As a former Waldorf class teacher, I've seen first hand how unchecked screentime from films, tv and computer games can adversely affect young children as they grow, but I also believe in doing what I can as a parent to educate and turn a potential problem into an opportunity.
So, while my five-year-old daughter doesn't play with computers or watch television at home, I've begun to watch films with her and expose her to the whole history of moving pictures in a way that mirrors her own growth and understanding.
My goal is to watch one of my favorite films, The Sound of Music (1965), with her but not before she's experienced far older and simpler films - all of which lead up to and inform the newer ones. The Sound of Music is a complex film in both story and effects, but certainly nothing like current films that use digital animation, fast editing and extremely mature dialogue to keep kids entertained.
She's going to eventually see a lot of stuff on the screen (at friends' houses if not our own) and I'd like to give her a really good background in where all these things come from so that she can navigate it in a really strong way. It's also proving to be an amazing education for me.
So, this year we started to watch films together at the rate of about one a month (we often don't watch the whole thing in one sitting), we often watch them over again (kids are great about this), and we always watch them together. We started with the oldest films I could find, which are silent and are just about to enter the talkies of the 1930's. As I've looked around, I've found some particularly good ones that I wanted to list, and which I'll keep adding to. If you have any recommendations, please add them in the comments. These are our faves so far.
These early films are short and all silent (Modern Times has sound effects and the the first words Chaplin ever spoke on film). One AM is only 20 minutes long, which is perfect for a five-year-old. The longer films we often watched over two or three nights.
DISCLAIMER: If this whole notion seems very antiquated to you or impossible to effect OR too liberal, my apologies in advance. It's certainly not easy to raise children and everyone has different home cultures, but I've just found that this works well for our home.
Seen at Age 5
- 1916 One AM - Charlie Chaplin
- 1921 The Kid - Charlie Chaplin
- 1924 Sherlock Jr. - Buster Keaton
- 1931 City Lights - Charlie Chaplin
- 1936 Modern Times - Charlie Chaplin
Age 6 - Talkies from the 30'sConsidering: The Little Rascals, The Marx Brothers
Age 7 - Films from the 40's
Age 8 - Films from the 50'sDefinitely: Singing in the Rain, Mr. Hulot's Holiday
Age 9 - Films from the 60'sDefinitely: The Sound of Music
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I love that you're dong this! So many won't watch black and white and miss out on so many wonderful stories and ideas and actors. Leonard Maltin's yearly film guides have a good list of recommendations for family viewing going from silent to more contemporary. From the 30's don't Miss "The Adventures of Robin Hood" from 1938, "Captains Courageous" 1937.The Little Princess 1939
40s-Young Tom Edison 1940, Meet Me in St Louis 1944 National Velvet 1944 Our Vines Have Tender Grapes 1946
50s-Roman Holiday1953 All Mine to Give 1958 ,
60s Pollyanna 1960 (also there's a silent version with Mary Pickford from 1919[?])
Mary Poppins 1964
All three versions of Little Women 1933, 1949 and 1994 are worthwhile
SInging in the Rain! So great.
My kids both went to a Waldorf grade school and are so much the better for it--I just wish there was a Waldorf high school nearby. I wholeheartedly agree that screen time needs to be strictly limited, for so many reasons. My kids love the Marx Bros.! Thanks for shining a light on this issue.
We did something similar to this when our boys were young (ages 18, 16, and 13)... they now have an appreciation for some of the older films. It definitely has influenced some of their thinking...ie.. love of a diversified collection of music, big band to jazz to film scores and even rap (ugh on my part.)
Did I keep a list? no...
Modern Times was the first movie I ever saw when I was 5 and remains a favorite. My father and I saw it over and over at Theatre 80 or when the Film Forum was doing a retrospective. We saw The Kid once and both cried and we swore never to see it again and while I don't remember it, I know we never did see it again. City Lights was another favorite. Thanks for bringing back the memories and reminding me to plan to do this when our daughter is older. (as for screen time, I have never had a television in the house and don't want one).
