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summer activities

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Welcome Aboard the S.S. FableVision

Strap in and set sail on the S.S. FableVision during this summer vacation! To help your children continue learning once school’s out, FableVision picked a few pieces from our portfolio to bring you and your child on an all-expenses-paid cruise from the comfort of your home.

Through these pieces, your kids will travel throughout the galaxy, exploring Georgia with Savannah, playing at the GASHA GO! Arcade, and more. With pieces for a variety of ages, there’s sure to be a stop for you and your child to visit and enjoy! 

GASHA GO! Arcade

First stop as you board the ship – visit the GASHA GO! Arcade on the S.S. FableVision and assist the Gashlings in their adventures.

Created for Georgia Public Broadcasting in its goal to provide a computer science curriculum for underrepresented students, the GASHA GO! World is full of playful and imaginative creatures who come alive at night to build toys. 

In Bubble Build, kids learn numeracy and literacy by helping Mash and his friends solve math problems to refill the toy capsules in the empty machine. 

Claw Control helps players practice resiliency, persistence, and grit as they help the Gashlings organize their tasks to efficiently create arcade toys. 

Play the games and watch the animated shorts about Gashlings for free on Georgia Public Broadcasting’s website!

Pinna Original Yes No Audio

Travel can be unpredictable. Find yourself trapped in a haunted house, sinking ship, or the Marshmallow Dream Forest in the Pinna Original Yes No Audio adventures.

Created by audiyo-yo, FableVision’s podcast division, this is an interactive audio experience that lets listeners drive the narrative and create their own adventure. By answering yes-or-no questions, explorers are led through the story, choosing their own path. They have five minutes to escape, or else they’re stuck in the story forever!

Pinna Original Yes No Audio is available through Pinna’s website with a subscription or a 7-day-free trial.

So Few of Me Animated Storybook 

Stop by a meadow with beautiful flowers where you can follow Leo as he struggles to deal with his overscheduled life and learns the importance of leisure time. In this Vooks animated storybook of Peter. H Reynolds’ So Few of Me, Reynolds invites us to include “time to dream” on our to-do lists throughout busy summer vacations and daily chores. 

The animated storybook, along with the rest of Vooks’ catalog, is available with a subscription.

Georgia Race Through Time 

Next, visit Georgia and time travel in Georgia Race Through Time with Savannah, an antiques collector. In this game created for Georgia Public Broadcasting, Savannah and her trusty canine companion Peaches follow cryptic clues that take them to locations throughout Georgia. Bonus: Savannah has a special gift to see back in time when she’s close to or touching a historical artifact. 

This game is available for free on Georgia Public Broadcasting’s website.

Zebra Penguin Skunk: Beach

It’s island time – visit the beach with Zebra, Penguin, and Skunk and get crafty with problem solving! The video, created by FableVision for Sesame Studios, a kids’ YouTube destination from the makers of Sesame Street, teaches children about friendship and ingenuity. The three black-and-white friends work together against the elements to build an elaborate sandcastle.

The short is available to watch on Sesame Street’s YouTube channel.

NoiseFilter Animated Video Series

Travel into the body with Dr. MarkAlain Dery and Dr. Eric Griggs (Doc Giggs), along with special guests Irma Thomas and Milan Nicole Sherry. 

FableVision and NoiseFilter collaborated in this animated series that supports NoiseFilter in its mission to reduce health disparities and achieve health equity. The timely videos demystify how vaccines work and how variants evolve, the science behind clinical trials, and Hepatitis C and HIV education.

All videos are available for free on NoiseFilter's website.

Discover SCIENCE Videos

Check in with friends Drew and Nia throughout your travels and continue to learn about the human body!

To help bring preventative health activities to children and families, Children’s National Hospital (CNH) partnered with FableVision for animated shorts featuring two tweens who met at CNH. The videos aim to destigmatize topics on how bodies work by focusing on blood, germs, mucus, digestion, sleep, and stress. 

All videos in this series are available on CNH's YouTube. 

Cyberchase Fractions Quest

For your last stop, blast into space to learn about fractions with Cyberchase Fractions Quest! In this game created for PBS KIDS and based on Cyberchase, kids use their mathematical sequences and problem-solving skills to outsmart the villain Hacker, who captured the CyberSquad. 

Cyberchase Fractions Quest is available through FableVision Games!

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Welcome to FableVision’s Summer Camp!

As sunlight fills the days after 15 months of COVID-19, we’re looking forward to an engaging and exciting summer. To ensure that your children continue to learn while they’re on break, we created FableVision’s Summer Camp—a compilation of resources, including educational animated series, games, softwares, and videos.

