Menu
  • An Eclectic Odyssey
  • Ideas and Inspiration
  • My Story
August 27, 2011September 9, 2011

25 Things my Kids Have Learned from Watching Scooby Doo

My kids love watching Scooby Doo. They’ve watched all the seasons of the What’s New Scooby-Doo? series as well as dozens of episodes of the original Scooby-Doo series, too. My son watches mostly for the monsters, and my daughter for the mystery.

I’m sure that anyone just casually watching my kids viewing a Scooby Doo episode wouldn’t think any learning was going on.  It’s more difficult to see the value in watching shows like Animal Atlas or Magic Schoolbus than Scooby Doo because it doesn’t seem very “educational.”  But as I’ve watched episodes with my kids and seen them play Scooby-Doo on their own, I’m amazed at the things they have learned from a show that’s often thought of as fluff.

If the majority of their time was just spent watching Scooby Doo instead of getting out in nature, cuddling together and reading, pretend playing, drawing, and other activities, then I believe they would be missing out on a lot of important and wonderful experiences, but I don’t ever want to devalue what things they do learn from their favorite TV shows or DVDs.

Out of curiosity, I wanted to see if I could come up with a list of 25 things the kids have learned while watching Scooby-Doo that were “educational.”

Here are some of the things they have learned…

 

1. How New Years Day is celebrated in Hong Kong.

2. The importance of dragons in Chinese culture.

3. That some race cars can exceed speeds of 220 miles per hour.

4.  What a crash test dummy is and how it’s used to improve car safety.

5.  Most of America’s gold is stored at Fort Knox.

6.  Military terms like: mess hall, drill sergeant, barracks, & stockades

7.  There are prehistoric creatures living on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia

8.  There are international sand sculpting competitions.

9.  Ancient Indian writing is called Sanskrit.

10. Coral can grow as big as an island.

11.  There are endangered animals in Africa.

12. Hatari means danger is Swahili.

13. Herbivores eat plants.

14. An infrared light on a camera allows you to see animals at night.

15. People think its good luck to throw coins into the Trevi Fountain in Rome.

16. Pompeii was destroyed in the 1st century A.D.

17. The difference between dormant vs. active volcanoes.

18. Trained stuntmen perform most of the stunts in movies.

19. A chupacabra is a legendary monster that looks like a small bear with spines on its back and has   allegedly been spotted in Mexico.

20. There weren’t electric lights out west (in the United States) until 1902.

 21. Astronauts eat food that has been dehydrated.

22. Chimpanzees have flown into outer space.

23.  Many people are buried above ground in New Orleans because the ground is swampy.

24. Mardi Gras is an annual festival in New Orleans where people dress up in costumes.

25. A mirage is when the suns’ rays make it look as if something is there that really isn’t.

 

Watching Scooby-Doo has lead us to explore Greece, Pompeii, Sumo Wrestling & Japanese culture, among many other things. The more you’re open to looking for the learning that takes place in everything you do, the more connections you’ll make. And the more connections you make between things, the wider your perspective will be on life, learning and what it means to be truly educated.

*We’ve had some illness in the family this past week, so I was unable to get the next travel post up today. I”ll return to my travel series next Wednesday.

What things have you or your family learned while watching a favorite TV show?

 

Photo Credit: Rob Gallop

 

I’d love to hear from you. Please leave me a comment below or send me an e-mail at chris@christinapilkington.com. Sign up for my mailing list (just fill in your info in the box at the right hand corner of this page) to get e-mail updates about new articles and other interest-led news.

Continue Reading

← 10 Ways to Take a Trip around the World without Leaving far From Home
10 Resources to Help You Plan Your Next Interest-Led Trip →
Subscribe in a reader

Welcome!

Hi! I'm so happy to have you here. My name is Christina Pilkington. Those are my two wondeful children in the picture above (they're twins!). We daily live a life of passion, adventure and connections.

Our philosophy of learning is to dive into life and take in all that interests and amazes us, on our own time and in our own way. We're particularly interested in travel, community-based learning, and exploring the world.

You can read the rest of My Story here.

Key Posts

The Difference Between Pushing & Challenging

10 Ways to Take a Trip Around the World Without Leaving Far From Home

Unstructed Play & the Structured Child

Five Fears that Prevent Real Learning

An Untraditional Unit Study

Raising Curious Kids

Questions: The Heart of Self-Directed Learning

A Daily Dose of Adventure

Reader Favorites

15 Interest-led Learning Families You Should Get to Know

10 Not-Your-Usual Fun Fall Ideas

Instead- An Unschooling Poem

15 Interest-Led Learning Travelling Families You Should Get to Know

Getting Rid of Your Unschooling Fears

10 Resources to Help You Plan Your Next Interest-led Trip

100 Quotes about Self-Directed Learning & Compulsory Schooling

Unusual Ways to Explore Academic Subjects

Music
Physical Fitness & Health
Literature
Geography
Art
Writing
Science
History
Math

Twitter Feed

©2025 | Powered by WordPress and Superb Themes!