"Maple Leaf Learning," Songs and Videos are Fascinatingly Odd

Sometimes when we are trying to get our son, Clarkson, to go to sleep my wife and I will put on a streaming service with music. Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime all have their own mini-shows with short episodes of songs. In late December on Amazon Prime we stumbled across one assortment of Christmas songs from a company called, "Maple Leaf Learning." Dedicated to ESL and EFL it has a moose in many songs and you would think it is based in Canada but actually can be found in Japan where its been active since 1999 and has a big ol' headquaters/education complex. The founder and director, "Kenny," is in Japan where they have programs to teach kids there English and he is involved in the creation of many of the songs, music-videos, etc. Basically, this dude writes all the ditties, sings them (with a variety of supporting cast members), and is some kind of mad genius with his songs that are both weird, and weirdly catchy. Seriously, my wife and I found the Christmas song listing and now into January can't stop singing, "Bernie the Reindeer," regardless of if Clarkson is around to hear us singing or not.

It isn't just Christmas music that, "Maple Leaf Learning," does however. They have songs about being happy, making sandwiches, and Halloween-themed songs in addition to many others. They also have games, books, phone apps, and the founder/director Kenny seems to be involved in all of it and quite likely never sleeps, the man must be so busy between running all this voicing the mascot/lead star of songs and videos, Marty the Moose. Maple Leaf Learning has fun resources, clearly puts out a lot of material, and otherwise is quite fun to listen to and watch. Everything is fascinatingly odd in that way stuff geared towards educating kids sometimes is (I to this day will argue, "Sesame Street," is one of the most avant-garde and experimental shows in existence) and I appreciate it is not mind-numbing like some kid-geared things out there. Clarkson loves it too, and if he likes relaxing and dozing off to songs about a Christmas Pet, then I'm just happy he's falling asleep to a jam he likes.