Moana! So much music in the beginning of the movie, at first we would just watch through Moana leaving the island or meeting Maui and then stop and it was 50% songs which really kept her engaged. Encanto I think was added to the rota next for similar reasons.
Now it’s all Frozen all the time. I miss Encanto, lol.
Ghibli movies, totoro or ponyo.
My not-yet-2 year old watches Gabby’s Dollhouse (known as “meow meow meow”) and Bluey for hours on repeat.
Daniel Tiger (an animated remake of Mr. Rogers neighborhood) is a hit in our household for our 2yo. Episodes are about 25 mins long and lots of concepts like patience, friendship, dressing for the weather, jealousy, etc. are addressed in a nice way.
Cocomelon is very good for cheering up Spore in desperate times but I find it so inane, so we try to only watch it as a last resort.
I’m sorry to hear about the 'rona! May it pass swiftly and smoothly.
No movie reccs (I find the conflict necessary for longer form things is too intense for Latte, but she’s a super sensitive kid so YMMV). Shows though, she (and we) have loved trash truck, puffin rock, and tumble leaf. All good, slow paced, not visually overwhelming, no mean characters.
Thanks all for the suggestions! Pipsqueak is very picky about her tv consumption so we’ve mostly done Daniel Tiger in the past.
We tried out a few of these without much success but have discovered:
Alma’s Way: Set in the Bronx. Very diverse “cast” and I love all the positive relationships in the family. The siblings love hanging out together. The mom and dad interactions are great (and the dad is frequently shown doing household chores like laundry). Even the divorced grandparents are happy to hang out. Lots of fun music which is what Pipsqueak likes
Molly of Denali: Set in Alaska and the show is beautiful! Lots of adventures in nature, focuses more on the two main characters than a big family. Lots of plotlines about increasing awareness of indigenous cultures so be prepared for quite a few “lessons” about how history is portrayed without considering native realities, or representation in media. (Which I think is important! Just noting that it’s one of the main points of the show and is not subtle)
Both are on PBS kids.They are geared for slightly older than 2year olds and I don’t think Pipsqueak follows the whole plot yet, but it’s been nice to have a few shows to cycle through as we’re on day 8 & 11 with blazing positive tests still!!
Those sound great! Have you tried the read aloud story books? Awnie’s house is big in our house (youtube) and Bluey if you haven’t tried.
Higher stimulation my kid also likes Danny Go (youtube) and Paw Patrol (hell on earth, just don’t start it)
Sesame street streams on youtube and there are some mr rogers full episodes, both of which I enjoy more than my kid does
I will never willingly start paw patrol after hearing every other parents disdain. We will wait until her peers force it on us. 
I’ll look into Awnies house - she can’t reliable press buttons if she has to advance pages but if it’s reading aloud on YouTube that could work.
We haven’t tried Bluey lately, last time she couldn’t follow it at all and we no longer have Disney+ . I guess we’ll save that for a future surprise.
It is reading aloud on youtube. When I am sick I put like 10-12 books on a playlist or queue and die for an hour. (Their are other channels but I don’t know their name). All the Eric Carl books (v hungry caterpillar) are on youtube but not the awnie’s house channel
Our nursery school actually sends us a reading list every term with a variety of links to youtube read alouds.
Ohhh thanks for this rec. I can’t put things on playlists because of some kids setting. How do you get around that?
Oh yeah, I meant to mention that Alma’s Way sprinkles in lots of Spanish words during the course of normal conversation. I was thinking of Meowlet this morning when it was on!
So I literally cannot fogure out youtube kids, so I do this casting from my adult youtube on my phone to the TV. The ipad we just have locked to dinosaur game, khan academy kids, a drawing game and duolingo kids (which doesn’t work because I didn’t finish registration)
Tell me more about this locking of the iPad.
Tell me the tablets you guys chose??? We need one, must it be an ipad?
(We don’t need one and aren’t gonna buy one til fall but I’m getting one for household + him leaving my shit alone reasons)
I have an iPad 2017 because it’s what I already had and I don’t want to add a new ecosystem, but I’ve read it’s not as well-featured for kids (separate accounts, etc) as other ones. Right now I just have Disney+ on the home screen, and even then I load up the movie/show and turn on guided access to lock out the screen and buttons.
So she can’t do anything to it, but she can’t do anything at all. Fine for watching a movie on a long trip, harder for having free choice of apps.
I got Kiddo an ipad 7 which was the cheapest/most basic one that Apple was still supporting at the time, but sure if that’s still the case. Kiddo can’t even see the icon for the app store, all the websites are blocked by default unless I specifically whitelist them.
And I was 100% an android user before. I did book an appointment with Best Buy geek squad and had someone walk me through using it because all the guides I found online were too extreme - either for Luddite grandparents or for people who would casually jailbreak a device. Best Buy dude was awesome.
We have Kindle Fires, I think I bought the 8 inch with the kid-targeted case solely because it cost something like $50. All we do on it is watch amazon prime, Netflix, or YouTube. We don’t have a TV in the living room though (not out of principle, just because I don’t know where we’d put it). My husband and I both watch shows on our devices (computer for him, kindle fire for me).
Oh, but my child is not independent on his tablet - he requires an adult to watch stuff with him so that he can ask why every 5 seconds.
So we received one from a relative who passed and made the log in a child account connected to ours. The process is a blur and intermittently we would put on. Tv show on tv or dinosaur game on G’s ipad and I would google stuff on my phone and do things to the ipad. It is set to 2h total use per day (then you’d need a password) and the only available apps are the kid apps, and after 15 min they lock and you need a password. For a month khan academy kids wasn’t time limited and I just couldn’t handle facing the torment.
If you have to share an account I would password protect everything but the kid apps and time limit those if you want (so much easier when the app is self limiting than if you need to impose limits). I think I left the drawing game nit limited.
Adult youtube wont let me subscribe to any channel labelled for kids.
yeah and i can’t put those vids in a play list! why!
That sucks. Is it because Im canadian? Because I have premium?