YouTube

[rivka]

I have never really been into YouTube. I don't usually click on links that people put in their LJ posts, and I was never very interested in sitting around browsing through videos. I'm not patient enough. But I'm really starting to realize what a fantastic tool YouTube is for the parent of a curious preschooler. Because they have videos of everything on there.

I first got the idea from bosssio, whose young son has a whole collection of garbage truck videos favorited on YouTube. That stuck in my mind, and when Alex expressed some interest in hammerhead sharks I dug around and came up with a bunch of short videos for her to watch. (Our favorites: this and this. Fascinating for adults but not for impressionable two-year-olds: this video in which a guy fishing for tarpon gets his catch stolen by a hammerhead.)

Tonight I showed Alex some more photos of the baby elephant at the Maryland Zoo. She wanted to see more, so I offered to look for YouTube videos of baby elephants.

Then she joined the topic of elephants to her current favorite fantasy-play subject, and asked me to find a video of an elephant going to the veterinarian. With the beauty of YouTube, it took me about five seconds to find a fascinating, non-gory, six-minute video of a bull elephant undergoing a tusk-ectomy at the Oregon Zoo. We went on to watch a video of elephants swimming in a river at an animal sanctuary, and then branched out to other animals visiting the vet. (I've just bookmarked this video of a random litter of Norwegian kittens at their first vet visit, amd this one of a litter of Rottweiler puppies, to show her tomorrow.)

I know that nothing beats giving a preschooler real experiences in the real world, and that YouTube isn't a substitute for that. And I know that for real information, books are a much better bet. But damn - if I can find a video of an elephant going to the vet? That means that I can find a video of anything. It's so cool to have a means of instantly satisfying her curiosity.

Comments

[wcg.livejournal.com]

While I imagine you could also find videos of rampaging hippos, it's probably not a good idea. Maybe it'd be better to find some of nice peaceful hippos twirling their ears or something.

Those are some awfully good videos you linked to.

[journeywoman.livejournal.com]

The boy's YouTube list features Zambonis, excavators, Thomas the Tank Engine movies, and Charlie the Unicorn.

[ex-serenejo.livejournal.com]

This is very cool.

Miro = YouTube Turbo

[(Anonymous)]

Miro (getmiro.com) is a free, open source application that runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux. You can run a search on YouTube, Google Video, and a bunch of other services, and DOWNLOAD videos to your computer so you can watch them whenever without having to wait to stream them every time. And you can subscribe to video podcasts from They Might Be Giants and other kids' vodcasters.

-Sumana H.

[thette.livejournal.com]

Hulda is in a tractor phase right now, so we show her videos of tractor squaredancing.

[janetmiles.livejournal.com]

Tractor. Square. Dancing.

I would not have believed it had I not seen it.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

You know, until you posted that link I had managed to convince myself that there was a translation error, or that thette was using some kind of metaphor.

O.M.G.

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

I like Youtube. I'm just catching up with the output of an artist that I can't easily acquire - and because he's prolific, I'll know that next time I have a chance to buy one of his CDs (ok, I could sell my soul to Amazon.de, but I don't wanna) I know which one I want. This is fantastic.

There are some things that work a lot better as a video than as stills. Barack Obama's speech, for instance.

two heart warmers

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

We expect something bad to happen, but things turn beautiful.

Lion greets woman who rescued him:



Christian the Lion greets men who raised him (and returned him to Africa -- this is the reunion, about a year later):

[chargirlgenius.livejournal.com]

It's fascinating to imagine that they live in a world where they'll rarely have to wait for an answer. It's amazing, and a little scary, in a way.

I rarely look at YouTube either - we have limited bandwidth with the cellular connection. But I think I might have to take the leap with videos for Henry.

[jinian.livejournal.com]

I don't remember whether you've said anything about maybe getting pets in the future, but this is a pretty good stand-in!