Help your children have a fun summer by supporting their creativity, sparking their imagination, and encouraging their interest in new things. Whether they enjoy animals, engineering, or meteorology (just to name a few)—we’ve got you covered with a variety of free/low-cost activities that can be enjoyed by your family! 

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PBS KIDS Parent Activities Videos
Saturn’s rings, puzzle boxes, Yup’ik dance fans, and more—these live-action videos produced for PBS KIDS’ website for parents provide fun and educational crafts to create with your children using household materials and art supplies. In tandem with their favorite PBS KIDS shows, like Molly of Denali or Elinor Wonders Why, families can complete hands-on activities, while learning about central themes of the shows and discussing important questions. Grab your crayons, glue, and scissors and follow the easy steps in the videos—it’s time to make butterfly costumes and periscopes.

The instructional videos are available for free on PBS KIDS for Parents.

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The Paper Girls Show
How about a summer trip to Confetti, a beautiful world built entirely out of paper? In the FableVision and Global Tinker animated series The Paper Girls Show, best friends Cailey and Reese travel to Confetti to visit their paper friends Kami and Dev. Together they creatively invent solutions applicable to the real world. Each episode features a new type of technology, such as 3D printers and robots, and the series infuses STEAM curricula that inspires young girls to explore arts, science, programming, and engineering. 

Watch the series for free on YouTube.

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UCAR Animated Atmosphere
As summer brings heat waves and hurricanes to New England, help your children understand the weather by watching Animated Atmosphere videos, created for University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR). To describe extreme weather and how to stay safe, the animated videos feature a weatherman yeti showing cold weather conditions, a dog demonstrating how to take care of pets, and a palm tree illustrating the effects of tropical storms. Humor, cute visuals, and an approachable script allow children to understand weather phenomena and get introduced to discussions on climate change.

The videos are available on UCAR’s YouTube.

FableVision Games
FableVision Games, a research- and educational-game-based platform, engages students and improves their learning outcomes in STEM, social studies, literacy, and social-emotional skills. Math, history, puzzles, and more—FableVision Games has something for any child’s interest.

The games are available on the FableVision Games website—play for free through June.

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Echo Explorers
Speaking of Cyberchase, Hacker is up to his usual tricks. He trapped some bats and the CyberSquad needs your help to free them. Created in partnership with THIRTEEN/WNET and Bridge Multimedia, Echo Explorers, a born-accessible game, follows guidelines from child disability, math, and environmental science content experts. It can be tailored to each child’s unique learning needs and sensitivities through settings in sound, captions, background visuals, difficulty, and control modes. Children of all abilities learn about echolocation and coordinate mapping with their favorite characters from the PBS KIDS show.

The game is available on PBS KIDS.

Go Wild! With Ranger Rick
Who can better excite children about wildlife than the beloved raccoon Ranger Rick? The FableVision-created mobile app for National Wildlife Federation (NWF)’s Ranger Rick teaches 4-8-year-olds about animals through three activities. In “That’s Wild!,” children engage through jokes and riddles about their favorite animals. In “Mystery Animal,” a set of clues helps children guess the unknown animal. Lastly, in “Rick’s Pix,” children create a scrapbook of animal photos decorated with stickers, frames, and nature backgrounds. The app excites children through fun activities, vibrant colors, and NWF’s extensive database of information. Next time you’re at the zoo, aquarium, or backyard, learn more about the animals you see through Go Wild! With Ranger Rick.

The app is free to download with a Ranger Rick subscription.

Reach Every Reader Apps
Help your young children begin their literacy journey! FableVision-created mobile apps, Photo Play and Animal Antics, for Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE)’s Reach Every Reader initiative, turn everyday routines into learning opportunities for 2-4-year-olds. In Photo Play, children decorate their own photos with stickers, emojis, and talk balloons, which helps them facilitate conversations with caregivers about the photo memories, locations, and details. In Animal Antics, children and caretakers use their imaginations to role-play as different animals. Reach Every Reader works to bridge the literacy gap by providing learning opportunities and word acquisition in low-income families.

The apps are available to download for free.

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FabMaker Studio
Spark your child's interest in engineering through FabMaker Studio, an easy-to-use, web-based program that allows children to engage in STEM and STEAM learning. From idea to reality, children build paper prototypes and final designs with this researched-based application. FabMaker Studio is part of the national Make To Learn research initiative, a unique for-profit/non-profit collaborative founded by Glen Bull, Co-Director of the Center for Technology and Teacher Education at the University of Virginia and The Reynolds Center for Teaching, Learning, and Creativity. 

The online-tool provides a low-cost, accessible way to design and invent 2D and 3D projects. As children progress through the program, they transform their creativity into building their own working machines. FabMaker is perfect for creating at home, in the classroom, and summer programs. 

