Spotlight

Have you and your kids had a chance to watch Hip Hop Harry: Move Those Feet or any of the Hip Hop Harry shows on Discovery Kids? We hadn’t caught the show, but since my girls love to dance and rhyme, I was excited to be able to review Hip Hop Harry: Move Those Feet for the Parent Bloggers Network!

All three girls (almost-10, almost-8, 4 1/2) sat in rapt attention when I started Hip Hop Harry, and even the older girls quickly started repeating after Harry, “I say ‘hip hop’, you say ‘Harry’! ‘Hip Hop’”, “Harry!” Hip Hop Harry’s main character is a human-sized teddy bear who leads the children through activities in this live-action show. Unlike the bear in “Bear and the Big Blue House”, the bear in Hip Hop Harry doesn’t have a moving mouth, but that didn’t seem to make any difference to the kids at all. In the picture on the right, I caught them during one of the few moments they were sitting down. Harry quickly had them on their feet, dancing and rapping with him.

I’m not a big fan of rap music, but the songs were fun and catchy enough that I occasionally find myself humming them. With songs like “I love to learn!”, they are a fun way to teach concepts and encourage kids to sing, rhyme, and move. One segment I really enjoyed was when the kids learned to exercise using a hula hoop, showing them that any time you move your body, you are exercising, and exercising can be a lot of fun! I have very active girls, my kids spend all day moving, so getting them to exercise isn’t top on my list of parenting issues, but it’s great to reinforce early that exercise doesn’t equal something distasteful.

Here’s a little video of the girls dancing around with the Hip Hop Harry: Move Those Feet DVD. It was rather hard to make even this short of a video, as the girls were up and down and all around with their moves, so keeping them in the frame was tricky!

Hip Hop Harry: Move Those Feet gets 5 spotlights out of 5 from the Gaggle of Girls! It’s a great way to get kids moving, plus there’s a lot of thinking and learning. A great combination. This was enjoyed by all 3 girls, ages 4-10, and they think that kids a little older and/or a little younger would also like the DVD as well. We’re going to try to check out the show on Discovery Kids and pick up the second DVD, Hip Hop Harry – Fun with Friends!

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