In spring, leaves grow back on trees that have been brown all winter and flowers bloom. Let’s go green like Rocky and see if YOU have a green thumb! Can we get a bean to sprout in this first week of spring?

Materials:

Ziploc bag, dry beans (like lima beans or whatever is on hand!), tape, paper, pencil/markers, paper towel, water

Steps:

1. Let’s experiment to see what happens when we try to grow beans!

2. Let’s wet a paper towel and fold it so it fits into a plastic baggie. Now, let’s put a few dry beans into the bag and seal it. Let’s tape the bag to a sunny window.

3. Predict: will they grow? [Pro tip: if your child is anxious about what the bean will become, ask questions and make predictions together. What color do you think it will be? How tall do you think it will grow? How many days will it take to change?]

4. Let’s draw pictures of the beans every day this week. What changes do we see?

Words to Use:

Observe – to watch
Root – a part of a plant that grows down in the ground
Sprout – to begin to grow
Experiment – a procedure to make a discovery or test a hypothesis

Simplify:

Draw the outline of the bean for your tiny farmer and ask him or her to color it in and point out the changes that he or she observes over the course of the week!

Stretch:

Ask your child to label the parts of the bean (seed, root, stem, leaves) and write the date on each observation.

Why:

Watching a bean grow and drawing it as it sprouts will help your little one learn about the science of how plants grow, observe closely, and represent what he or she sees!

Extend the Learning:

If your kid loves gardening, try playing Garden Rescue in the Noggin app, which you can find in the game section. 

Wash Those Hands with the Guppies!

Tops, bottoms, all around and in-between. Keep hands clean with the help of the Guppies! Sing the chorus from this awesome Guppy song to get your kid’s hands squeaky clean during each soapy session. 

Try These Sink-Side Activities!

We’ve all heard the CDC recommends washing hands for at least 20 seconds. Seems like such a short period of time but with kiddos trying to run off, you may find it gets a little slippery keeping them at the sink for that long. Next time you’re in the bathroom, keep kids calm, clean and collective with these 20-second sink-side challenges!

• Play a simple brain game with your kids. What words can they come up with that start with “S,””O,” “A,” and “P”?

• Lather up those hands and ONLY when they are nice and clean (wink, wink) can they be used as hand wands to make bubbles. Keeping hands a safe distance away from your mouth (make sure they’re clean and extra soapy), turn them into hand wands. Cup your hands and blow a big bubble! Who can blow the biggest bubble? Be sure to scrub hands once more after you’re done blowing bubbles. 

•Challenge kids to say this silly tongue twister: “Blaze blew a billion bouncy bubbles, a bunch of bouncy bubbles blew by Blaze. If Blaze blew a billion bouncy bubbles, how many bubbles did Blaze blow?” Whew! Can they get it right in 20 seconds?

• Play a quick game of sink, float, swim… A soapy spin on rock, paper, scissors! (Rock being sink. Paper being the gesture that floats. And scissors being swim). Let’s see who wins! Play a game between each lather, and the winner rinses first.

Missed a Spot?

Make sure to wash hands thoroughly for 20 seconds and pay extra close attention to frequently missed places.

How to Teach Kids About Germs

Mr. Grouper teaches the Bubble Guppies about germs and what can be done to prevent them from spreading. Watch this clip with your child and then start a conversation with them about how they can become germ busters. You can give kids a crash course on germs and practicing good hygiene with the Bubble Guppies in “Bubble Scrubbies,” now streaming in the Noggin app.

Germ Questions. Clean Answers.

Do the Snizzle!

When your kids feel a sneeze coming on, do they know to grab a tissue or to catch it in their elbows? According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), we can reduce the spread of germs by simply covering our coughs and sneezes. If your child is prone to forgetting these healthy habits, here’s a super catchy tune they’ll be happy to sneeze to!

Learn the Facts to Keep Kids Healthy

• According to the CDC, coughing or sneezing into a tissue or elbow can reduce the spread of germs. Remind kids to throw the tissue into the trash after use.

• Everyone should wash their hands with soap and water for at least 20 seconds after blowing their nose, coughing, sneezing, going to the bathroom, and before eating or preparing food.

• Use hand sanitizer that contains at least 60% ethanol alcohol or 70% isopropanol alcohol.