All our children are grown now and they still talk about some of the movies we "made" them watch. We would get the black & white Fred Astaire movies, some swashbuckling movies and others -all in black & white and tell them they only had to watch for 15 minutes. Guess what!!? Not ONCE did they ever get up & walk away. BY THE WAY, "Singin In the Rain" just had it's 60th anniversary. Loved reading the story and all the posts! Thanks.
Wizard of Oz..
My daughter is 4 and LOVES the Marx Brothers' "Duck Soup". She is also a fan of Laurel and Hardy,.... She saw them at the bottom of the Netfix, and said, "I wanna see THAT". I could have jumped for joy. Now that I've watched them thousands of times, they still stand up, and are funny every single time we watch them....
The Red Baloon is a MUST for children of all ages!
Don't forget "Bringing Up Baby" (1938) for some classic screwball comedy.
My husband and I are HUGE film buffs, so I definitely love this idea. However, I have to share a small story - when I was little, I used to find silent films really unsettling (even scary, to a degree). I found out later that may it may have had to do with the rate of frames per second, which I wasn't really accustomed to. I enjoy most silents now, but sometimes I still feel that way. Hopefully it won't be the same for your daughter!
I also found the voices of the little rascals to be like nails on a chalkboard, even at a tender age.
Make sure not to overlook some of the wonderful animation from the era! Not just Disney, but also some of the great old Looney Tunes shorts and maybe a few of the non-offensive Tom & Jerry shorts (some of them are jaw-droppingly offensive, I will admit). Hand-drawn animation is a dying art, and we need to build in a new generation to appreciate all of the hard work and craft that goes into it.
So many of the great old MGM musicals would be perfect. I'm a huge Astaire/Rodgers fan, and a fan of some o the non-Ginger stuff Astaire did (Band Wagon, Easter Parade, etc.). Anything with Judy Garland (especially Meet Me in St. Louis, the Harvey Girls, Easter Parade, the old Andy Hardy movies). Gene Kelly also made a few terrific ones, most notably Singin in the Rain.
Mr. Hulot's Holiday is one of my all-time favorite films. I probably saw it for the first time when I was about 7 or 8. You should add Mon Oncle to the list too!
I know you are looking for older movies and your daughter might be a little young for this, but I love Wallace & Gromit. They are wonderfully quirky characters and the shorts are only 30 minutes long.
All 3 of my children enjoyed Disney films, especially some of the older ones - Snow White, Dumbo, Bambi, Robin Hood. More recent favourites included The Rescuers Down Under, and the American Tale series (not sure if these were Disney). My daughter loved The Sound of Music, too. Now aged 12, she's into horror films.
I grew up with watching almost no TV and mostly watching old films over and over again (Charlie Chaplin, the old Swiss Heidi movies, Erich Kästner films, Astrid Lindgren ect.) but I think the very systematic way you do a little bit strange. Why should a five year old watch only silent movies, a six year old films from the thirties, a seven year old the ones from the forties ect- I much rather would think about if a particular film is right for my kids age not which era it is from! Several of the Charlie Chaplin films are actually very complex and I doubt a 5 years old would get them although they might find some of the slapstick funny, while there are many great films which are perfect for that age and you will miss out because they weren't made in the "right" era. Of course you can watch them later but a film which is perfect for age five won't have the same effect if you only watch it with, lets say, a nine year old because you finally arrived at the era the film was made.
One of my neighbors has 4 kids and they are doing something similar but with books! Their youngest just turned 8 and was regaling me with the sad life of Heathcliff, having just finished Wuthering Heights!
Don't forget Harold Lloyd movies too... oh and Laurel and Hardy. When I got older, I loved "Auntie Mame." It was my favourite for a while.
