Welcome to the week sans giveaways! (I know, that’s not exciting for you. For me, however, it means I don’t need to moderate 6000 comments when I have regular internet access again.)

Want to see some cute vintage cartoons from around the world? Then visit Bunny Ears!

Bunny Ears is a new Web TV station for young children aged 3+ that brings you an assortment of vintage and contemporary cartoons from all around the world.

Each cartoon is fairly short, about 5 minutes each, and are filled with simple animation and adorable stories! While there isn’t a huge selection up yet, they are planning to bring hundreds of cartoons, that are hard to find elsewhere, right to your computer screen!

Run out of Toronto, Ontario by mom Judy Blumstock, Bunny Ears is advertising free and free to watch. She founded it for her own daughter and now it’s available for everyone’s children.

While you may recognize some characters, such as Chapi and Chapo, there are many others that you and your children will quickly fall in love with!

I can’t help but to love Chapi and Chapo the most, but a close runner up is sweet little Bedtime Bear! Perfect for helping your preschooler with his or her bedtime routine!

Hop on over to Bunny Ears, cuddle up with your preschooler, and settle in for a sweet and funny story! -Gina

Danger Rangers is an action-packed animated tv show that, at first glance, looks like every other high quality animated show. With a mission to reduce preventable childhood injuries, though, it’s one that you can let your kids watch completely guilt-free. Even if you’re a guilt-ridden kind of parent!

Each episode deals with different issues surrounding child safety in a very child-friendly and entertaining manner. I showed both Fires and Liars and
Mission 547: Safety Rules! to a group of 4 & 5 year olds and they not only sat and enjoyed both shows (not back to back, of course) but also were able to recall the lessons and answer questions about the safety rules from the show correctly once the show was over. I, the “media hater” “hard to convince kids tv critic” have nothing but good things to say about Danger Rangers!

See when it’s on in your area and check out the grown ups’ section of the website for more information. It even includes accompanying lesson plans and suggested co-viewing questions to ask your kids after the show in the resources area. The DVD’s are available for purchase at the Danger Rangers Store too! They retail for $12.99 each.

You could win a copy of Mission 547: Safety Rules! To enter, email theopinionatedparent@gmail.com with Danger Rangers in the subject line by midnight on 11/12/07. Five winners will be selected at random. Congratulations Louise, Barb, Jess, Shari & Ang!

We’ve been previewing the upcoming series Word World and I must tell you that I’ve finally found a show on TV (well, soon to be on TV anyway) that I’d actually let my kids watch.

It’s an incredibly innovative addition to the preschoolers TV lineup that’s coming to PBS Kids in the fall of this year. The characters and animation are engaging enough, like all cartoons, but the coolest thing about Word World is that each character and (many other inanimate items in the show) is actually a word. See the dog and the house to the right of this post? Isn’t that cool?

As an early literacy teacher in the “real world” I can, for the very first time, recommend something that will be on the big black box for your children. Though…does PBS Kids have commercials? Because if it does your kids still shouldn’t be watching those (we believe no child should see a commercial until they’re at least school aged - preferably 8-10 - and you can teach them to be incredibly critical of marketing) and I’d recommend taping/downloading/Tivo-ing/insert your favourite method of commercial removal here instead of letting the kids actually sit & watch it when it’s on, but the show itself? Magical.