Friendly Reminder:

Download our printable activity today and inspire your kid to create something amazing!

What you’ll need: 

1. Our printable pack. Download it here
2. Safety scissors x2 – one for you and the other for your little crafter 
3. Glue (or tape) 

Optional: For a sturdier craft, wrap the “body” part of the printable around an empty toilet paper roll 

Easy Instructions:

1. Print the pack.
2. Help your little engineer cut out all of the pieces. 
3. Fold where indicated, apply glue in between the folded piece to create double-sided pieces.
4. Apply glue to the body piece where indicated and roll into a cylinder (or glue this piece to the paper toilet roll).
5. Apply glue to the tail piece where indicated and roll into a cylinder as well.
6. Hold the body piece and help your child attach the pieces to it.

Noggin knows all a bot robots! Team Umizoomi’s Bot is a lean, green, skill-building machine. Rusty’s always in his lab combining and designing rockstar robots. And don’t forget Ryder’s PAWesome robot pup — he’s programmed it to drive! Imagine a robo pup who could parallel park better than 99% of Noggin moms and dads. 

With Noggin’s bots boosting your preschooler’s brainpower, it’s about time that everyone in the family ramped up their robot knowledge … or maybe just learn a few funny jokes your kids will go nuts and bolts over!  

Here are some facts (and funny jokes) you can use to explain the basics of robots to get your future engineer’s circuits sizzling! 

What’s a robot? 

A robot is a machine, programmed by a computer, that can carry out a series of actions or programs.

When are kids old enough to start learning about robots? 

Given their growing importance, children may get a head start on learning the basics of robots and robotics early and then explore more complicated ideas as they grow older. They can start by learning about cause and effect, sequence, and patterns. Over time, they can learn to use different programming languages to explore the ideas more deeply. 

What does robotics mean? 

Robotics is the study of robots. It incorporates engineering, science, technology, computer programming and more! Pretty soon when your child enters elementary school, she or he might take a  class to learn about designing and building robots. 

Where did the word “robot” come from? 

The word “robot” comes from a Czech play from 100 years ago called “Rossum’s Universal Robots,” which was about a factory that manufactured simplified people called robots and then put them to work. It raised questions about the exploitation of robots: Can they think? Can they feel? 

What’s a sensor? 

A sensor is a device that detects and/or measures something like light, temperature, or sound, and then can react. Robots use sensors to respond to their environments. For example, a sensor might detect movement and prompt a light or a faucet to turn on.  

What’s a motor? 

A motor is an electrical machine that converts electrical energy into mechanical energy so things can move. Robots need energy to move, and many use motors!

What are some things robots can do? 

Robots are everywhere nowadays — and most of them don’t look like R2-D2 and C-3PO! Robots can make the lights turn on when you enter the room, they can help you wash your hands, and they can clean up your home. Robots can help doctors and teachers, they can drive cars, and they can help with national security and space exploration. 

Can robots think? 

Thinking or “conscious” robots are common in science fiction, but — at least so far — robots are tools  directed to follow instructions from people. They don’t think on their own. It’s possible that future neurologists and computer scientists could create conscious robots that think on their own. This prospect obviously raises lots of serious moral and ethical questions. 

How long have people been talking about robots? 

People have been obsessed with robots for thousands of years (it’s not just you and your kids!). Ancient Greek myths included mechanical servant robots; ancient Chinese talked about flying robot birds. In the 13th century, an Arab inventor, engineer, artist, and scholar, Al Jazari, wrote a book called “The Book Of Knowledge Of Ingenious Mechanical Devices,” which was a “how to” book on making 100 mechanical devices and robots. In Renaissance Italy, Leonardo da Vinci sketched plans for a mechanical knight robot. 

What were people’s predictions about robots 100 years ago? 

People in 1900 thought the world would be run by robots in 100 years. French artists made pictures of robots doing everything that people do — cutting hair, cleaning homes, and playing instruments…

What were the first at-home robots? 

Robotic vacuums were some of the first robots in people’s homes (and yet, our homes are still sometimes a mess!) 

What are robots up to on Mars? 

Artificial intelligence is important in space exploration, especially as people reach farther into the solar system. NASA’s Curiosity rover is a car-sized rover that has been exploring Mars since August 2012. Curiosity’s work might pave the way for human exploration of the red planet! Here’s more from NASA about its robots. 