My oldest daughter has attended our state's silent film festival with me every February since she was 4. I took her to see an evening of silent and early sound film comedy shorts at a local theatre when she was 3. Kids are never too young for the classics! And when she saw Singing in the Rain and Hugo, she actually understood some of the historical context of the films. (She's 7 now.)
a bit different from what others are posting but i just wanted to mention the very excellent documentary "babies," which my then 3-year-old daughter just loved when we watched (and a year later, she still loves). i think seeing the other babies, and the very different environments in which they live, was fascinating, and it's beautifully filmed too.
Charlie is the man! I wasn't exposed to his films until college. They are all wonderful and have a magical quality about them that appeals to children, as well as a morally relevant theme for adults.
It may not seem shocking nowadays with SNL parodies and YouTube, but to impersonate and make fun of Adolf Hitler WHILE he was in power? That took some brass ones. Chaplin was not a saint by any means, but man was that guy talented!
Love many of the classics listed above but I also try to find movies that have some diversity in terms of race and gender. (I won't show her Dumbo for instance which has horrible racial caricatures). Does anyone have suggestions for classic movies that include people of color?
We've not moved to films yet, but I've been watching Mister Rogers with my almost-three-year-old --- still pitch perfect, nice and slow, just like I remember from my own childhood.
My husband and got rid of our TV when our first was born. We wanted to get out of the daily habit ourselves and and we wanted our kids to fall in love with other aspects of life first. Several years later we now have a TV (got it a few months ago). It has been working out well. The girls very rarely ask to watch it! It isn't an option for weekdays and even many weekends. (We find that HGTV shows are some of the most G-rated offerings)
A film I enjoyed sharing with them was the French film The Red Balloon. It was a nice introduction to movies as it is quiet, thought-provoking and aesthetically pleasing. I like sharing films and tv shows with my children that depict different places and cultures. We enjoyed Wizard of Oz and The Sound of Music too.
Want to recommend The Court Jester starring Danny Kaye (1956) especially after seeing The Adventures of Robin Hood and maybe some other swashbucklers since it is a brillain parody and homage to that genre.
Oh and The Crimson Pirate starring Burt Lancaster (1952)
Wish I had some good suggestions for you, JELLISWGT. Look at Leonard Maltin's film guide for suggestions on discussing some of the stereotypes and caricatures that crop up in classic films. It's a way of trying to turn these problematic elements into a way of understading earlier attitudes and some of the changes in this regard. When kids are the right age of course.
Oh and there are four Nancy Drew adaptations from 1938 and 1939 available on DVD that are a lot of fun. She and her boyfriend together are a hoot.
In addition to these amazing classics, we also have introduced DS to classic animation from the same era. There's some really great (and funny) stuff from that time.
i grew up watching tcm!!! freaking love them. shirley temple was a fav of mine and my little girl is starting to love her too. my brothers would watch little rascals with me too. although i do love the goonies and other "classics" that arent very old. sound of music is a favorite too. seven wives for seven brothers. great idea.
i usually watch tcm by myself because others ruin it for me. either complaining its too out of date or my director fil talking about act one scene one and she was a lesbo and he was gay and blah blah blah ... sit back eat your pop corn and shut up. although i am like that with every movie! these are like my beloved grandparents
This is such a great post, and I'm loving the comments! We have a two year old and so far the only thing we consistently watch is Mister Rogers, which is just absolutely fantastic. The pace is slow, considered, and filled with such love.
As for films, I have it in my head that I want to show him My Neighbor Totoro as his first movie. But I love the idea of starting with the old silents!
How about some old Shirley Temple films? I have a fondness in my heart for A Little Princess and Heidi, as others have mentioned. And Laurel and Hardy, definitely.
In addition to mixing eras, in echo with my comrade above, I'd urge you to become more ambitious. My (then) six-year-old niece _loved_ "The Seven Samarai." Yes, it had subtitles, but it also had good guys versus bad guys, and the good guys (mostly) won.
