Spending Time with Your "Backyard Friends"

In the wide world of preschool programming, it's tough for parents to filter out the good television from the bad. After all, if your kids must watch TV, you want them to watch something that's more than just a cute show.

Nick Jr.'s "The Backyardigans" doesn't fall into the typical rhythm of an educational television show. The five animated animal friends, Tyrone, a moose, Pablo, a penguin, Tasha, a hippopotamus, Austin, a purple kangaroo, and Uniqua, a, well, Uniqua, rarely count, speak little to no Spanish and almost never feel a need to utter their ABC's. But don't discount the program yet, the show offers a lot more to children than just what we've grown to think of as "educational."

The show revolves around the five characters and the adventures they play out in their backyards. Everything from races around the world, capers in ancient Egypt and exploring on a Viking ship is possible in the imaginative world of the Backyardigans. Each show begins and ends in the backyard setting, where the friends join together, play out their story in its setting and then return to the backyards to have a snack when the fun is over. It encourages children to get outside and play, use their imaginations and create their own stories or adapt the stories they've seen on the show. As more and more toys come on the market with built in voices and stories, children are becoming more and more passive in their play, more spectators than directors. The Backyardigans gets children to take more control over their imaginations and develop their own adventures right in the backyard.