What are the funniest robot jokes? 

Humor is more in the domain of people than robots…but here are a few we think are funny: 

Why did the robot go back to robot school? 

Because his skills were getting rusty!

What’s a robot’s favorite music? 

Heavy metal. 

Why did the robot get angry? 

Everyone kept pushing his buttons.

What do robots wear when it snows? 

Roboots!

What did the baby robot call its maker?

Da-ta!

The words “robots,” “programming,” and “coding” probably make you think of complex topics in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math). For Marina Umanschi Bers, a computer science professor at Tufts who studies innovative technologies for children, coding isn’t a STEM skill; it’s about playgrounds and literacy.

Coding is a Playground

“Coding is like a playground because it’s the ability to create anything you want,” Dr. Bers said, adding that “playgrounds” support open-ended creative play, as well as social interactions, language development, and problem solving. 

She contrasts “playgrounds” and “playpens,” which are more limited, giving children just one way to play and just one “right answer.”

Open-ended, creative play with “playground” technologies — like ScratchJr, a free program for kids that Dr. Bers co-created with colleagues at MIT — fuels healthy early development and turns kids into creative problem solvers. 

“I think part of the reason we’re seeing so much innovation in our world is because this is the generation that was exposed to computer programming and computer science, and they became innovators,” Dr. Bers said. “They didn’t just innovate in the computer science field, they started to innovate in society.”

Coding is Literacy

In her book, Coding as a Playground, Dr. Bers writes about how she speaks four languages and uses them to communicate in different ways and with different people. She says coding is another language and another form of literacy, allowing people to express their ideas and tell their stories. Coding can be applied to any discipline — from math and science to music and art. 

“When little children are learning how to read and write, they are learning to express themselves,” Dr. Bers said. “It really empowers individuals because reading and writing is associated with thinking. The same is true for coding. Learning how to code engages children in problem solving, but also in using the power of computation to create new kinds of things and new kinds of projects and think in abstract, logical ways.”

Dr. Bers says that when families bring storytelling into coding, it becomes more fun and engaging for all kids, and especially for girls. 

“Somehow coding has been co-opted by problem solving,” she said. She recommends that parents instead ask their kids questions that help them think about coding as storytelling, such as “What question do you have?” or “What stories do you want to tell?”

8 Ways Parents Can Turn Coding and Robots into Playgrounds and Literacy for Kids

Dr. Bers shared 8 on-screen and off-screen ways parents can transform coding and robotics into playgrounds and literacy for their children. 

1) Play with “cause and effect.”

Bang on different pots and pans to discover what sounds they make. Experiment to find out what happens when you blow bubbles with different sized bubble wands. Slide stuffed animals down different playground equipment and predict which one will be the fastest.  

2) Play with sequence.

Play “turn taking” games: these can be simple games like taking turns making different animal sounds or more complicated games like Candy Land or Go Fish. Try organizing things (like stuffed animals or shoes) from smallest to biggest or biggest to smallest. When you read stories, talk about what happened first, next, and last. 

3) Play with patterns.

Spot rhythm patterns in your favorite songs or visual patterns in your environment. Play pattern quiz games to help your little one understand patterns. For example, you could say, “I see a pattern. There’s a red button and then a blue button and then a red button and then a blue button. What comes next?”

4) Give your kids access to developmentally appropriate programming tools like ScratchJr or KIBO (a screens-free robot kit for kids that Dr. Bers also developed).

Many kids are ready to play with these tools starting at age 4 or 5. They are creative and open-ended coding “playgrounds” that let kids make their own creations. Dr. Bers says she’s seen students use these tools to make dancing robots, robots that can clean up, and robots that try to scare away animals eating gardens at night. She said her team is currently working with a classroom that is using KIBO to recreate the “wild rumpus” in Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak. 

“It’s a process — from coming up with an idea to designing a project,” Dr. Bers said. “In technological playgrounds, children have ideas…They can carry out those ideas.”

5) Remember that there are “playground” robots and “playpen” robots. Nudge your child toward the ones that are “playgrounds.”

“Robots can become a playpen: you just watch someone else make a robot and then you watch it do its thing. That’s actually pretty boring, right?” Dr. Bers said. “A robot can become a playground if you are provided with a programming language or a way to communicate to the robot what to do.” 