I'm afraid wanting diversity in older movies is a lost cause. No studio would make a movie without hope of revenue from the Southern markets. I made the movie "Hellzapoppin'" a part of my Labor Day viewing. (A school-aged child might love this: think it of the grandfather of "Airplane.") One reel is given over to some of the best Black music and dancing of the era. It was the practice to only put Black talent in one reel of the movie, a segment which could be "lost" when the film went on the Southern circuit.
On the other hand, there are some older movies with strong women. Try old Katherine Hepburn movies such as "Holiday" and "Stage Door," some pre-Code movies such as "Gold -Diggers of 1933" and "Forty-Second Street" (though Ruby Keeler's character is rather passive), and some serial and genre pictures.
Yeah this is why screening the classics for my daughter makes me a little nervous. You never know when there's going to be a "Swing Time" moment. Maybe when's she's old enough to discuss these issues (she's 3). For now, maybe Pixar is a safer bet. Wall E is pretty classic.
I shall second the motion on some of these: Singin' in the Rain, Adventures of Robin Hood, Bringing Up Baby, Meet Me in St. Louis, and the Marx Brothers. My now 11-year old was always very sensitive and couldn't take much in the way of suspense and other very intense emotions. On TV we mostly watched things on PBS like Nature and Nova. It was interesting to see that many films that people assume are kid-friendly films just did not work for her. When the neighbors were watching ALL of the Star Wars movies at 5 and 6 years old, she couldn't even handle things like "Finding Nemo" (which is actually quite a stressful film for a sensitive kid as every few minutes they are averting certain death!). I found that most Disney films were actually way over the top for her in those early years. Watching the Little Mermaid at 6 or 7 with an older cousin had her screaming and crying during the intense climax. When it finally came to the happy ending, she stopped crying, but that ending only lasted about 2 or 3 minutes, and once the credits started rolling she cried some more just getting the remaining stress out! Interestingly, at the same time we were reading lots of the "Redwall" books (by Brian Jacques) which have lots of intense parts, but also lots of happy and celebratory parts to them. Over the years, as she entered this world of Redwall over and over, she began to be ready for more intensity in movies. Something I noticed was that, unlike what happened with the Little Mermaid, in the Redwall books, once the battles are over and the bad guys are beat, there is quite a lot of time spent feasting in celebration and finding out how all the characters you had grown to love went on to live a happy life. It really allows you to come to some emotional equilibrium at the end and doesn't just dump you emotionally out on the ground at the end as so many Disney (and other) films seem to do. My two cents.
This is a wonderful idea! But... "Singing in the Rain" is a way more complex film (in every sense - musically, dance-wise, plot-wise, etc.) than "Sound of Music". My daughter is 7 now and loves "Sound of Music", but I am waiting to do "Singing in the Rain" till she is old enough to at least get some of the jokes. And the Marx brothers? For a 5 year old? Some of the jokes still fly over my</> head!
This is never going to work so long as your kids attend any sort of camp or afterschool program. It's fun to see your list though, so thanks for the post.
I was able to show my girls The Sound of Music early by beginning the movie when Maria is introduced to the kids and ending it with So Long, Farewell. This way the scary Nazis are excluded as well as the less interesting nuns. The best songs are in the middle anyway.
This is great. When I was a kid, my mom had me watch Wiard of Oz. it started in black and white and I was ready to shut it off but she told me to be patient. Then bam! techinolour! It helped me to see that being patient pays off, and sometimes a film is more than meets the eye at first. Now as an adult, I don't mind a slower paced movie, or a film where it takes a little while before the magic to come in; I've learned that the in your face at the opening credits kinda movie isn't always the best.
@Rozewalker: My Neighbour Totoro is one of my daughter's favourite films, along with other animés such as Spirited Away, The Cat Returns, Hal's Moving Castle, and the more recent Ponyo. She also enjoyed Grave Of The Fireflies, quite a dark film, with quite grown up themes of war and loss. If Maxwell sticks to his schedule, his daughter will not watch any of these films until she's at least 13, which would be a shame, IMO.
