WHO knew that we all breathe 10 million balloons of air in a lifetime?
This is the kind of startling-yet-digestible fact, broadcast on “Sci Trek” that freezes our family in front of the TV set, watching The Discovery Channel.
And we remain to learn that French engineer Alexandre Gustave Eiffel modeled his Parisian tower on the human thigh bone. Who knew?
Discovery has become my family’s default channel, replacing the Cartoon Network, PBS and Nickelodeon as the station we flip to and leave on.
It’s educational television that’s all carrot and no stick. Reality TV – and not just “Cops” -fascinates children.
Show after show answers the big questions kids ask: Why are we on this planet? How are we born? Why do birds fly? And, of course, what are dinosaurs, why aren’t they coming back?
There are times when it even gets to be too much for me – for example, when the channel profiles the practice of plastic surgery and suddenly some white-coated loon is peeling back a woman’s face for the camera.
Some parents might not want their little future plastic surgeons to witness operations at this tender age.
For them, there’s Discovery Kids, which airs from 9 a.m. to noon on weekends. If there’s a problem with Discovery Kids, it’s that we want more.
If your kid hits the clicker at 8 a.m., demanding their Discovery, they’ll get infomercials and wander off to Nick or the networks. That’s a shame, because there’s plenty of meat on these bones.
“The Crocodile Hunter’s Croc Files” (10 a.m. Saturday, 10:30 a.m. Sunday) is a personal fave. Aussie Animal Planet fixture Steve Irwin and his wife Terri easily translate their childlike zeal to a show geared to smaller kids.
Who can resist it when Terri picks up a rattler with a twig and bare hands, proclaiming the hot, sleepy fanger “cute?”
Now that’s a female role model!
Other shows include: “Sci-Squad,” which is “Zoom” with a mystery hook; “Outward Bound,” a youthful “Survivor” that puts a team of real kids on a 14-day nature trip and doesn’t shy away from their inevitable melt-downs; and the “Ultimate Guide” series which can, in any given week, tell your kids everything they always needed to know about ants (or some other species) but you didn’t know how to answer.
Discovery Kids often dovetails programming initiatives on the “mother ship.” Heralding “Shark Week,” there have been marvelously witty interstitials featuring Kenny the Shark. The unseen predator (think son of “Saturday Night Live’s” land shark routines) has moved in with a normal family fronted by Spencer Breslin, the star of “Disney’s The Kid.”
Funny and educational, the segments reveal that sharks aren’t stereotypical man-eaters, despite Kenny’s hungry glances at Dad. In fact, pigs kill more people each year than sharks. Who knew? As Kenny says: “I hate competition.”