Creative Galaxy: an inspiring place for the preschooler you love!

We’re an active family, and when I babysit my three year old niece you are likely to find us attending music class, picking out new books at library storytime, or getting some exercise at our neighborhood playground.  We also love learning together, and being creative together.  Everyone needs some down time, however there’s no reason that relaxing in front of a TV show can’t be both entertaining and inspiring for kids (and parents too!).  You’ll find a whole new kind of show when you watch Creative Galaxy produced by Out of the Blue Enterprises, and let’s just say, it really “lights us up!”

In this interactive show for preschoolers, Arty and his friends use art to solve everyday problems.  What to do when mom forgets to make birthday party favor bags?  Dad’s mini-golf game for family game night gets wrecked by the neighbor’s puppy?  Dinnertime isn’t as much fun as playing with cars?  Arty, his friends, and his tag-a-long Epiphany fly in their spaceship over to Creative Galaxy and use art to make their lives more fun and functional.

Arty, Epiphany, and Arty’s family are about to play a board game when Arty realizes he didn’t make any game pieces!

Creative Galaxy points out that many different mediums can be used to create art.  Paper Planet? Check!  Other “planets” have to do with things like sculpting and building.  As the characters visit the planet, they create (and invite their viewers to create) art that will help solve their problem back home.  After each animated segment, there’s a more “instructional” segment with real children creating an art project like the one described.  The children are older than the targeted audience for the show, but they are working independently and describing the projects as they work, so I think that makes sense.

Two children work together to create their own game, like Arty did in the story segment of the show.

With some prompting from me, my niece followed instructions from the characters on the show, including drawing the little spaceship, imitating the steps they take the create a project, and answering questions (“Which color circle goes on the top of the stoplight?”).  I thought the show did a nice job pointing out that there are many kinds of art and many ways to create art.  There were a few points where it seemed a little overly preachy to me (Wear your seatbelt!  Yum, I love broccoli!), but not to an extent that it distracted from message of the show.

My six year old son joined in watching with my niece after school one afternoon, and while he is too old to participate in the “answer the question” part of the show, he was definitely inspired to do some creating after watching an episode where Arty made up his own board game.  The second the show ended he disappeared downstairs and spent almost an hour working on his board game!  Wow – I was impressed that a TV show could inspire him to actually go and do something!

Inspired!

In my son’s game, each person had to try to get from the spaceship to the moon.  He made up and created the whole game by himself!

I enjoyed that Creative Galaxy has a different learning goal than many other shows for preschoolers. Instead of watching another show about ABC’s or 123’s, children are learning to appreciate the beauty in the world around them, to be creative using many different mediums, and to be problem solvers and innovators.  If that idea “lights you up” then check out Creative Galaxy from Amazon Studios.

I was selected for this opportunity as a member of Clever Girls and the content and opinions expressed here are all my own.