Wow. The Little Rascals? That choice is loaded with racially sensitive content. Seems like a lot to introduce to a 6-year-old. Talk about "adverse effects"...
While I absolutely agree thay many of these older films are appropriate for children it is very important to be aware of the numerous social assumptions that are being made in these movies. Specifically about racial roles. When my kids were young I thought that I would keep them away from the Disney-esqu type of films and show them movies/television that I enjoyed as a kid, only to be horrified by some of that racial stereo-typing that exists in many of these movies. Even messages a subtle as - all of the servants and wait staff are dark skinned. So while I will continue to watch some of these movies with my kids I will point out stereo-types to them. Not in a preachy way, but more posed as a question, "What do you think about...?" Even toddlers will develop assumptions about people. Ahhh, parenting!
we went to the drive in last week and saw the original Sherlock Holmes' Hounds of Baskervilles - my 8yr old loved it and asked if she could see all of the SH movies.
@makinyc. I totally agree, classic is not always better. @L-A I didn't know what Little Rascals was (I'm from England) but just looked it up. I'm shocked that would be a suggestion?!
A lot of good movies mentioned. But don't miss "Blackbeard's Ghost", an old Disney movie with Peter Ustinov and others. I've never seen my kids laugh as hard as they did during that movie. And even my wife and I enjoyed it!
My husband and I are film freaks and often think about future children and what films we'll introduce them to...he had this same idea, letting them start out with early cinema and progress from there. Great post!
We started our kids off with old movies too, although it's getting harder and harder to control what they see (what with sleep overs and such).
Besides old movies, we also looked towards beautiful animation.
First was Krtek, or The Mole. You really ought to try to track down the Krtek dvds. They are silent, and the animation is joyously modernist. They are popular all over the world, but not known in the U.S. Here are some links:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/03/arts/zdenek-miler-creator-of-krtek-the-mole-dies-at-90.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/06/world/the-saturday-profile-50-years-of-burrowing-gently-into-czech-culture.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nOdwlFdeBM
We also love the work of Michel Ocelet in our house. Our children have grown up watching Azur and Asmar (more beautiful in the original French) and Kirikou. Gorgeous animation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80WFVB1EHT0&list=LPmYFiizGeATA&index=2&feature=plcp
And then there is Bob and Bobek... (but they need to be translated... but still, are very, very, funny, beautifully drawn and intelligent)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlX6bZk_mII
Another favorite which needs translation --
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imFbVtg8ljw&feature=fvwrel
There is so much great stuff out there beyond Disney (which we have actively tried to avoid), but most parents never hear of it.
A final note -- our kids got into The Sound of Music through friends, and soon we were roped into getting it when they were 6 and 3. It turned out to be a great thing, as that summer we visited Bertchesgaden (ever realized exactly how very close the Nazis were! Those hills weren't just alive with music -- they were teeming with the Nazi elite...) and of course, visited Salzburg. It was magical, and gave them a real insight into the places we visited during our vacation. They really loved that trip.
I bought "Robin Hood," starring Errol Flynn and Olivia Dehaviland (sp?) for my husband and was surprised that our (then) 4 year old took a great interest in it, asking to watch it over and over again. She (did I mention that she's a girl?) even had me make her a Robin Hood costume for Halloween that year, complete with bow, arrows, and quiver, making hers the most envied costume of every dad in the neighborhood….
Jelliswgt, I just recalled a couple. Not sure if they'd be appropriate for your daughter since I think they'd be godd for kids at leas ten. They are Intruder in the Dust (1948), Stars in My Crown (1950) and The Well(1951). The black characters are not in the lead roles except in The Well but their characters are crucial to the stories and are not stereotyped in the usual manner of the era.
Wow, does every thing need to be analyzed to the point that you won't show your three year old Swing Time because they aren't old enough to discuss the implications of the Bojangles scene? The easiest thing to do of course would be to use the fast forward button, but even if you didn't, no three year old would even recognize what was going on or relate it to the real world in any way shape or form.