 If you click here for more information, you can also receive a free activity!

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Summer Learning, Summer Fun with Cyberchase Fractions Quest

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This post was originally written by Bob Krech and posted on our partner THIRTEEN/WNET's blog. Click here to view.

Bob Krech is a writer and consultant on elementary math. A former elementary teacher, supervisor, and curriculum developer, he has written more than thirty books for teachers and parents and is a recipient of the Presidential Award for Excellence in Math and Science Teaching. He is the math advisor for the award-winning PBS children’s television series, Cyberchase.

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Summer is here! Time to get outside, get active, and have some fun! Time to keep learning too. Of course, this summer is going to be different for kids and families in quite a few ways. With new social distancing requirements in place due to COVID, there will be fewer in-person summer camps, classes, or educational events to attend. These are activities some students traditionally look forward to when school is out. They’re exciting, stimulating experiences that keep kids thinking, learning, and engaged during the summer months. 

In fact, for students who are not engaged in summer learning, studies have shown that there is a very real phenomenon known as the “summer slide” where kids, because they are not reviewing or using material they have learned, will regress. If you don’t use it, you lose it, so to speak. This can be particularly true with concepts that are difficult for young learners, like fractions. A solid understanding of fractions underpins most all of the math students will encounter as they enter upper elementary grades and middle school, so it’s important to have a strong understanding. Students need to keep reviewing these concepts and skills to establish and maintain a solid foundation, but who wants to sit down and do another workbook? Not to worry. Cyberchase to the rescue!

THIRTEEN and FableVision have just released a free beta preview of a new online game to help families stave off the “summer slide.” Cyberchase Fractions Quest combines screen time, fun time, and learning time in an exciting online adventure. Set in the world of the popular PBS KIDS animated series in which three diverse kids use brain power, science, and math to save the day, the game introduces, explores, and reviews important fraction concepts for grades 3 and 4. Playing keeps kids learning while having fun. Each section of the game features a different fraction concept; fair shares, unit fractions, non-unit fractions, equivalent fractions, and estimation with fractions. It brings players into cyberworlds like underwater Aquariyum and skate-boarding Radopolis as they practice fractions in unique problem-solving scenarios in three contexts; area (shapes), sets (groups) and on a number line. Students learn how to create, interpret, manipulate, and write about fractions. They get involved with fractions from every angle and thus develop a thorough understanding.

Fractions Quest is easy to access and begin playing right away. It’s intuitive, motivating, and makes you think rather than just complete tasks in a rote manner. Each section of the game begins with a helpful tutorial that teaches players about the fraction concept as well as the mechanics of the game. Players travel in their cybercoupes across cyberspace as they thwart the villainous Hacker’s plans and rescue their Cyberchase pals. Review and support scaffolding are built into each part of the game, so the action and learning are very individualized for each player. It’s fun, exciting, and an in-depth learning experience in an area where most all kids need at least some practice, helping kids stay in tune with fractions and be ready for school when it rolls around again.

One of the big ideas students learn through Fractions Quest is that the actual size or quantity of a fraction depends on the whole it is a fraction of. For example, ¼ of the water in a lake is a lot more than ¼ of the water in a bathtub. To emphasize this idea at home, gather some different sized round fruits, such as an orange, a cherry, a grape, and a melon. Talk about fourths as you cut an orange into four equal pieces. Now cut a cherry into four equal pieces. Put ¼ of the cherry next to ¼ of the orange and ask your child which is more and why. Help your students create other fractions using the fruits. Creating, discussing, manipulating, and comparing these physical examples is really helpful to developing this understanding. This helps greatly later as students think about fractions of numbers and how ¼ of 100 (25) is going to be larger than ¼ of 20 (5) just like ¼ of the orange was more than ¼ of the cherry.

So, here it is. The special free beta release of Cyberchase Fractions Quest to help families keep that learning going when it’s needed most. Enjoy! https://www.fablevisiongames.com/fractions-quest

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You're Invited to FableVision's Virtual Summer Picnic

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FableVision is waving hello to summer! Though summer break may look different to many students this year, FableVision has put together a list of resources and activities for your kids to enjoy and keep their minds sharp.

As more camps, schools, and families continue to be affected by the global pandemic, our studio is proud to provide resources for both you and your child in order to provide fun, exciting and new ways to take this summer to the next level! Whether you’re looking for some fun coloring pages, challenging and engaging educational games, or craft and activity-filled new shows and films to watch, we gathered our favorites to spice up this summer for you and your family. 

