Breaking out the VCR

Last night we dug out the box of old VHS tapes and hooked up the VCR.  It was like opening a time capsule.  You see, when Firstborn was a toddler, DVD was relatively new, and VHS was still the main contender.  The shows my kids watched as wee ones were mostly in that format.  Many of these shows we haven't watched in years, both because they have grown out of Little Bear and Blue's Clues {sniff}, and because it's kind of a pain to set up the VCR.

But last night, we unearthed a real treasure.  About 9 years ago, my dad gave the boys three VHS tapes that he got at Christianbook.com:  Little Dogs on the Prairie.  They were the only three ever made, and CBD no longer has them, but you can still find them, in both VHS and DVD, fairly reasonably on Amazon. 

These are just all-around good productions!  It's real, hand-drawn animation, the music is well-done and catchy, the stories reference the Bible and have a moral, and they are very funny!  Craig and I laughed through all three episodes of the tape we watched last night.  (In fact, even though we haven't watched them in years, there are still a couple catch-phrases that we will occasionally quote.)

Not only that, the kids all really liked them too, from the 13-yr-old down to the 8-yr-old.  Firstborn just barely remembered it from years ago, but, although he enjoyed them as a preschooler, I'm sure he didn't get all the humor, or necessarily even the lesson.  This time around he "got it", and there were several out-loud laughs from his end of the couch.  The other two were giggling as well.

There's not too much out there on the web, but here's a clip from one episode.



If you're interested in good, clean, quality entertainment for your children, with Christian values, that the whole family can enjoy, I highly recommend you try to get your hands on these.  In addition to Amazon, there were a handful of listings on ebay.  It appears that you might be able to order the DVDs from the Fancy Monkey Studios website, though the website doesn't seem too current, so I think I'd try to email them first before you go that route.

I think we'll be leaving the VCR hooked up for a while!