I don't get this. We are all grown up people here who presumably were exposed to 20th century culture (good bad and ugly) in our youth and I bet most of us watched or read things as children that we know now contain racially or socially offensive elements and yet we managed to survive into NPR listening adulthoods without joining the Klan. Are the same parents who are so concerned about Swing Time not letting their kids read the Little House books? Because if they are not, that is just sad.
Going back to the post, I appreciate the intent behind the timeline, but the idea as a whole is pretty silly. A year in a kid's life is like ten years for an adult. By the time she is nine, the films she watched at five or six will be ancient history. Your kid doesn't need a foundation course in the history of cinema to appreciate Do-Re-Mi -- if you want to show her The Sound of Music, why don't you just do it? If you start watching it now when it is all just sounds and colors doesn't mean she won't want to watch it over and over again when she is older. God knows I did, with that very film, when I was a kid.
It seems to me there is also a basic disconnection here. You want your child to have a foundation in movie history which is good, but our current liberal sensitivities mean you don't actually want her to see the content that many of the most influential films contain. The Birth of a Nation is probably the most influential film of early cinema, but I can't imagine many parents are going to show that to their kids no matter how film literate they want their kid to be.
One movie a month?! Children are sponges for information so why so drastically limit a child's exposure to good things such as great movies? As someone's whose health is not so good at a young age I cringe when I see people budget their time, or the time of their children, as if somehow it is endless.
You should also consider loosening up on the kind of content. Sure it is a good thing to limit a child"s exposure to certain content but you are also thinking as an adult does, not as a child does. You should consider letting the child watch movies that children have tradtionally enjoyed. Children need to have fun.
Great thread, I keep thinking of films we have all enjoyed as a family. Don't miss Peter And The Wolf, and The Time Machine. Beautiful music and 3D animation.
@rsr thanks for your suggestions. I will definitely check them out! @yrnamehere, I don't really see that not wanting my African American daughter to see Fred Astaire in blackface is over analysis. Blackface is demeaning and dehumanizing. I get that it is also culturally complex but it is also fundamentally racist and therefore Swing Time, in my opinion, is not a movie for kids, like Taxi Driver is not a movie for kids. Images are not meaningless, even for three-year-olds, and we are not talking about a subtle image here.
I remember vividly being taken to see a Charlie Chaplin movie (can't remember which one) as a kid (7)-- bawled my eyes out (it was soooo sad) and was unable to understand why people where laughing. Begged my mother to take me home in the middle of the movie because I couldnt stand how sad the movie made me feel. :(I still can't watch these movies because I find Chaplin's movies incredibly sad and tear provoking). I fear that I must be one of the only people in the universe who thinks this way! :(
I went to a summer daycamp in grade school that had as an optional activity one reel of a classic old movie a day. I have vivid memories of the B&W Hunchback of Notre Dame -- but only one reel, because it was too scary to keep going. At 46 I think I should go back and finish it, don'tcha? I much preferred the lunchtime showings of 1950s/60s documentaries -- bridges being built, machines being made, history of the American Revolution, etc. Anyone know offhand where those can be found these days?
And as an aside because it seems that this group of people would be interested... Consider this an argument for kids being able to learn perspective.
I'm in my mid-40s. I remember seeing at least part of "Song of the South" -- and an adult who was watching with me told me that the kids were lucky to have someone so intelligent & experienced spending time with them. Years later when I first heard the "oh it's so racist" descriptions I was boggled -- to me, the black storyteller was in a position of power. I've heard that it was originally controversal for that very reason -- that white kids were looking up to a black man. We've come a long way that it's now censored for the opposite reason.
When I was growing up in the 1970s, there was an old theater near our house which used to run classic movies on Sundays... and you could buy a "season pass" at school. I remember being awed, sitting in the balcony on the velvet chairs watching the Wizard of Oz on the big screen at 6 or 7.
@JELLISWGST you are absolutely correct. Just because a child cannot articulate or understand imagery, doesn't mean the child isn't retaining and forming ideas based on those images.
