Animaniac revival for mom, kids enjoy it too

I was looking for the 50 states mnemonic song to help my girls memorize the US capitals when I ran across an Animaniacs video gem I haven't seen in years. I remember watching it back in the early 90s and totally forgot about it until L. clicked on the link to check out the video.

L. might have laughed at the general silliness of the caricatures identifying each of the presidents but there are some very funny references that had me laughing out loud (again) with a renewed appreciation for the cleverness (and semi-inappropriateness for kids that fly over their heads) of this video.

Animaniacs sing the President's Song


We watched that video three times before L. and I were distracted with other Animaniac clips on YouTube.

Animaniacs video of Wakko's 50 State Capitols song
This was the song I was originally looking for. And although this version is sung way too fast for kids to memorize initially, a print out of the lyrics can be made for the kids to sing-along.



Animaniac's Universe song
When your kids ask you who Mickey Rooney is (when they figure out the reference is a name and the characters aren't saying "macaroni" as L. first thought) and why he's in the song, you can tell them he was an actor who was barely 5-feet tall (I had to look this up because I wasn't quite sure why he was mentioned in the song either).



Animaniacs nations of the world
This video is a little grainy so L. couldn't see all the countries Yakko pointed to but she got the general gist of continent for each reference.



I also thought the video below was very clever because instead of the hazy visual of the world map in the Animaniacs actual cartoon, images of the world flags were used instead. Not that my kids could catch every one, but they got the general gist of different country flags (and used the paused button on the ones they liked).



I do have a blog in the works about an enjoyable outdoor adventure we had earlier this week teaching a new 4-H club about geocaching but I allowed myself to be distracted with the Animaniacs tonight. The kids and I laughed for an hour watching these videos and well, sometimes making time to be distracted is in actuality the best way to spend time with them.