Hooked on Puppets
"Tapes recorded at EP usually are the most problematic after years of storage, displaying a wide variety of tape damage symptoms including color loss, audio loss, frame skipping, and tracking issues."
This week in the VCR (and scattered all around the den) I’ve got something very special for y’all. While I don’t remember watching this at the appropriate age, this is a set of tapes I remember very vividly, having watched them in either the 3rd or 4th grade. At the beginning of this summer, I was digging around some thrift shops in Johnson City, Tennessee, and came across this box set and I immediately recognized all the characters on the box!
Enjoy the antics of Dicky Duck, Georgette the Frog, R.R. Raccoon and many other lovable characters as they learn vowels and consonants, identifying letters, two, three, and four letter units and sounds, and many other basic phonic skills.
Also, learn along with Mr. Vowel, Sir Consonant, Hank the Hog, and a cast of adorable puppet friends as Shelly the Nanny teaches Phonics skills at the intermediate or advanced learning level.
Your child will spring to the top of the class after viewing The Learning Treehouse Basic Phonics Series.
I picked up the whole box set (4 tapes) for $1, along with a shopping basket full of widescreen-release VHS tapes of literally dozens of movies I didn’t have in my collection yet. I usually don’t take the time to hit any thrift stores in that area because, historically, I’ve been pretty unlucky there, but this summer I’ve done my rounds there a few times over now and the selection of old electronics, tapes, and cameras has been pretty excellent.
As far as these tapes go, it’s pretty standard mid-90s edutainment affair. For me, this really took me back since I’d seen this box set laying around my school growing up and even watched the first two tapes on one occasion. Give these a shot, even if you don’t recognize R.R. Raccoon or MC Rabbit. The tapes were improperly stored + they were recorded in EP mode, so some of the scenes look like absolute nightmare fuel.
Check out these other Learning Tree House Productions videos if you enjoy this box set and let’s get right into the tapes!
The Learning Tree House Phonics Series:
Vol. 1 Basic Alphabet And Letter Sounds
1996 | Runtime 38:33
Joining Shelley the Nanny in her treehouse are Mr. Ree, the world's greatest puppet detective, Dicky Duck and a whole gang of puppet friends that make BEGINNING PHONICS a delightful learning experience.
In SEGMENT ONE, Dicky Duck, Georgette the Frog and R.R. Raccoon learn to IDENTIFY LETTERS.
In SEGMENT TWO, Louie the Dog and Arnold Schwartzenbull learn the SOUNDS OF LETTERS.
SEGMENT THREE finds Mr. Ree and Shelly the Nanny following the "yellow cheese trail" as they and some pretty strange characters continue to discover the SOUNDS OF LETTERS.
Finally in SEGMENT FOUR, Hank the Hog, with help from Mr. Vowel and Sir Consonant learns how to tell the difference between VOWELS and CONSONANTS.
The Learning Tree House Phonics Series:
Vol. 2 Vowel Identification
1996 | Runtime 44:03
Shelley the Nanny is joined in the treehouse by Mr. Ree, the world's greatest puppet detective, MC Rabbit, Scratch the Dog, Karate Kat and the whole gang of puppet friends that make BEGINNING PHONICS a delightful learning experience.
In SEGMENT ONE, Shelley the Nanny and Mr. Ree help MC Rabbit learn to IDENTIFY VOWELS and the SOUNDS they make with the help of the All-American Vowel Team.
Scratch the Dog visits Shelley the Nanny in SEGMENT TWO for his weekly voice lesson and also learns SHORT VOWELS SOUNDS, and how they fit into words.
SEGMENT THREE has Rapunzel, the girl with the long golden hair stopping by the treehouse for a lesson on LONG VOWEL SOUNDS and THE SILENT "E" RULE.
In SEGMENT FOUR, Karate Kat learns how to deal with VOWEL UNITS and how they sound when in a word. Such as, ay, ee, ai and oa.
The Learning Tree House Phonics Series:
Vol. 3 Understanding Two Letter Units
1996 | Runtime 60:40
Joining Shelley the Nanny in her treehouse are Wordsworth Wolf, Hank the Hog, Louie the Dog and Henny Higginlooper plus a whole gang of puppet friends that make BEGINNING PHONICS a delightful learning experience.
In SEGMENT ONE, Shelley the Nanny helps Wordsworth Wolf rehearse for his leading role in the new puppet playhouse presentation of the Three Little Pigs, only to discover that he needs help with his TWO LETTER UNIT SOUNDS such as ch, th, wh, sh, ph, and gh.
SEGMENT TWO finds Hank the Hog being a very greedy pig, and Shelley the Nanny shows him how impolite it is to be greedy with his friends. Along with this lesson Hank the Hog learns his TWO LETTER UNIT SOUNDS such as ch, th, wh, ph and gh.
In SEGMENT THREE, Shelley the Nanny helps her friend Louie the Dog with the TWO LETTER UNIT SOUNDS that he has been having problems with. How some TWO LETTER UNITS appear at the beginning of a word, and the same TWO LETTER UNIT might be in the middle of a word.
In SEGMENT FOUR, Henny Higginlooper is having a terrible time writing a letter to her friend Boris, so Shelley the Nanny helps her to understand the importance of the TWO LETTER UNIT SOUNDS of le, mn, mb, gn and sc.
The Learning Tree House Phonics Series:
Vol. 4 Three And Four Letter Units
1996 | Runtime 51:39
Joining Shelley the Nanny in her treehouse is R.R. Raccoon, Arnold Schwartzenbull, Louie the Dog and Hank the Hog plus a lot more unusual friends that make BEGINNING PHONICS a delightful learning experience.
In SEGMENT ONE, R.R. Raccoon introduces Shelley the Nanny to his new friend Rubberbandman who is planning to take to the road and find his way to fortune and fame. Before he can do that however, he must first learn some THREE LETTER UNITS such as wor, war, tch and dge.
In SEGMENT TWO, Chester and Ester, the only known attached at the hip dance group in North America, perform for Shelley the Nanny and Arnold Schwartzenbull. Shelley agrees to help Arnold with his dance steps, if he agrees to learn THREE LETTER UNITS such as ind, ild, old, ost, alk and igh.
SEGMENT THREE continues with Louie the Dog studying his FOUR LETTER UNITS like ture, tion and sion, but only after Shelley agrees to play along with his corny jokes.
Hank the Hog introduces his Singing Fish to Shelley the Nanny in SEGMENT FOUR. Hank is teaching the fish to sing, and in return, the fish will teach Hank to swim, which leads to a very embarrassing situation for Hank, but not until he learns some FOUR LETTER VOWEL UNITS like eigh, ough, and augh.
Well, that’s it for this week! I hope you enjoyed the tapes! If you’re looking for more, please check out my page on Archive.org for the full list of digitized media. If you have any questions, feel free to send me a message right here or drop a comment below. If you haven’t already, please check out these old edutainment tapes or any of my other previous posts here. Thanks so much for checking out this week’s edition of Diptych!
See you soon!
—Forrest
Thanks I Hate It!