I'm African American and recall watching Looney Toons, Shirley Temple and the Little Rascals as a child and I always knew something just didn't feel right. I knew something was wrong and somehow it related to me.
In regards to the post, I love the idea of introducing one's child to classic films.
IN Switzerland, there is a children's film club called The Magic Lantern which has clubs in most major towns and cities (and now has spread to the United Arab Emirates).
They have a showing every 3 or 4 weeks in a major movie theatre, no parents allowed -- just children. They start off with a bit of a theatrical presentation, and they talk to the children about what to look for in the film, discuss the issues the film raises, aspects of film making or the story, insights into the actors or acting. It's quite well done. And yes, they show certain Chaplin films as well as Buster Keaton, but also documentaries and source far and wide. This would be a wonderful model for North America:
http://info.lanterne.ch/category/concept_en/?lang=en
There are many films out there that are not well known or easily accessible in the U.S. or Canada, and that is a real shame.
It might be worth noting to some commenters that part of the process here of only having one film a month and no television is coming out of the steiner philosophy of education and child development.
In that philosophy, ideally a child wouldn't be exposed to *any* screen time in terms of TV, movies, planetarium shows, computers, etc until after age 9. So for a waldorf parent, this is a *radical* process -- the idea that a child would be watching a film once a month.
We just interviewed at our local waldorf school, and I was completely honest that our family culture includes television. We legally download shows throughout the week, and we also watch films (classic and modern). DS receives far less screen time that DH and I do (he's 4), but he still does have screen time.
We take him to movies (Muppets, Oceans, African Cats, How to Train Your Dragon to name the few he's seen in theater), but we also take him to plays (local, community theater mostly), and we allow him to watch classic cartoons as well as a few, select modern ones. He probably watches 2-4 hours per week.
The teacher frowned a bit and started to say "but you know he doesn't need it?" and I said "yes, but I do."
The reality of living 24 hours in flights from family, and while we have friends, it's unfair to just call them up to ask them to occupy a (very active) DS for an hour so that I can have a bit of peace, get some work done, etc, at the end of the day, I let him have some screen time.
I was polite, but I pointed out that while the school has preferences and special character, and in general I agree with that, I adapt what is useful to my family, and that's that. And she moved on to the next question.
@Zoebird: You mention Steiner (which I considered for my kids a long time ago). Is Steiner the same as Waldorf?
Bravo for showing the silents to your niece. I'd suggest showing her a Mary Pickford, as MP on screen was a strong leader, sympathetic, virtuous, funny -- an ideal image for growing girls. And she played some great roles adapted from famous children's books. I took my two nieces (both age six) to see Pickford in "The Poor Little Rich Girl" (1917) and they loved it. I'd recommend her "A Little Princess" (1917) too.
Silly me, Steiner and Waldorf are indeed the same thing. @Zoebird: I would think carefully before choosing a Steiner education, especially if there are aspects that you do not fully agree with.
There are also extremely well executed films for children in our time. I recently experienced SPIRITED AWAY (Japanese) with my 6 year old granddaughter. It's one of her favorite films and beautifully done.
I have a 4 year old boy and an almost 2 year old girl. One of my favorite films is the Wizard of Oz. We watched this together for the first time a few months ago, snuggled in bed. My son was glued to the screen while I silently mouth all the lines and sang all the songs. I cannot wait to get him started on other favorites! We watched the "silly parts" of "Duck Soup" the other night and he begged to watch the whole thing. I just thought it would be a little too over his head to see the whole thing at this age. He is really into reading about outer space right now so I am considering having him watch "Trip to the Moon." I haven't seen it in years but what I remember of it I feel like he would love! As a kid my siblings and I enjoyed an array of MGM classics and watched hours of the little rascals. This influenced a love for art, music, and film throughout my life. And it has always been expected that you have to dig to get to something you truly love. I hope my kids have the same desire to learn and explore and discover what means something and is beautiful to them!