Supriya and Documentaries

Supriya likes watching documentaries of all kinds. She loves the "Reading Rainbow" videos which we get from the library. She loved the three musical biopics we got from Netflix - De-lovely about Cole Porter, The Jolson Story about Al Jolson and Yankee Doodle Dandy about George M. Cohan. Then there was the Elvis video we had borrowed from the library. She watched all of these over and over, soaking it all in.

We have watched several "science" documentaries recently, from the Genographic project to the Blue Planet DVDs. Our latest discovery is that our digital set-top box downstairs gets the Science Channel. So today we watched the first part of Carl Sagan's Cosmos. A lot of the material is beyond her current abilities, but she was getting the story (I think).

There is something about the documentary format that grabs Supriya. They present information in a story form. They give great visual context to the information and they don't take anything for granted. All of these shows were very well-produced and they made the material very interesting and accessible. And that accessibility is the key point in this context. Supriya has learned and retained a lot from them - all out of her own interest. The documentary format really works for her. I guess we will be getting more of them from Netflix and the library.