Just in time for summer vacation, WSRE and PBS are offering new web-based tools to entertain and educate kids along with a new web-series dedicated to helping parents navigate the hot topics of the day and find support.
Need a break from fighting vocabulary crime? Visit WordGirl’s new website at pbskidsgo.org/wordgirl to strengthen your linguistic lexicon. WordGirl greets visitors directly as soon as they land on the site and encourages them to explore. Here are a few of the fun activities that await you:
- Get behind the wheel in the new game "Chuck's Extreme Sandwich Crusher."
- Watch complete episodes, Huggy dance clips, favorite word segments and more.
- Submit your favorite word to the show and send a message to a friend.
- Get inspired to decorate your office, house, apartment, or hideout with "Build-A-Lair."
- Visit "Tobey's Robot Workshop" while the boy genius is grounded from his latest attempt at world domination.
- Become a WordGirl star by creating your own avatar.
PBS KIDS® has launched Play-Along Videos, a series of online videos for preschoolers that combine video shorts with interactive game play. Available on the PBS KIDS Video Player, the Play-Along Videos feature DINOSAUR TRAIN and SUPER WHY. In each Play-Along Video, kids interact with characters to help them complete tasks, such as matching items of the correct size or finding the right words to complete a sentence. An additional Play-Along Video will be available from THE CAT IN THE HAT KNOWS A LOT ABOUT THAT! in early 2012. Play-Along Videos are designed to offer educational content supporting childhood development, including social and emotional development, artistic expression, language development, and reading skills. The SUPER WHY Play-Along Video helps children build key literacy skills, including vocabulary and spelling. In the DINOSAUR TRAIN Play-Along Video, children build their science skills, exploring concepts such as investigation and dinosaur anatomy, while on a fossil excavation.
In April, PBS Parents launched The Parent Show with Angela Santomero. Hosted by Ms. Santomero, the Co-Creator and Executive Producer of the top-rated PBS KIDS® series SUPER WHY and one of the key visionaries behind the long-running, award-winning Blue's Clues, The Parent Show is just that: a show for parents. Offered online only, the show can be viewed and shared whenever a parent needs advice, ideas or a laugh. New episodes will air weekly, and in between, parents can chat with Angela through her blog on PBSPARENTS.org, and on Twitter @AngelaSanto. The Parent Show can be found at PBSPARENTS.org/theparentshow and on PBS' YouTube channel.
Each week, The Parent Show will explore a topic that parents are dealing with today -- such as school readiness, media habits or healthy eating -- through a video interview, a follow-up video message, and a blog post. Angela will interview noted experts with a wide range of backgrounds, from astrophysicists to chefs to puppeteers, who will share their unique and fresh ideas and tips for parents. She will also go behind the scenes with content creators, producers, and personalities from PBS programs. Each interview will be followed up with an additional video, in which Angela will delve more deeply into the weekly issue at hand. Angela will also share her own personal experiences through a weekly blog post. On PBSPARENTS.org, moms and dads will be encouraged to join the conversation, suggest topics for future webisodes, ask questions, post comments, and interact with each other.
