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Favorite documentaries?


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Looking for fabulous documentaries - mainly history and science, but can be about anything. DS13 is requesting more! He has never been a kid who was very curious and, being a dyslexic, it has been a wonderful way for him to open his eyes to the world around him!

 

Please share! And I do have Netflix and Discovery Streaming. ;)

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My favorite documentary is "A State of Mind." It focuses on a couple of young gymnasts in North Korea training for the Mass Games. It's an absolutely fascinating look into North Korean life and culture. "Baraka" is also really neat, though I'm not sure how to summarize it. And "Survivorman" is technically a tv show, but it's a great way to learn about different regions of the world, and a variety of survival skills.

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We watch a ton of documentaries and similar. My kids love them.

 

Modern Marvels is a great series on all sorts of things and/or people. Look for specific subjects under the title.

 

The Planet Earth series is fabulous. There was a similar one about Russia - I think it was called Wild Russia?

 

Otherwise, look for titles about people, critters or time periods. Some are good, some are boring. We watch the good and skip the boring. It only takes about 10 minutes to tell them apart.

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Ken Burns' Civil War.

I really liked the new one--They Shall Remain, or something like that, that PBS did on the Native Americans--very, very good.

Not a documentary, but the " ----House" ones are terrific--Frontier House is a fav--they are PBS shows that have people living as they would in a certain era. There's Colonial, Victorian, Frontier, and maybe others.

 

ETA: you might want to preview some of the House ones--and come to think of it, I'd probably wait a few years on those...may be boring to a younger child. (But now I'm off to Netflix them! lol)

Edited by Chris in VA
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1. Following the Footsteps of Alexander the Great (from Britain) Wonderful geography/topography lessons reading sections from his diairies and then visiting that actual location. (we got it at the library)

 

2. One about protecting Tigers in Eastern Russia and how the Russian government has such a small budget that they can barely afford gas for the helicopter! (also from the library)

 

3. Margaret Sanger- (kind of a movie about her life!) Excellent for girls to see--her own mother died in childbirth and she battled for woman to have birth control before they had the vote.

 

4. Buena Vista Social Club- about Cuban musicians

 

5. The Wave--about the fascism experiement done at a high school in Berkeley in the 70's. The original teacher spoke at the screening here. It is required to see if you grow up in Germany!

 

I'll think of more and get back to you!!

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David Macaulay has ones on History / Technology - City, Cathedral, and I can't remember the other ones - those are history related but there are also ones about building bridges and something else technological. My kids have all enjoyed those.

For geography Michael Palin's adventures traveling around the world are fabulous. Start with Round the World in 80 days where he tries to follow Phineas Fogg's trip around the world using only transportation that would have been available then. We have watched everything he has made so far and keep hoping for more!

Meryl

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Thank you so much for the all of the wonderful ideas! I have written them all down and have looked at many of the trailers/websites. They all sound fantastic. Thank you for taking the time to share them with me. ;)

 

I don't know which ones to start with! If you think of any more, please let me know!

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Looking for fabulous documentaries - mainly history and science, but can be about anything. DS13 is requesting more! He has never been a kid who was very curious and, being a dyslexic, it has been a wonderful way for him to open his eyes to the world around him!

 

Please share! And I do have Netflix and Discovery Streaming. ;)

 

Connections, old PBS series about how one discovery set up the conditions for another.

Liberty! about the American Revolution

The American Experience about a variety of US history topics. One nice thing about these is that the disc often comes with extras that are also good.

 

The Blue Planet aobut earth's ocean environments. I also like other BBC Planet Earth type documentaries.

 

I think that each of these is available from Netflix. We bought the BBC nature videos last year from Amazon in April. They had a great sale price during the week of Earth Day. I think I ended up getting four different sets for the price of one.

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