Extending the Value of What Children Watch
There’s no getting around the fact that young children will watch TV. It’s impossible to overstate its status as a social force and the collective fire ring around which we all gather. The trick is learning how to harness this social force for the good of your children. You know how powerfully programs and advertisements influence children. How can parents and childcare providers use television to its most positive ends and take advantage of its entertainment value? PBS 45 & 49 has some ideas!
Young children learn by interacting with the people and objects around them. Direct hands-on experiences and repetition help them to digest information and retain it. PBS 45 & 49’s children’s series present great opportunities for fun and interesting ways to accomplish this through our Learning Triangle strategy of “Watch, Do and Read.” Here are some suggestions for follow-up activities after they watch our programs:
Plan activities that reinforce a program’s content.
If LeVar Burton takes you on a tour of a pretzel factory in Reading Rainbow, for instance, try making pretzels at home. You and your child can make pretzels out of play dough or clay. If you feel more ambitious, bake real pretzels.
Link your children’s experiences to what has been seen.
Point out connections to your children as you go through daily routines: “We are cooperating just the way Big Bird and Telly did on Sesame Street.” “There is a shoe store that looks just like the one we saw on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. Want to go in and see what it’s like inside?”
Re-enact situations in dramatic play.
Encourage your children to re-create the places and situations that they enjoy watching on television. Help them find props to make the store, bank, railroad station or imaginary place that captured their interest. Offer to be whichever character they would like you to be in their game.
Extend the learning through art.
Suggest that your children make drawings or paintings of places and characters they like to see on television. You can even help them construct scenes from favorite programs using household items such as milk cartons, straws, paper towel rolls and lots of imagination.
Extend the learning with books.
Find books that reinforce themes presented on the television programs your children watch. Help your children make connections between the stories and characters they like on television and the books you enjoy together.
The Learning Triangle
Watch, Do & Read
Learning Triangle “To Go”
You can find Learning Triangle activities “to go” in PBS 45 & 49’s Lending Library kits. The kits include videos of our children’s programs and related books and materials for activities so you can employ the Learning Triangle with your own children or the children in your in-home or childcare center. You can borrow our Lending Library kits from these locations:
Akron Children’s Hospital Family Resource Center
One Perkins Square
Akron, Ohio 44308
This site houses various kits related to health and safety issues. For childcare sites, schools and individual use.
Stark County Early Childhood Resource Center
3114 Cleveland Ave. NW
Canton, Ohio 44709
Family literacy kits for childcare providers.
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