While we don't usually watch
Waybuloo, chicken pox drove us to strange things. One episode we happened upon inspired this paint-fest:
Lest it be not obvious, to do this you simply:
Take your paper, fold it in two
Paint on one half
Re-fold and give it a good smoosh down (my toddler especially enjoyed this bit)
Unfold and behold!
It also works for faces, if you get bored of butterflies, and the big-eyed Waybuloo creatures were good subject matter.
It provided a bit of a diversion from the usual 'hand 'em a paintbrush and let 'em get on with it' painting. (When I say 'and let 'em get on with it', a truer reflection would be 'and try valiantly to contain paint to protective newspaper and intended paper'. Admire our technicolour floor.)
I'm not a fan of Waybuloo. I don't like the strange moon-faced Pipling animals, but I have no justifiable reason for disliking them other than personal taste. Perhaps it is that they subliminally remind me of
alien 'greys' No? Just me that spent too much of my youth watching X-Files then... Give me the
Clangers any day. (Oh lawks, am I really turning into one of
those parents?)
What really irks me is the way they use the third person all the time. My kids are trying to learn to talk, so why are you teaching them that they should always speak like this:
"Yojojo love bananas!"
"Yojojo not eat bananas! Laulau paint bananas. Yojojo wait."
Mummy not like that. When kids acquire language through being immersed in it, it's not very helpful to be reinforcing the wrong patterns of speech, in my humble opinion. I can appreciate that the choice of pseudo-childish speech and made-up words are perhaps designed to work with the 'otherworldly' feel the programme-makers are trying to create, but as someone once said, you have to know the rules in order to break them. If you're still learning the basics, then I think a lot of that intent will go over the heads of the target audience. Then you're just left with badly formed verbs, traumatised pronouns and confusion.
As for the 'yogo', I don't have any time for the anti-yogo
"religious indoctrination" argument. It's just exercise. But why not call it 'yoga' and be done with it? Is it because it's not strictly yoga? If not, why not? It's near enough, surely... I would have expected my daughter to enjoy the 'yogo' as she usually likes copying that sort of thing - witness her mimic my exercise DVD, feel the demoralisation of her managing the
'supermans' with complete ease - but it doesn't seem to grab her.
On the other hand, the 'Peeka' game (a.k.a hide and seek) is more engrossing. That's where the children, who are called Cheebies (again, why can't they use the proper word?) have to find the Piplings. To me, completely tedious; to her, mildly diverting. Fortunately, Waybuloo isn't one of her favourites. I don't think I could stand the linguistic abuse on a daily basis.
As I feel my blood pressure rise at the thought, it's probably time for a nice sit down, a calming cup of tea, and a reflection upon whether I am over-analysing these things, yet again... oh, the perils of being a former English student. Peppa Pig, all is forgiven.