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Summer Banner

Soak in the summer fun with our new summer banner, designed by FableVision director of art and animation Bob Flynn. Celebrating the first day of summer and all the wild adventures with friends the season can bring, this banner is now also available as a printable coloring book page. Release your inner artist, and be sure to share your artwork and tag FableVision through our Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram channels for a chance to be featured on our social media pages! 

Click on the black and white image to your left to download and print your own FableVision summer 2020 banner coloring page.

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Cyberchase Fractions Quest 

Brain power to the rescue! FableVision is proud to present Cyberchase Fractions Quest, our newest game that integrates a story-based setting with a research-based approach to fractions learning! Combining research-supported teaching methods with an engaging narrative context to motivate students, players embark on a quest to save Cyberspace from the villain Hacker and his henchbots Delete and Buzz. Stepping into the role of the hero, players travel through a series of minigames to deepen their understanding of fractions and tap, jump, and solve their way to success!

Aligned with Common Core Standards for Grade 3 and 4 mathematical structure, this game grounds students' conceptual understanding of fractions and practice math while on summer break!

The public beta version is available for free for a limited time on FableVision Games.

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The Paper Girls Show

Are you ready to let your imagination run wild? In partnership with Global Tinker, FableVision created a new STEAM-powered animated series that encourages girls to find innovative solutions to everyday problems. Follow best friends and makers Caily and Reese as they discover the fantastical paper world of Confetti and find inspiration to solve their real world dilemmas. 

Each episode provides corresponding activities and curriculum that introduce viewers to a different type of accessible technology. From paper circuitry to 3D printing, viewers are able to learn about the world around them through relatable characters, creative storytelling, and magical art and design as they explore Confetti.

Empowering young girls to create, play, and imagine, this STEAM-based series allows for children to experience science, art, engineering, and programming in a whole new way that shows them: “If you can dream it, you can make it!”

Season one is available to stream now on YouTube.

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Quandary

Planet Brazos needs your help! Playing as the captain of a new space colony, players must help their settlers solve ethical dilemmas by considering each viewpoint and making the best decision for the community as a whole. A Learning Games Network and FableVision-created game for the classroom and at home, Quandary develops and trains students’ critical thinking and problem solving skills and uses character development and story to help  players understand the difference between fact and opinions, and apply the skills they gain to real world problems.

A multi-award winning ethics learning game, Quandary is available for free on the Quandary website.

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Go Wild! With Ranger Rick

Learn more about your favorite animals in Go Wild! With Ranger Rick, a FableVision-created app for the National Wildlife Federation (NWF)’s Ranger Rick magazine series. Engaging kids ages 4-9, this app features three activities: Mystery Animal, That’s Wild!, and Rick’s Pix. In Mystery Animal, players are given a range of clues and prompted to guess the animal they think it is! In That’s Wild!, children read and laugh along to riddles, jokes, and fun facts based on all of their favorite animals. In Rick’s Pix, children and parents can either take or select a photo and create a whole new image to save and share using stickers, nature backgrounds, and fun frames. Designed to immerse young players in the natural world, this app leverages real wildlife information provided by the NWF.

The app is free to download with a Ranger Rick magazine subscription, providing young children a whole new digital experience of nature!

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Good Thinking! The Science of Teaching Science 

Debunk myths in your classroom with the Good Thinking! The Science of Teaching Science animated series. Created by FableVision for the Smithsonian Science Education Center, the series provides teachers with opportunities to learn how to best adhere to next generation science standards, perfect for summer professional development! Each episode offers insightful pedagogical ideas that educators can explore across a large range of subject-matter. From topics like natural selection to energy and gravity, Good Thinking! is a useful tool for teachers to learn how to best deliver heavy content in an approachable fashion.

With a new lesson and demonstration on how to engage with students every episode, this series is research-proven and vetted by experts, helping to deepen understanding of STEM topics for both teachers and students.

Good Thinking! is housed on the Smithsonian website, YouTube channel, and on PBS Learning Media.

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The Word Collector

Discover the magic of words that can connect, transform, and empower! Written and illustrated by FableVision founder and award-winning children’s book author and illustrator Peter H. Reynolds, The Word Collector is an empowering book centered on celebrating the power of words. Published by Scholastic and named as a 2019 Outstanding Literary Work for Children by the NAACP, this book marks the importance and journey of finding your own unique voice in the world.

FableVision also created an accompanying animated film of The Word Collector to bring the story of a young boy who collects words that inspire and move him and the people around him to action to life.

Visit wordcollector.org to learn more about the book and purchase your own copy! And to stream and listen to Michelle and President Barack Obama read the story aloud for the Chicago Public Library’s “Live from the Library” storytime sessions, check out the Obama Foundation’s YouTube channel. To watch the animated film, visit the Scholastic website.

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