Dr. Bers said robots are best when the child is actively involved, using coding/robotics to express his or her own ideas by controlling the robot’s behaviors. 

6) Remember that not all robots look like steampunk spaceships! 

Dr. Bers encourages kids to build robots out of different materials — including soft, mushy, and fluffy ones — and decorate them in creative ways. This makes robots more fun, engaging, and creative for all kids. Robots’ design can be part of children’s process of expression.

7) Spot the robots!

Robots are everywhere. They help astronauts explore space, they help doctors perform surgeries, and they help people drive cars, wash hands, and play their favorite songs. Throughout your day, Dr. Bers suggests, see if your child can spot the robots and talk about what they do. 

“If you go to wash your hands in a restaurant, usually you put your hands down and water comes out of the faucet. There’s a sensor. That is a form of a robot because there was a sensor that detected your hands and motion,” she said. “There is no magic in that faucet. Someone designed it and it serves a purpose.” 

Dr. Bers said parents don’t have to know all the details of how the faucet (or the Roomba) works: “What’s important is there is someone who programmed it — it’s not magic. There is cause and effect. And someone thought about its design.” 

8) Make sure kids are in control!

Allow your child to take the lead when they’re playing with coding and robots: it might take longer, but your little one will learn more by doing. 

“I see parents kind of take over,” Dr. Bers said. “The parent is controlling the interface and asking the kid what the kid wants to do, but the parent does it. That’s more efficient and it goes faster, but it’s not the real way to do it. The real way to do it is to let the child do it. And go slow. Go with the child. They will be slow.”

This month in Noggin we’re revealing riveting facts about robots. Are you ready? Here’s one: robots rock because brilliant brains build them! And we hope that our Robots Collection inspires YOUR future engineer to make a marvelous machine of their own one day. 

Beep-boop-beep-bop! We’re computing how much your kid is going to learn this month in Noggin. Our skill-building bot content along with your kids’ favorite characters will:

• Demonstrate STEM concepts 
• Increase creativity
• Teach problem-solving skills and how to follow directions

Ready to Access our Robots Collection? 

Launch the Noggin app and tap the “Robots” button in the character carousel. Everything featured in the Robots Collection was hand-picked by our team of educators and child development experts to help kids improve STEM skills, learn new vocabulary words, introduce computational thinking, and give little learning machines some fun facts about robots. Below you’ll find recommended in-app robot activities, and tips on what you can do to extend the learning off-screen. 

Gizmos Gone Wild!

Robots are smart machines but they too can make mistakes. There’s mayhem at the Umi City Mall when a group of little Gizmo robots malfunction and wreak havoc through the shops, food court, and department stores. Will Team Umizoomi’s mighty math powers be able to wrangle these out-of-control Gizmos? This full episode teaches kids that robots are machines that have jobs to do. Sometimes robots make mistakes and need to be repaired, and when they do, people (or mini math heroes) can fix them.  

Extend the Learning: After watching with your preschooler, ask “What are robots?” and “What job did the robots in the episode have?” Remind your child that people build robots to do specific jobs. Then have a little fun by asking them if they were to build a robot, what job would they want the robot to do? 

Catch that Robot

Harold Humdinger’s meteor-powered robot is loose in Adventure Bay and the PAW Patrol pups need your preschooler’s help to save the day! In this pup-tastic action-adventure game, kids will learn STEM concepts such as how bridges and ramps function. They’ll get to rescue friends by building bridges with Rocky and making ice ramps with Everest. Once their friends are rescued, they’ll help Chase use his super-speed to catch up to the robot and stop it from causing any further damage to Adventure Bay! Mighty Pups (and preschoolers) to the rescue!

Extend the Learning: Put your preschooler’s memory power to the test on your next commute. Point out a bridge or a ramp and ask kids to explain how they work. Our “Catch that Robot” game includes simple definitions of what bridges and ramps are, which are easy enough for kids to recall.   

Mega Mud Robot

Gasquatch has been saving up his money to buy a Mega Mud Robot. But when his coins go missing, it’s up to Blaze (and your preschooler) to help recover them before the toy store closes. While playing this interactive video, your kid will count coins, follow instructions to help Pickle control a robot, and help Blaze transform into a bubble-popping monster machine. When kids help collect all Gasquatch’s missing coins, he’ll buy a Mega Mud Robot that they’ll get to play with! 

