Tag Archives: Education

Gotta love podcasts!

When I started this blog I was hunting for resources to educate myself on parenting and to also talk about it here- looks like I had my priorities wrong way around!

Anyway, in my search I had found a few podcasts that talk about parenting- these are only audio versions, of peads interviewing child development experts, answering medical related questions, etc. Then I stumbled upon storytelling audio podcasts too, which is something I don’t mind “learning” too to then tell the kids stories at bedtime. Eventually.

I then started looking into the video podcasts too, and found Dora, Sesame Street, and a few others. I started downloading the Sesame Street ones first, and showed them to Caitlin. She loved them!

Though these are only 5 minutes or so each episode, she has since learned that hitting the space bar starts the clip again at the end. This “trick” has freed me to go about my evening routine like shower, and; well, shower. I just leave her to watching – She doesn’t mind watching it over and again.

Hey that sounds like why the tv is called the idiot box…..

Like the tv series each episode has a theme. One could be about newspapers, another is tricycle; lately Caitlin likes to watch the “eat your colours” one repeatedly. I don’t mind these because she does learn something. Like with this episode, while she chants along with the tune of what food is what colour, she is learning that these are good foods to eat (green is for broccolli, red for carrot, etc). The latest episode is on insects. I watched it with her the first time wondering what they’d be talking about. I was reminded myself that the distinctive feature of insects is that they have 6 legs…..

But at the basic of these podcasts, she is learning good English; albeit that of American accent.

This is what I liked most- that she is actually picking up proper English through watching these. I say proper English because here people tend to not speak properly, since it isn’t the mother tongue of most.

So then my question is: Are there any similar Mandarin educational podcasts? I don’t even mind dubbed ones of Sesame Street. I think there may be a few dubbed versions of popular ones already- Thomas and Pocoyo. Kids shows, that is- ‘cos there are Mandarin podcasts but those are tailored for adults wishing to learn the language.

I subscribe to these via iTunes only, meaning there is likely other podcasts not covered in iTunes.