Top 5 Nature Documentaries for Families
One of the highlights of our travels is the wildlife we get to see. Monkeys at Silver Springs State Park, wild horses and bison at Paynes Prairie Preserve State Park, snakes at O’Leno State Park… There is so much to appreciate out in nature so when we can’t go out on an adventure ourselves, we often turn to the next best thing.
We absolutely LOVE nature documentaries and there are some truly fantastic ones out there! Talk about excellent and engaging educational material…. These have entertained us time and time again for countless hours so these have been worth every penny (and the ones we received as gifts from the grandparents are even better!).
The Top 5 Nature Documentaries around here, as voted by my kids, are available on DVD or Blu-Ray and can be found at these affiliate links:
Planet Earth 2 earns rave reviews from all of us. It was a decade in the making so it was highly anticipated. We heard from family in the UK, where it was released before being released here in the US, about how amazing it was and they were right! The images are just stunning and of course it features the voice of the legendary Sir David Attenborough. From the rare pygmy three-toed sloth to the nesting albatross, this is just fantastic.
While we eagerly looked forward to Planet Earth 2, we thoroughly enjoyed Planet Earth. We still do! It offers amazing views into different regions and wildlife habitats including mountains, caves, deserts, shallow seas, and seasonal forests.
Clearly, we have a Sir David Attenborough theme going on here. But his voice! It’s synonymous with captivating nature documentaries. Life will not disappoint. FireBoy has surprised many a person with his knowledge of and love of natural phenomena thanks in no small part to these DVDs.
And maybe there’s a BBC theme here so far too… The Blue Planet series is magnificent! It’s often said we know more about the surface of the moon than we do about our own oceans. This is a chance to explore our watery planet from the tidal seas to the coral seas to the frozen seas to the deepest areas of our open oceans.
Looking at forces of nature on a larger scale, The Universe is a fascinating look not only at how the Earth was made, but at what lies beyond our little planet. This is especially interesting to our older kids who want to know more about things like supernovas, nebulas and constellations.
This list had some competition – think Frozen Planet, Secret Life of Birds, Nature’s Most Amazing Events and Totally Tropical Rain Forest, among others – which are all also part of our DVD catalog/homeschool curriculum.
What other great nature DVDs are we missing? Let me know in the comments below!