Extend the Learning: In this interactive episode, Pickle controls a dog robot using a remote control. Grab paper and crayons and help your kids draw a remote control. Decide what each button on the remote control will make the other person do. Example: The red button makes you freeze and the green button makes you jump. Take turns “pressing” the buttons and pretending to be silly robots.

Rusty Rivets

If your child loves robots then you’ll want to modify, customize, and Rustify what they’re watching and introduce them to “Rusty Rivets”! When there’s a job to do and the stakes are sky-high, Rusty and his best buds Ruby and Botasaur invent and innovate their way out of every jam. Rusty Rivets is a show modeled after the Maker Movement, which is all about creating new devices and gadgets from unused, discarded, or broken electronics to solve problems. 

Extend the Learning: Combine and design with your preschooler using our “Build a Bot” printable pack, found here.

An award-winning mom-dad team talked with Noggin about how parents can raise kind (and successful!) kids.

Seven years ago, Adam Grant, an organizational psychology professor at Wharton, published his first book, Give and Take, which argues that the most successful leaders are “givers,” people who help others with no strings attached.

The book became a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller, was one of Oprah’s “riveting reads,” and was translated into 30 languages. But while corporate leaders loved it, the book didn’t help kids learn about giving, and Dr. Grant — who is also the dad to three young children — said he kept getting questions from parents eager to turn their kids into “givers.”

Enter: Allison Sweet Grant, Adam’s wife and co-author.

“Allison had what I thought was an amazing idea, to write a book about a gift box that ends up being in search of a giver,” he told Noggin. Allison said the resulting book, The Gift Inside the Box (published October 2019), is designed to help parents talk with their kids about kindness, generosity, and empathy. 

The Grants were kind enough to chat with Noggin about kindness and generosity — and some easy ways parents can raise kind (and successful!) kids. 

Noggin: How do you define kindness?

Adam: Kindness is an umbrella term to capture showing care and concern and respect for other people and generosity as being willing to help others.

Noggin: Why is it important? 

Adam: We think kindness is necessary for human society to function. It’s hard to have a school where kids feel supported and learn without feeling that their teachers and their classmates treat them kindly. You certainly don’t want to be part of a family where kindness is not a core value. You know, I’ve spent a lot of my career studying workplaces are people are motivated to help each other and finding that that actually makes the teams more productive and creative. If you look around the world, it’s one of the core values. It’s also defining virtue and every major religion around the world. 

Noggin: Does kindness actually help kids succeed? 

Adam: If you want to predict kids’ academic achievement in middle school, if you go back to their elementary school days, it wasn’t the highest achieving kids who would end up being the most academically successful later. It was the kids who are the kindest…Teaching kids to be kind makes them feel valued. That motivates them and gives them a sense of purpose beyond themselves. It also helps them learn — tutoring or teaching others or explaining homework actually helps to reinforce their own understanding. And so we actually think that teaching kids to be kind is one of the best ways to set them up for success later. But of course, we don’t do it for that reason. 

Noggin: You’ve written that more than 90% of parents say they want their kids to be caring, but only 20% of American kids say caring for others is important to their parents. How can parents correct this misunderstanding?

Allison: I think it’s really easy for all parents to fall into the achievement trap. When our kids would come home, the first question we would ask is “How was the test?” or “How did your team do?” But now I find myself always asking a different question first: “Who did you have lunch with?” That leads to a conversation about who their friends are, why they’re friends with those people, what they did on that day to maintain those relationships. And I find it’s a question about the quality of their day. 

Adam: One of the things we do at family dinner is we started asking them, at least on a weekly basis, “Who did you help this week?” At first, they said, “Oh, I forgot,” or “No one,” but then, over time, they not only remember it happening, they seem to look for chances to help because they knew we were excited about it and caring about it. 

Noggin: When are kids capable of learning kindness? 

Adam: One of my favorite experiments with kids actually shows that even preschoolers, as young as three, if you just ask them to be a helper, they really want to earn that identity. They like the idea of being helpful and feeling like they made somebody else’s day a little bit better. I think we want to start talking to kids about kindness as early as they can understand language. But even before that, role modeling is extremely important. We know the kids who are surrounded by parents and teachers and also other kids who are kind are more likely to take that as a cue for how they should behave.

