Certain children's television shows are not only fun to watch, but with the help of parents, they can also be very educational.

"Parents need to sit with their children and discuss the program, be engaged with other activities such as dancing or singing along," said Ana Esqueda, Bilingual Language Arts instructional specialist at the Ysleta Independent School District.

"The television should not be used as a baby sitter but for educational purposes."

Studies have found that children 2Â years of age who watched certain programs, such as "Clifford the Red Big Dog," "Dora the Explorer," "Dragon Tales" or "Blue's Clues," had greater vocabularies and higher expressive language, according to the PBS Web site, www.pbs.org.

"The key to children's shows such as 'Dora the Explorer' or 'Blue's Clues' is to watch the shows with the kids and point to them what's important and to repeat things so the child can comprehend what's going on," said Marie Shannon, mother of 4-year-old Jessica.

"We're very selective in which television shows we watch. She already knows we watch 'Dora the Explorer' and 'Blue's Clues' in the mornings, and surprisingly, she already knows how to count up to eight and the colors in Spanish," said Shannon.

Fenton Maxwell, executive director of "Kid Fitness," a health and fitness show for children, said educational television shows for children have to incorporate simple things that the child can remember, such as different places or animals, in order for the child to remain interested and learn from the program.

"Although a healthy lifestyle is our main focus in 'Kid Fitness,' we try to incorporate other educational aspects such as social studies. For example, visiting different countries or states and learn about the different cultures and places," he said.

Maxwell said the key to a successful educational children's television show is to keep it fun, entertaining and about something kids will find interesting.

"We have to get professionals behind us when designing a television show for children; we need to make sure that what we're trying to teach the child is right. The message has to be understandable to our viewing audience, in this case, children," he said.

The more a child watches the television show, the more he or she learns, but most children's programs are designed so the child learns something from it from the first time he or she watched it, Maxwell said.

But how much a child learns from an educational television program depends a lot on his or her age.

Children younger than 22 months may be entertained, but they don't learn words from the television program, according to a study at Wake Forest University published in Media Psychology.

"Before Jessica was 2, she would just get excited over the images on the television; it wasn't really until later that she began to recognize things she would see on the programs and putting things together. For example, if the theme of that day's episode of 'Blues Clues' was shapes, she would point at different objects and say what shape they were," Shannon said.

"Now that she's four, she gets it really quickly and gets really involved in the show, especially when they hide things and ask the children if they know where it is, she starts screaming the answer at the television" she said.

"Kid Fitness'" Maxwell added that while there's a lot of programming for children, it is imperative that parents carefully choose what their children are watching.

"Children are like sponges, they pick up everything they see and hear, and if we can help them learn about the importance of fitness or the different shapes and colors, it's great," he said.