Monday Review: Ben and Holly's Little Kingdom: The Elf Games

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For fans of Ben and Holly's Little Kingdom this is the latest DVD collection brought out to join in with the Olympic summer. In total there are 11 episodes to watch:

• The elf games
• Nanny's lesson
• Mrs witch
• Elf joke day
• King Thistle's new clothes
• Elf school
• The Royal Golf Course
• Morning noon and night
• Gaston's visit
• Trip to the seaside

The DVD gives options of choosing one episode, play all or magic shuffle. This gives a chance to have a short session or a long one.




Each story has a little lesson for children to learn in a story fashion. It also shows how the different Elves and Fairies do things differently but that working together brings out the best results. Some of the episodes such as nanny's lesson teach children about farm animals and where eggs, milk and wool come from.

Both my 5 year old son and 8 year old daughter were content to sit quietly and watch the DVD together. We don't normally watch the show so it was a nice treat to have a selection of episodes. At £8.99 for 11 episodes it's not bad value at all.

 

The "Now" Generation

Whilst watching the Star Wars trilogy on video (yes I do mean tape!) with my children this week it made me realise how things have changed since I was their age. They found it hard to wait for the videos to rewind when the movie had finished and not being able to skip to the menu and miss out all the adverts! Did those of us born in the 20th century have to learn more patience than those born in the 21st century?


Here are a few ways that things have changed in my lifetime growing up in the 1970s and 80s:


Television:


Not only was TV quite often still in black and white but children's TV was restricted as to when it was on. I remember that we had our after school slot on the BBC but then "grown up" TV came on with documentaries, quizzes etc. Yes at the weekend we had a full morning of programmes such as Tiswas and the Saturday Swap Shop, but the majority of output on the 3 channels was aimed at the adults. Even adult television was cut off at the end of the evening with the National Anthem heralding the end of the broadcast.


These days children have their own dedicated channels some of which even run 24 hours a day. They can watch their favourite programmes at anytime due to both On Demand services and services such as Sky Plus and BT Vision recordings. They can even use the Internet to download them onto the computer or games console.