Noggin: What strategies can parents use to emphasize kindness?

Adam: There’s a chance to create more of a fun experience, or even a tradition of kindness. There’s a tradition I love in Denmark, which is called Cake Time. It happens in schools, and once a week, there’s one child who’s supposed to bring in their favorite kind of cake or dessert, and they describe a problem they’re facing and the whole class then engages in first some empathy and then some problem solving around what they can do to help. And so it allows the whole classroom to practice helping. I’ve often wondered if that’s something that can be done in families. We’ve done something that’s probably a little bit easier to our own family, which was an idea Allison had when our kids first started to appreciate receiving gifts.

Allison: We started a family tradition when our kids were very little around gift-giving, which is that when our children receive gifts, whether for their birthdays or for the holidays, that they choose specific gifts to give to children in need also. It’s something that they look forward to, and it’s something that we look forward to. It’s a really easy way to incorporate generosity, at its most basic level, and kindness.

Noggin: If you teach kids kindness when they’re little, does it last? Do they grow into kind grown-ups?

Adam: The most powerful evidence I’ve seen on this is actually from a classic study by sociologists of Holocaust rescuers. These were people who often put their lives at risk to save complete strangers. And the study was comparing them to a group of neighbors who did not step up and become heroes. And when you trace back to their childhoods, one of the things that set the Holocaust rescuers apart was their parents had a very strong focus on teaching concern for others. When they broke a rule, for example, instead of punishing their kids, the parents would explain why their behavior was wrong and how they can make it right. And most of those explanations focused on the impact on others. So these kids were taught early on to think about how their actions affected others and how they could really do right by others. And that seemed to instill in them a very strong sense of care and concern for others. And as they grow into adults, a belief that they had a responsibility to help other people. Instilling these values early can lead people to carry them with them for a lifetime.

The Noggin app is packed with super sweet role models — pups, guppies and even ogres — that can make a big difference in helping kids learn about kindness, respect, and empathy. Our Noggin role models help kids:

• Build character
• Express emotions and empathy
• Be kind and generous 

How to Access Our Kindness Collection

Launch the app and look for the “Kindness” button in the top nav. Each piece of content featured in this section was hand-picked by our team of educators and child development experts to help kids understand feelings while encouraging them to be generous and kind. 

Blue’s Clues Feelings Game

When you ask your kids to talk about their emotions or feelings, they may have difficulty expressing what’s on their minds or deep inside. Noggin can help with our friend Blue! Blue wants to play a game to find out how her friends are feeling, and she needs your preschooler’s help. As kids play, they’ll get to explore different emotions through role playing and creative expressions. They’ll learn definitions of emotions while creating their own Felt Friend face — which will give them the words and ideas they’ll need to express themselves better!

• Skill Learned: Feelings
• Extend the Learning Tip: Break out the paper and crayons and have kids draw feeling faces — like happy, sad, silly, and angry. Once they’re done, talk about how they’re feeling!

Itty Bitty Kitty Rescue

When a kitten is in trouble, Chase, Rubble, and the PAW Patrol team race to her rescue. This action-packed eBook invites kids into a pur-fect PAW Patrol adventure where they’ll learn how a team that works together can save the day. While reading this story with your do-gooder, be sure to tap on the parent tips (the question mark icon at the bottom of the screen) for ideas of how to extend the learning beyond the page!

• Skill Learned: Empathy
• Extend the Learning Tip: When you’re done reading the story, try asking your little hero some big character-building questions: “Who was the last person you helped?” and “What can we do to be more helpful to others?”

A Card for Josh

What are some ways your child shows love and compassion? Does he or she give hugs, say kind words, or willingly share a cookie? We have got a simple but sweet suggestion for your kids to try: make a card! Josh is feeling a bit nervous, so Blue, Mrs. Pepper, and Mr. Salt have decided to surprise him with a card to make him feel welcomed. Kids can color and customize a special digital card for Josh, who will receive each special creation and express his appreciation.

• Skill Learned: Empathy
• Extend the Learning Tip: Once your little artist has created a card for Josh, he or she can make cards for other friends with supplies you have at home.