Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Recommended Resources Documentary suggestions for 6-8 year olds

I am looking for documentaries for my DS who is 6 years old to watch for the summer. He has had very little TV exposure and has not watched many documentaries and I think that I should remedy it this summer. Any interesting ones that you can recommend? He likes science, wildlife, nature and astronomy so far.

My DD 6 really liked the BBC Planet Earth series. She also liked the Discovery series North America. NOVA also has a lot of great documentaries, many that you can watch online.

The new Cosmos series!

I second Planet Earth and Nova!

Stephen Hawking's Into the Universe and The Grand Design
The How Things Work series
Marty Stouffers Wild America and there was a series he did with his child that I cannot recall.

Have fun!

I second Cosmos. Also if you can get Water Brothers, probably online and Brain Games. Maybe online too or NatGeo.

Bang goes the Theory is good too. 7 seasons of shows, but that might have to be online too. They are out of Britain.

The old Cosmos series! ;-)

We don't watch cable except for the sports occasionally but we do have a Roku and a Netflix account together with a Amazon account.

It is tremendous because there are hundreds of documentaries there and ALL of them are commercial free!

I particularly recommend the Pluto one by Neil Degrasse-Tyson and there are a host others there too - just follow your nose.

My joy would be complete if the full Smithsonian Channel were available via Roku too but alas it is not.

The 3-part National Geographic Guns, Germs and Steel series. It dumbs Jared Diamond's book down to the point that my 9 year old easily followed it. It's a great introduction to world history and has enough recreated battle scenes to hold a kid's interest.

We really enjoyed March of the Penguins, although DD5 was sort of traumatized when some of the baby penguins died, so watch out for that.

I liked SuperBridge (a 2 part Nova where they build a bridge across the Mississippi).