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 four year old co-collector.

Tip Jar: Finding great content for 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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A mad scientist is in the middle of making a monster… sort of. A story that flips between two parallel worlds, CREATE is a short stop motion animation by artist, animator, and director Dan MacKenzie.

via Vimeo. 

The Hidden Beauty of Pollination. You’re seen this video before. It was a part of Louie Schwartzberg’s TED Talk in 2011, but frankly, it’s so amazing that it’s worth watching and posting again on its own! 

This video was shown at the TED conference in 2011, with scenes from “Wings of Life,” a film about the threat to essential pollinators that produce over a third of the food we eat. The seductive love dance between flowers and pollinators sustains the fabric of life and is the mystical keystone event where the animal and plant worlds intersect that make the world go round.

via Boing Boing.

Why isn’t Pluto a planet anymore? C.P. Grey gives a great animated explanation, with a bit of history and a lot of information about the scale and relationships of the types of planets (and other objects) in our solar system.

Though it’s labeled as a dwarf planet now, Pluto is still a planet in all of the kid’s old second-hand and retired library books, so this video was pretty important for us to understand. And even though it was jam packed with some fast moving info for a four year old, reviewing the video gave us a good chance to do lots of drawing and diagramming. Have crayons, markers and paper on hand for after!

via 22 words.

From the archives, more planets and more space!

A baby koala, called a Joey, moves inside (and occasionally peeks from!) its mother’s pouch at the Taipei Zoo. From National Geographic:

…a female koala carries her baby in her pouch for about six months. When the infant emerges, it rides on its mother’s back or clings to her belly, accompanying her everywhere until it is about a year old.

The kid should see this!

via Science Dump.

Short but sweet — both the video and the firetruck! This was filmed in Nobleton, Ontario, Canada and may be the world’s smallest working firetruck.

via Irene’s Internet.

And previously on TKSST: more firefighters!

This beautiful video by Ödland was directed by Vincent Pianina and Lorenzo Papace for music written and recorded by Papace. It’s all made with paper, light and so many beautifully-crafted images. There are more “making of” photos on the pair’s site: lepetitechomalade.com:

via ufunk.

The Caterpillar and the Brook is from the animated series Minuscule. A French-made collection of short stories, Minuscule is about the private lives of ants, snails, bees, caterpillars, wasps, spiders and other tiny creatures, all told without any speaking at all. Highly recommended! For a caterpillar double feature, enjoy Caterpillars in Pairs:

And for the kid’s favorite Minuscule short of the series, finish up with zzzeplin, about a spider and a balloon.

Thanks, Annie.

The spectacular Catalan street theater company, Sarruga, transforms the Millennium Park in Chicago into a fantasy world, bringing their giant ants, spiders and praying mantises to interact with the public in a larger-than-life show full of light, music and movement. In Insects, Sarruga turns these normally miniscule animals into giants, inverting roles and making humans ten times smaller than the insects.

And no, insects don’t shoot steam, nor do venus fly traps swirl around and bang into things in real life. But! It’s always fascinating to see a scale change — something so small to a larger than life size — especially when people become the smaller swarm in the scene!

From the archives (tho not an insect, but an Arachnid, and still a larger than life puppet of sorts): a massive UK spider puppet!

This lady bug swarm video from Boulder, Colorado got popular in 2010, but the kids hadn’t seen it until this weekend and loved just how colorful this particular swarm was.

Lady bugs or lady birds are beetles and can be found in the UK, Ireland, Australia, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, South Africa, New Zealand, India, Malta, and in parts of Canada and the US. According to wikipedia, there are over 5,000 species of them, with more than 450 of those in the United States. As examples, check out these two galleries of their diversity: one from the UK and one of Coccinellidae in India.

There’s also details about their anatomy here. Take special note about how their colorful casings pull up to reveal soft dark wings underneath.

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