I recently discovered a PBS show called Wild Kratts that is just right for Drake’s love of animals, and my desire for him to learn more about animals. Wild Kratts is a PBS show based on 2 real life brothers who go on adventures to rescue animals. Like most PBS shows, Wild Kratts has a short informational piece at the end of each show to review the animals they learned and to show real videos clips of them. We discovered Wild Kratts through the little girl I watch who is also a fan of the show, and since then Drake has been hooked asking for it whenever he is allowed TV time. I love that he learns more about animals, their strengths and abilities, their habitats, and the need for conservation and protection of the world and its animals.

Besides Wild Kratts, here are a few other animal related shows and movies that Drake either enjoys currently, or that I plan to introduce to him.


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Diego – Drake has been a fan of Diego for quite a while now. He started watching it when he was first introduced to Dora, but recently he has really taken to Diego much more than Dora. Diego is always rescuing new animals and there is quite a lot of information about habitats, what the animals eat and their behaviors. Drake has learned a lot of new animal facts from Diego that have helped broaden his vocabulary and animal base knowledge.

Wonder Pets – Wonder Pets is an older show that we discovered on Amazon Instant Video. Drake watched the show for the first time with his grandmother and got hooked. The main characters are a guniea pig, a duck, and a turtle and they are the Wonder Pets. Together they work together as a team to rescue an animal in trouble. They have 2 theme songs they sing in every show about saving the animal, and Drake sings these songs all the time. His favorite game is rescuing an animal and we rescue many daily. From Wonder Pets Drake has learned that elephants live in Africa, cranes come from Japan, and so much more. I am hoping to take that knowledge and start showing him maps so he can better understand our world and where animals live vs. where we live.

ZooBabies – Another Amazon Instant Video series I found one day. Zoo Babies focuses on baby animals in zoos and how they are cared for, as well as conservation work being done for their species.

Planet Earth – I haven’t shown Drake the Planet Earth series yet, but Mr. Chocolate and I are huge fans of these Discovery Channel documentaries. We used to watch them all the time before we had kids and Planet Earth was really breathtaking. I hope Drake likes this one as much as we did, but he might be a little young so I’ll have to see how it goes. Disney has their own version of Earth and I think its cuts from the original are made more palatable for younger audiences, so I might try that one first .

Chimpanzee – Chimpanzee is a movie about a little chimp named Oscar and his troupe living in the rain forests of Africa. It’s a Disney production mixing real life footage of chimps narrated by Tim Allen with a story line for young children.  I think this might the perfect transition movie for Drake to move from cartoons into more nature based shows.

There are tons of animal documentaries as well that I am hoping to show Drake one day including  March of the Penguins, Crimson Wing, Born to be Wild, Oceans, and so much more!