Cross-platform Game Experience THE CAT IN THE HAT KNOWS A LOT ABOUT THAT: MATH SAFARI Makes Math Fun and Approachable at Home, in the Classroom, or on the Go
ARLINGTON, VA, September 18, 2012 – Today, PBS KIDS launched THE CAT IN THE HAT KNOWS A LOT ABOUT THAT: Math Safari, a series of free online, mobile-friendly, and whiteboard games focused on important math skills for preschool and early elementary children, and connected by storyline. Math Safari also includes tools to support parents and teachers’ use of these games in learning settings at home, in the classroom, or on the go. This suite of resources can be found at PBS KIDS Lab and is part of the Ready To Learn Initiative, an early learning project of PBS KIDS and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), funded by the U.S. Department of Education.
“Our mission is to use the power of media across platforms to offer children opportunities to learn and explore,” said Lesli Rotenberg, Senior Vice President, Children’s Media, PBS. “THE CAT IN THE HAT KNOWS A LOT ABOUT THAT: Math Safari is our newest offering to help kids build core math skills, such as early algebraic thinking, geometry and spatial sense, by interacting with their favorite characters wherever they are – at home, at school, or on the go.”
In THE CAT IN THE HAT KNOWS A LOT ABOUT THAT: Math Safari, kids join characters Nick, Sally and the Cat as they head off on a math adventure in the Thinga-ma-jigger. The group sets out to recover the missing pages of the Cat’s “Animal Safari Book” after Thing 1 and Thing 2 accidentally dropped it from the Thinga-ma-jigger, scattering its precious pages everywhere. THE CAT IN THE HAT KNOWS A LOT ABOUT THAT: Math Safari offers six curriculum-based games to aid kids in their math skills:
Online Games:
•Bee Hive and Seek: The Thinga-ma-jigger shrinks to bee-size for this honey of a hide-and-seek game. The fun begins with a map of a garden, featuring a variety of hive locations, as well as symbols for all of the key garden landmarks. Skill: Spatial Sense.
•Meerkat Jubilee: Kids deliver invitations to the annual Meerkat Jubilee to all the meerkats by venturing underground and rotating the mixed-up tunnel sections to get to the meerkat lairs. Skill: Spatial Sense.
Mobile-Friendly Games:
•Do You See My Seahorse: The baby seahorses have become separated from their seahorse fathers! Kids use the number clues to ensure a happy reunion for all, matching the numeral on each seahorse baby with the same numeral on the seahorse father. Skills: Numbers and Counting.
•Deep Sea Follow Me: Children head to the bottom of the Swirly Whirly Ocean with Sally, Nick and the Cat to help Gari Garibaldi search a very unusual coral reef for a new place to live. At every step of the game, players are presented with a different view of a coral reef, with audio clues prompting them to click the route that matches a directional cue. Skill: Spatial Sense.
Online and Interactive Whiteboard Game:
•Welcome to Beaver City: The beavers have drawn up dozens of fantastical log blueprints, far from the traditional dam, but they need help estimating the length they’ll need to cut each log before it can be fitted in to place. Kids can play individually or as part of a team. Skills: Estimating and Measuring Length, and Ordering by Height.
•The Cat in the Hat Can Map This and That: To extend the mapping activities from “Bee Hive and Seek,” this online mapping tool gives parents and caregivers an easy way to create customized layouts of a room, yard, or local park. These layouts can be printed, saved, and used in a variety of ways to help preschoolers correlate their everyday, real-world surroundings with the symbols of a map. Skills: Geometry and Spatial Sense.
The Math Safari adventure will also continue on-air on PBS KIDS with related interstitial content that will roll out in the coming months during episodes of THE CAT IN THE HAT KNOWS A LOT ABOUT THAT.
“Public media is committed to educating Americans of all ages, especially young children,” said Debra Sanchez, Senior Vice President for Education and Children’s Content at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. “Through the Ready To Learn Initiative, we are collaborating with top kids’ media producers to create engaging, innovative games, and we are working with third-party researchers to ensure our content continues to provide children with the skills that are necessary to succeed in school and in life.”
Available for free, the PBS KIDS Lab (PBSKIDS.org/lab) is PBS’ largest offering of interactive math content for preschoolers to date, with games that comprise several multiplatform offerings, each centered around a PBS KIDS media property. Each offering links a set of games across different devices and is built around a math framework, leveraging games on a variety of platforms to support key math skills. The Lab aggregates games by age and skill area so that adults can search for the games that will be the best fit for their kids. The site offers help for parents and teachers to show how the games support learning by providing details on the games’ curriculum-based content.
Part of PBS KIDS’ commitment to STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) education, THE CAT IN THE HAT KNOWS A LOT ABOUT THAT! recently kicked off a new season of television episodes on PBS KIDS. The series, which launched in 2010, encourages science exploration for preschool-age kids.
About THE CAT IN THE HAT KNOWS A LOT ABOUT THAT! TV Show THE CAT IN THE HAT KNOWS A LOT ABOUT THAT! was created in response to recent findings that children graduating from kindergarten are less prepared to learn about science than about other subjects. The series supports young children’s science learning by introducing scientific inquiry skills, teaching core science concepts and vocabulary, and preparing preschoolers for kindergarten and first grade science curriculum — all in whimsical style.
A team of science and early childhood experts developed the curriculum for the series. Each episode begins with a question posed by Sally or Nick. Then, guided by the Cat, the kids figure things out by observing, collecting, and managing clues, making connections, constructing and evaluating theories, and having discussions – all in a preschool-appropriate manner. Produced by Portfolio Entertainment Inc. and Collingwood O’Hare Productions, in association with Dr. Seuss Enterprises, Random House Children’s Entertainment, Treehouse, and PBS KIDS, THE CAT IN THE HAT KNOWS A LOT ABOUT THAT! is based on Random House’s bestselling Beginner Book collection, “The Cat in the Hat’s Learning Library.”
About PBS KIDS PBS KIDS, the #1 educational media brand for kids, offers all children the opportunity to explore new worlds through television, online, and community-based programs. For more information on specific PBS KIDS programs supporting literacy, science, math, and more, visit PBS.org/pressroom, or follow PBS KIDS on Twitter and Facebook.
About CPB The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), a private, nonprofit corporation created by Congress in 1967, is the steward of the federal government’s investment in public broadcasting. It helps support the operation of more than 1,300 locally-owned and operated public television and radio stations nationwide, and is the largest single source of funding for research, technology, and program development for public radio, television and related online services.
About the Ready To Learn Initiative The Ready To Learn Initiative is a grant program funded by the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Innovation and Improvement. It supports the development of innovative educational television and digital media targeted at preschool and early elementary school children and their families. Its general goal is to promote early learning and school readiness, with a particular interest in reaching low-income children. In addition to creating television and other media products, the program supports activities intended to promote national distribution of the programming, effective educational uses of the programming, community-based outreach, and research on educational effectiveness.
CONTACTS: Maria Vera, PBS, 703.739.3225 / mvera@pbs.org Caitlin Melnick, 360 Public Relations, 617.585.5775 / cmelnick@360publicrelations.com
The contents of this release were developed under a grant from the Department of Education. However, those contents do not necessarily represent the policy of the Department of Education, and you should not assume endorsement by the Federal Government.
The project is funded by a Ready To Learn grant (PR/AWARD No. U295A100025, CFDA No. 84.295A) provided by the Department of Education to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.