Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Age or Ability Specific Forums Pre-school videos/movies for the sensitive preschooler

Hi, Polly,

Some my quite-sensitive lads have liked:

-The Secret of Roan Inish
-The Story of the Weeping Camel
-Wallace and Gromit (the shorts, not the full-length film, which was too scary)
-Ingmar Bergman's version of Mozart's Magic Flute
-Robert Altman's Popeye
-Microcosmos (French insect movie)
-opera films (La Cenerentola, Il Barbiere di Siviglia, etc.)
-operetta films (Pirates of Penzance, The Gondoliers, Iolanthe, HMS Pinafore, etc.)
-some Shakespeare (the films of staged versions have worked better here than the dramatizations--they don't really want to see a boat actually sink at the beginning of Twelfth Night, for instance)
-The Way Things Work videos (re: pressure, heat, etc.)

Apart from those, we've had to go old: Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, The Marx Brothers, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, Gene Kelly, the Nicholas Brothers, etc. Really, Hollywood musicals before about 1960 are ideal kid fare--pretty innocent, lots of good music, not usually too much that could be construed as scary or truly suspenseful...

Our other method for preventing being overwhelmed watching even these gentle films has been a) always to watch things together, and b) to watch no more than 30 minutes at one sitting.

Hope that helps a bit!

peace
minnie

PS--Just thought of one more, but we have to start this one a few minutes in--Carroll Ballard's Black Stallion is lovely, but we have to start after the shipwreck (actually, we can't start Babe right at the beginning, either--have to wait until Babe is at the fair). Ballard also made a lovely film called Duma, but you might want to wait a year or two on that one.