Thank You, Internet: Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood

My girls occasionally watch Sesame Street clips on Hulu, and episodes on Netflix. We stream them on the Play Station, so they can watch them on the TV. But the TV is in the family room, where it is often pretty cold on winter days. So, I like to keep it mostly closed off unless we're using it, in an attempt to keep from spending a fortune on heating.

Of course, Netflix and Hulu can be accessed on my laptop, at the dining room table, which is great. But I discovered something else I'm now hooked on, and so are the kids: Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood on PBSkids.org.

I loved Mr. Rogers as a kid. As I grew up, I gained respect for him and his show because he talks to kids like they're people, and he has a way of making everything seem simple, normal, and approachable. I still remember a bunch of the songs from the show. Actually, I can't help but sing along to the closing song... "It's such a good feeling to know you're alive..."

If you somehow missed out on Mr. Rogers' as a kid, you should watch an episode, now. He was an incredible person, and his show is very different from most other kids' shows. It's not full of special effects or flashy animations. Half of the show is focused on real life situations like going to the shoe store to buy new shoes and finding that the pair he wants isn't available in his size, so he settles for a similar pair... and doesn't get upset about it. The other half is in a place called "The Neighborhood of Make-Believe" which is accessed via a small toy trolly that runs through part of Mr. Rogers' house, and out through a tunnel. The Neighborhood of Make-Believe is kind of strange, admittedly. There's a talking cat, tiger, owl, elephant and platypus, as well as a number of other, human as well as animal, hand-puppet characters. There are also live actors and actresses who wander and interact with the puppets.

In the Neighborhood of Make-Believe, the characters are unique and have their own personalities, ideas and problems. Troubles arrise as organically as they would in the real world... if the real world had talking animals, I suppose. The main difference is that the troubles are solved in a much more ideal way than they ever are in reality. A human character forgets to stop by and pick up the tiger puppet on her way to a party at the castle. When she is reminded, and comes back to apologize, the tiger is understandably upset. They talk about it. The tiger tells her how it feels to be forgotten, and asks her if she's ever been forgotten. The woman tells a story about being forgotten and explains that the person who forgot her wasn't mad at her or trying to avoid her. "She just... forgot." It's a sad and apologetic conversation, but not accusatory or angry. Honestly, it's refreshing.

Anyhow, I found the page by googling "Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood", expecting to find youtube videos, not network approved, full episodes. You can watch the videos in full-screen, and when one episode ends, the next begins automatically. They're also in chronological order, so if you remember Mr. Rogers saying, "last time we visited the land of make-believe..." (which I didn't remember), you can still view them in order so that all makes sense, without any effort of your own.

PBS has a lot of shows on their website, some full episodes and some clips. Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood has around 50 full episodes, as well as some games and neat interactive features.

I'm not sure how to navigate to the Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood page from the pbskids.org main page, so here's a direct link: http://pbskids.org/rogers/