At-Home Learning Activities and Resources

August 3, 2020

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Jumpstart Little Explorers | Exploradores Pequeños de Jumpstart

In this section you will find themed activities to do at home with your children, including science experiments and activities that introduce concepts in math. These themes are intended to help the littlest explorers discover new concepts like the ocean and space, while continuing to develop their language, literacy and social emotional skills.

En esta sección encontrará actividades temáticas para hacer en casa con sus hijos, incluyendo experimentos científicos y actividades que introducen conceptos de matemáticas. Estos temas ayudaran a los exploradores más pequeños a descubrir nuevos conceptos como el océano y el espacio, mientras continúan desarrollando su lenguaje, alfabetización y habilidades sociales y emocionales.

Jumpstart Songs

Need a reset? Sing with your child. Not only can it lift everyone’s mood, but it builds language skills. Children hear rhyming or silly words, helping them identify and segment sounds. Talking together about words and ideas in songs or coming up with your own rhymes builds vocabulary. Sing, dance, and have fun together!

Join Jumpstart Literacy Champion and singer-songwriter, Brynn Elliot, in a sing along.

Jumpstart Storybook Activities

Read some of Jumpstart’s favorite storybooks featured in the Jumpstart curriculum and then have fun doing some simple activities together!

Don’t already have these books at home? Click on any story’s Video Read Aloud link to watch a Jumpstart friend read the book aloud. You can also try the activities without the books at all or with another favorite.

Candlewick Press, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Lee & Low, Little Brown Books for Young Readers, Penguin, and Simon & Schuster have all graciously give Jumpstart permission to share our Video Read Alouds of their books. We hope that our video recordings will help bring life to these beautiful stories at home!

Ready4K | Receive Early Learning Tips and Activities via Text!

You can sign up to receive weekly readings (from Jumpstart Corps Members!) and at home learning activities via text Monday-Friday through our partnership with Ready4K—an evidence-based texting platform.

If you are not already registered and receiving texts, please register at jstart.org/ready4k.

Noggin

Noggin is the interactive learning service from Nickelodeon. With Noggin, learning is led by the Nickelodeon preschool characters kids know and love and developed by educational experts. Noggin offers an ever-expanding library of books, learning games, activities, exclusive shorts and 1,000+ ad-free episodes of preschool favorites like PAW Patrol, Peppa Pig and Blue’s Clues & You! With Noggin, kids can go on fun learning adventures that explore science, literacy, math, music and more.

To start their FREE 90-day subscription, Jumpstart families can sign up at https://bit.ly/3cg6kwU.

MarcoPolo Learning

MarcoPolo Learning offers quality STEAM + Literacy digital learning experiences for children ages 3-7. Their mission is to provide young children worldwide with knowledge about the world around them in a way that nurtures their natural curiosity and teaches foundational skills playfully. For this reason, they are proud to partner with Jumpstart to provide free access to thousands of children nationwide.

Here are the two links:

English: https://www.marcopololearning.com/special-offer/JSE6T
Spanish: https://www.marcopololearning.com/special-offer/JPS6T?lang=es

PBS SoCal Learning Hub Programming and Activities

PBS SoCal has created an updated At-Home Learning hub for children Pre-K through 12th grade. These resources were created through a collaboration with Los Angeles Unified School District, KLCS and KQED and is being distributed nationwide.

Here are some additional resources from PBS:

First Book Learn From Home Activities and Books

Our partners at First Book have many resources available for educators and families. Specifically, for preschool-aged children check out:

  • Sign up today for opportunities to receive information on a variety of programs to support children’s continued learning

Wide Open School

Curated content from multiple online sources (Mind in the Making, Vroom, Go Noodle, Cosmic Kids, etc.) organized into daily schedules by age and stage

Too Small to Fail 

These resources from Too Small to Fail provide you with ways you can talk, read, sing, and play your way through the day—just with things you might already have indoors.

Parent Resource from Noggin

Need strategies to stay sane during these trying times? So do we! Jamie-Lynn Sigler hosts a parent discussion for @noggin with special guest Dr. Nadine Burke Harris, the California Surgeon General! Watch Navigating the New Normal: Parents Edition.

