The Kid Should See This.
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There's just so much science, nature, music, art, technology, storytelling and assorted good stuff out there that my kids (and maybe your kids) haven't seen. It's most likely not stuff that was made for them...
But we don't underestimate kids around here.
Kid-friendly not-made-for-kids videos for all! Collected by Rion Nakaya and her three four year old co-curator.
Tip Jar: Curating this blog takes work! If you like the videos on this site, please support the science education projects that we've picked on DonorsChoose.org.
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Señor Wences (Wenseslio Moreno) on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1966.
Wences was known for his speed, skill, and grace as a ventriloquist. His stable of characters included Johnny, a childlike face drawn on Wences’ hand, which he would place atop an otherwise headless doll and with whom Wences conversed while switching his voices between Johnny’s falsetto and his own voice at amazing speed. Wences would create Johnny’s face on stage to open his act, placing his thumb next to, and in front of, his bent first finger; the first finger would be the upper lip, and the thumb the lower lip. He used lipstick to draw the lips onto the respective fingers and then drew eyes onto the upper part of the first finger, finishing the effect with a tiny long-haired wig on top of his hand. Flexing the thumb would move the “lips”.
Sounds like a DIY waiting to happen, no?
We aren’t using the telegraph as a metaphor anymore, but why aren’t we still teaching our kids about the central nervous system, peripheral nerves, the autonomic system in cartoons? Don’t our brains get email from our feet?!
Here’s the 1979 classic, Telegraph Line, from School House Rock. (Updated video.)
Classic Sesame Street time! Kids get help making drum from a barrel against the backdrop of New York City in the early 80s. The video doesn’t dive deep into it, but there’s even more detail in just how the notes are made exactly to specification:
…fine-tuning is done by lightly tapping the note area to stretch it appropriately. Tune down, hit it from above. Tune up, hit it from below. That’s the easy way to describe it, but the full tuning process involves making sure the whole note area is harmonically balanced (getting the octaves to match)…
For more detail, check out the set-up of the notes on the Tenor Pan.
via mikesenese.com.
After watching NYT’s Brooklyn’s Rube Goldberg video, we went googling for Japanese versions and happened upon a bunch short films for the educational TV show, Pitagora Suitchi (PythagoraSwitch).
This one and this one are serious physics fun, but don’t stop after that: there’s an entire 25 minute playlist! (…if not more. It’s the internet, afterall!)
Created for Yo Gabba Gabba’s Christmas special, animator and director Kirsten Lepore recruits the most adorable shapes around to give presents to each other!
Wes Montgomery, Four on Six, 1965. With Rick Laird on bass, Stan Tracey on piano, and Jackie Dougan on drums. Some nice fingerwork closeups in this… great for seeing how instruments are really played. Plus, check out that ceiling!
Al Jarnow’s Cosmic Clock, a short video animation showing a billion years of time passing in fewer than two minutes.
Via Kottke. Thanks, @tommertron.
