4 ways for families to engage young kids at home
with BrainPOP Jr.
BrainPOP Jr. is designed for grades K-3, but kids at any age (even younger!) can build foundational skills and learn a lot through animated movies and educational games. Keep reading to see how our own BrainPOP employees use it with their young ones.
1. Create teachable moments with educational animated movies for kids
BrainPOP Jr. offers a collection of animated educational movies for grades K-3 that cover every school subject and all kinds of interests your kids might have. They also include characters that children adore, like Moby the robot and his friend Annie.
For Ryan Thomas, a senior QA engineer at BrainPOP, his 2.5-year-old daughter loves BrainPOP Jr., especially movies about teeth, counting, and music. She uses the app on different devices, but her favorite way to watch is on a tablet.
Watching BrainPOP Jr. educational movies with your young child is an excellent way to build on their interests, introduce new concepts, and encourage discussions about the world. The movies include built-in questions to pause and ask that deepen kids' learning and comprehension.
Use these fun and educational movies to take advantage of teachable moments with your kids, such as observing a butterfly while playing outside, losing a tooth, or recovering from a cold. These are all great opportunities to lean into kids’ curiosity and demystify big ideas.
2. Make learning a family activity
She can't read yet, but she loves listening to the questions and pressing the quiz buttons! We work through the quiz together, and most of the time we rewatch together to make sure she understood the topic. It feels advanced for her, but she loves that it feels like a challenge."
—Nina George, Chief Growth and Marketing Officer
As parents, we could all use a little inspiration for quality family time activities. Bonding by learning is a wonderful place to start!
Every BrainPOP Jr. topic comes with embedded learning games and quizzes that you can play and complete together as a family, helping children reinforce the concepts they learned.
We use BrainPOP Jr. for my 3.5 year old to help answer the never-ending list of questions he has about everything in the world that I do not know the answer to! Now, instead of asking to watch BrainPOP Jr., he just says, 'I want to learn something,' and we know what that means. He's too little to do most of the other activities on his own, but he loves reading the jokes together."
—Sari Turner, Senior Director of Product Marketing
3. Connect to school or homeschool activities
I like to match what my 6-year-old is learning about in the classroom. This month, they're learning about hiberation, 100 days of school, presidents, and money. We can reinforce those connections at home with BrainPOP Jr."
—Karina Linch, Chief Product Officer and former elementary school teacher
BrainPOP Jr. has topics that cover every school subject to support students' learning journeys in and out of the classroom.
4. Build kids' early literacy skills for lifelong achievement
Building comprehension should begin early, alongside word-reading instruction, and continue long after word recognition is automatic. Research shows that students' reading levels are linked to their background and vocabulary knowledge about specific subjects. In fact, when students experience an intentional approach to knowledge building, they retain new information much more quickly and deeply."
—Barbara Hubert, Ph.D., Senior Director of Learning Design
The magic of BrainPOP Jr. is that it speaks to kids in a language they connect with and understand. They learn key concepts and develop foundational learning skills through humor, playful animation, and dynamic stories. In the process, kids are developing high-impact literacy skills like making and supporting inferences, finding the main idea, and determining the meaning of new words. These are some of the crucial skills that prepare kids for academic success and success beyond the classroom.
This article was written by Cara Holt, education specialist and 20+ year classroom educator.
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