Oobi

When our family got the Noggin network, we discovered a show with talking hands, complete with eyes, that were as heartwarming as anything we had ever seen. Basically, this show is like crack for little kids it is so addictive. Oobi learns about the world around him with his grandfather, Grandpu, his little sister Uma, and his best friend Kako. They do much of everything regular families do, and they learn about different things in the process. My kids love this show so much. We constantly watch Oobi, which I don't really mind, because the characters aren't loud or obnoxious, and my kids learn a lot from them. Oobi is definitely a show worth letting your kids watch!

My one year old son loves this show. And I have found it very entertaining myself. Especially the Grandpu character, Oobi and Ooma's apparent guardian. Grandpu always endures what the kids have to offer no matter what, whether it's bathtime or a "Grandpu day" meal made of Grape Jelly, Tuna and Hot Sauce.

There are definitely jokes there that a child would not get, but an adult would snicker at, in fact I laugh out loud several times. One example, Oobi was helping with an infant, smelled something foul and blamed Grandpu. Of course, the baby had a dirty diaper. Great fun all around for the entire family. Catch it on Noggin when you can, you won't be disappointed. I, too, was against it at first.

I am a mother of two-year-old and a secondary English teacher and watching this show makes me flinch at all the incomplete sentences in which the characters speak. In one episode Oobi and his supposedly ethnic friend Kako take singing lessons and attempt to sing "Row Row Row Your Boat" in a round except the creators think it's fine to omit words from their (the characters) vocab so the song they sing goes more like "row row row boat gently down stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, life but dream." My child loves show but I have to leave the room when it's on or I go insane verbally filling in their pronouns and conjunctions or whatever other fragmented sentences dribble from their mouthes (or fingers). The message they try to get across is always a good one and sometimes they throw in subtle humor only adults will get, but the writers definitely need to stop worrying about saving trees and start teaching kids that grammar is not all that bad.

I hesitated to let my sons watch Oobi for the longest time because of the basic speech involved. However, my oldest son has Pervastive Developmental Disorder (broad spectrum autism) and a speech delay. Watching Oobi has expanded his vocabulary tenfold. He can recite entire scenes now, and is learning to put words together. It works for him because it takes out articles, contractions and superfluous words and gets down to the basic words needed to convey meaning. The "extra" words were bogging down his understanding. So, while I agree that the speech in Oobi isn't good for toddlers who are talking at or above age level, for those struggling to learn, it could be a valuable tool!

In addition, the show is DARLING! Even the adults in my house love to watch it! You actually forget while you're watching it that they're just HANDS with plastic eyeballs! The episode when the kids put on a production of Little Red Riding Hood is SO entertaining. It's even taught my kids to start singing!

When I first saw this show it was a interstitial on Noggin. I thought it was kind of stupid, But our son, who is handicapped and has very limited speech because of a brain injury at birth, was taken by it at once. Then it got it's own half-hour, and I watched it with him. The entire show breaks down story telling to the basics without talking down to kids. The characters are as described: just a hand with eyes attached. But they also wear costumes at times. The amount of emotion and "acting" that is presented is simply amazing. The puppeteers are extremely talented to be able to bring these characters to life in a way that you accept after a very short time. Unlike a lot of kids TV this show is very watchable and includes some inside jokes for parents at times (things like all the "parents" at a play having to turn off their cell phones before the performance). The writers of the show made a conscious decision to make the language simple too. No adverbs or conjunctions. My son can follow the story and understand the concepts being presented and when I have used the same basic language with him apart from the show and relating to our everyday life, he responds. Being able to communicate with him in such an unfettered way for the first time in his life means everything to me. It is not a typical puppet show, but it has won the heart of our atypical son...and his parents too.