This post is sponsored by Hero Elementary on PBS KIDS.
Cheers to a new year of life! We are so thankful to have another opportunity to continue learning and growing as a family with you all! The new year typically brings a lot of new things to everyone’s households, but I am going to hold on to a TV show that debuted last year that has come to be a household favorite of ours! The show I am referring to is Hero Elementary on PBS KIDS; this adorable little show helps to spark a love of science in children! As someone who truly had a love-hate relationship with science, I have searched high and low for a program that helps kids realize they all have Superpowers of Science that give them the tools that they need to be little scientists and solve problems.
This month, Hero Elementary debuts a full week’s worth of the new episodes. These episodes have so much learning potential for our children. One thing that I really like about these new episodes is that they focus on everyday phenomena that kids experience but may not fully understand. For example, back home in Tennessee, we didn’t get a lot of snow, but we got enough to play in! Here in the greater Phoenix area, I don’t think we will be encountering any snow, although we could (and may) drive a few hours to a different city for a quick, snowy day trip. When watching the episode “The Crew Who SNOWS What to Do”, I discovered that Muffin, like Sparks’ Crew, did not quite understand why the snow melted. Thoughtfully, Hero Elementary sent us a gift that provided us with some stellar tools to conduct science in our home!
Exercising Our Superpowers of Science
First and foremost, we had to make some snow of our own; so we could build a snowman, of course! We recently discovered some play snow in a toy that we picked up a few weeks back, but it wasn’t nearly enough to build a snowman of the size we had in mind.
We had to get a little creative, but Muffin had the great idea to put some blankets in a pillowcase! After building our snowman and dressing him up, we had a conversation about what would happen if he was a real snowman outside in the sun. She was confused when I first asked, so we re-watched the episode of Hero Elementary that originally inspired us.
She then was able to guess that the snowman would “go away”. To put this into practice, we talked about how snow is made of water. Muffin also realizes that ice is made of water! We talk about hot versus cold and decide to perform some science tests with ice. Since we don’t have snow, we decided to test our melting theory with ice. We put a few ice cubes in four places: on the kitchen counter in the house, outside on the porch, in the refrigerator, and in the freezer.
The Outcome of Our Science Observation
We came back to check on them an hour later and had some insightful results! Muffin was very surprised to see what had happened to the ice!
- Kitchen Counter: Melted.
- Outside: Melted.
- Refrigerator: Partially melted.
- Freezer: Ice!
This presented us with a unique opportunity to discuss why each ice cube turned out so differently. What excites me about this whole process is watching my daughter’s eyes light up as she truly understands why everything turns out the way that it does. It is such a satisfying feeling to know that I am able to contribute to my daughter’s learning at home! I am not ashamed to say that I was having a hard time figuring out how to weave learning into home life, especially when things first shut down and we were Muffin’s only teachers for several months. Hero Elementary is the perfect supplement to any curriculum because it makes it fun to extend science lessons into everyday life.
What is the Value in Watching Hero Elementary?
In case you didn’t know, Muffin has an IEP for a few delays. Some of our goals for her IEP this school year are working on back and forth conversations, asking questions, and deductive reasoning based on context clues. We have really been able to tackle many of those skills through our interactions before, during, and after watching Hero Elementary together. Some days, you can really see her thinking critically while she’s listening to the show. It is always astounding when she uses a new word or phrase that she picked up from the show too; kids are little sponges when they enjoy the learning experiences.
You can watch Hero Elementary on PBS KIDS. Check your local listings for times or watch anytime on PBSKIDS.org or on the PBS KIDS video app!
Tune in next month to find out what problems we will be solving with help from the lessons we learn from watching Hero Elementary on PBS KIDS.
Thank you Hero Elementary for sponsoring this post!
