YouTube Kid Channels

Even though it turned out the “Momo” stuff was a hoax, I think we can all agree that it freaked us out a bit. My kids don’t watch too much on YouTube but I kept trying to replay the last couple of weeks in my head to try to remember if they had watched any new videos. I also cautiously asked my 6 year old if she had seen anything funny recently and reminded her that she can always tell me if she sees something that makes her uncomfortable.

Hoax or not, these are important conversations to have and I’m glad we talked about it because it has opened up a dialogue that I hope will continue during her childhood.

Anyway, even if we don’t have to worry about Momo, I wanted to share a couple of YouTube channels/playlists that are always safe for kids — and fun for adults, too!

Art Hub for kids: this guy and his three kids (all different ages) take turns drawing characters from shows, movies or objects relating to an upcoming holiday. We’ve done everything from a unicorn, Minecraft character, pumpkin and pikachu. The dad encourages viewers to pause whenever they need and finishes every episode with a phrase we’ve adopted for more than just when we watch these videos: what’s the most important thing? To have fun!

Cosmic kids: we started doing these videos two years ago when my daughter, who was in preschool at the time, came back from school saying she did yoga. So one day when we were stuck inside I did a YouTube search for kids yoga. There are plenty of mom and me yoga videos but when we landed on cosmic kids, we stopped searching for other things. The host takes popular stories and adds basic yoga poses while she recites the story. It’s fun for kids and my kids usually end up asking me to do it, too :)

Soundtracks: Sing is one of my kids’ favorite movies and the soundtrack is super fun to listen and dance to. YouTube is great about putting soundtracks into a playlist so it will play only songs on the soundtrack and automatically stop when the final song has played. And while you’ll still have commercials in between songs, you don’t have to worry about a weird video creeping in there.

Sleep sounds: all of my kids have really liked listening to bath water running when they get a little crabby. But having the bath water on for 20 minutes is so wasteful! I found the video below on YouTube and have used it multiple times to get the kids to calm down without wasting so much water.