RE: How the cartoons our kids watch have changed since the 80's - A warning for parents raising boys.
I abandoned TV completely. This caused my sons to become readers, and there is an awesome selection of excellent literature. If you can't come up with a good reading list from your own memories, that may be part of your problem. My youngest son loved the Redwall series, and I think it was a pretty good foundation.
Speaking of foundation, I dove into scifi as a kid, and Asimov's Foundation series was well remembered. Keith Laumer's Retief books were hilarious, and I read them aloud to my kids, to gales of laughter.
I do not recommend you allow drivel to be rammed into the brains of your impressionable kids. Just read to them, or take them to the library and let them read. It's awesome that you're homeschooling, as those cartoons aren't a tenth as bad as what kids are being indoctrinated with in the low intensity prisons that are passed off as schools of late.
When I was very young, my favorite toys were spent ammo, sand, and sticks. I don't think my intellect was stunted by having to invent my own games and toys. My youngest's favorite toy was an old 1/4" drill (broken) that he disassembled and reassembled into various configurations. Lashed to a stick the motor could make it a rocket, or the handle could make it a gun.
Stimulating their imagination and feeding their curiosity while providing a strong and gentle example of what men should be is all you really need to do, and letting the bizarro crew of the new Thundercats at their brains is inadvisable IMHO.
Best of luck, and better skill. You clearly intend to be a good dad, and that's more important than almost anything else.
I agree that reading is the most important way for kids to be entertained very much, the only thing is my oldest kid is only 9 years old and my youngest is 1. I'm working on teaching them all but in the meantime it's more than a little tempting to put the youngers ones in front of the boob tube while I have the older ones doing lessons. The noise and distraction level really does go down but at the sacrifice of my 3 yo and baby boy being exposed to the flashing lights and all that instead of playing and running around.They can be like a pack of puppies gnawing on the furniture sometimes ;) I suppose I should said that in the article, I could/should have had an entire paragraph on how young of kids the man'bun crowd is after.
You're right though, talking the easy way out isn't the answer and now that summer is here these kids are outside in the sandbox together until the next school year starts, no excuses.
I wish I could give them a drill and let them play with spent ammo but it's too dangerous around here but maybe not why you think. My next article on the subject will be about how the "busy body" types ruin the lives of boys in the city If I let them play with a tool made to look like a gun a neighbor would more than likely call a S.W.A.T. team down on them and who knows what would happen to us then.
I'm not just complaining about these issues, I promise my good man. I'm doing a show later today about what I am currently doing to move us out of this city and to a place where we can be and live a normal existance away from the folk who can't help but bother every neighbor, (at least that's my goal) and call the state when they see something they don't like. I'll probably go a little into why I let them get even a little of this mind poison too, being homeschooled in a cold climate, but that's a longer story and not as good of one.
It's going out over a few mediums, Discord is the main one I recommend but I can link you to the promo post so if you're interested.
We can definitely use a strong voice and people with experience to participate and have fun with us.
Are you already over there on PAL, its probably where we met isn't it?
I think we're in a couple discord channels. Moving out of the city is what I did, as well.