!

Gnomeo & Juliet
Sherlock Gnomes
On Friday, I mentioned that my kids are loving these gnome movies.  They're so much fun!  We all actually enjoy watching them.  They're silly, have funny references for kids and adults and we really like them.

Planes
Olive's tennis coach recommended this one when he found out that Fletcher loved the Cars movies.  It's really cute.  Fletcher loves it and talks about it all the time.  He doesn't normally love planes, but it has a very similar feel to Cars with the talking vehicles so he's a fan.


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