Learn more at www.noggin.com/kidstogether

Talking to Children About COVID-19

Get tips from the CDC (Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention) on how to talk to children about COVID-19.

Something Strange Happened in My City is an amazing social story written by Dr. Jenny Yen, a Jumpstart course professor at CSU Fullerton, to help children understand what’s happening in the COVID-19 crisis. It has been translated into multiple languages and can be found here.

Check out these fun resources from Noggin that teach children how to wash their hands and other ways to reduce the spread of germs.

Internet Access

Do you or your children need internet access to stay connected? Many internet providers are offering free services during this time.

HighSpeedInternet.com

Comcast: Internet Essentials

Articles and More

A Guide to COVID-19 and Early Childhood Development from the Center for the Developing Child, Harvard University. This guide pulls together information on COVID-19, including what it means for child development, and shareable resources that can help parents, caregivers, child care providers, pediatricians, and others who work with families.

A Parent’s Guide to Surviving COVID-19: 8 Strategies to Keep Children Healthy and Happy written by Kathy Hirsh-Pasek and Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, members of Jumpstart’s National Early Education Council

Caring for Preschoolers at Home provides expert guidance on maintaining structure, routine, and healthy habits for learning and growing at home.

5 Tips for Parents Balancing Screen Time During School Closures

Healthy at Home Toolkit (Ready Rosie) supports families with resources for learning at home, prevention and care, and emotional well-being.

Time to Talk, Play, and Create: Supporting Children’s Learning at Home provides tips based on research for supporting young children’s learning through interactive and fun activities while families shelter in place at home.

Abriendo Puertas (Spanish)–Recursos para familias en español

Talk with your child about how it feels to miss friends, family, or teachers. Discuss some ways to make yourself feel better when you miss someone, like writing a letter or looking at pictures.

What makes a volcano erupt? How big is a whale? How long does it take to get to the moon? What is your child interested in? There are many child-focused resources for learning about the world online. Find one from a free reliable source like NASA or PBS and learn something new together.

Invite your child to come up with a question and send it out to friends or family. Questions could be silly or imaginative like, “What is the first thing you would do if you went into outer space?” or “Where would you go if you had wings?”

Create a kindness jar. Invite everyone in your household to write or draw a note when they see someone else demonstrating kindness. Throughout the day, or at mealtimes, take one of the notes out of the jar and read it aloud to celebrate the ways everyone is helping and being kind to one another.

Read Maybe Something Beautiful by F. Isabel Campoy and Theresa Howell. Then, create a mural about things that make your community special.

Read Cassie’s Word Quilt by Faith Ringgold. Then, invite each member of your household to use art materials to draw what they are grateful for. Help children label their drawings. Invite family and friends that don’t live with you to send pictures as well. Put the pictures together to make a gratitude quilt and display it somewhere special.

Start the day with conversations that help children build their planning and self-regulation skills. Ask a question like, “What is something you are looking forward to today?” Then make a plan for the day together.

Big emotions are normal, especially when routines change or people are experiencing stress. Consider strategies to help children understand their emotions and calm their bodies. Children may use a feelings chart to label their emotions like excited, anxious, surprised, or confused. Then have a conversation about what children can do when they’re having big emotions, like taking three deep breaths.

Children’s bodies need to move! Consider activities that incorporate mindfulness with movement, such as children’s yoga. Learn a few poses together like cat/cow, bird, and butterfly.

Model empathy by spending some extra time talking with and listening to your child. You might hear them asking the same questions repeatedly as they process the changes in their world. Your patience, kindness, and child-friendly answers will help them to work through their emotions.

Children process emotions in many ways, including being extra quiet or loud, pushing boundaries, not listening or following directions, and needing to move their bodies, sometimes in less safe ways. Some extra time talking or snuggling with a book can help everyone feel calmer and more connected.

Play a mirror emotions game. Invite your child to look in a mirror and make an emotion with their face while you try to guess it. Then switch and invite them try to guess yours! Try some silly or tricky ones like disgusted, worried, or proud.

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