HOME LEARNING IDEAS

We know how tough it can be to juggle your own responsibilities while keeping young children entertained and educated at the same time. With this collection of activities and resources across the curriculum, we hope to alleviate a little bit of that stress.

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As you explore the BrainPOP Jr. catalogue, follow these tips for actively viewing movies with your child.

Invite your child to choose the movie. Search in a favorite subject area or pick a topic your child is learning in school.

Spark interest by asking your child to share what they know about the topic. Encourage a personal connection—it will motivate them to watch!

Example: Before a movie about recycling, ask “How do we recycle in our family? Why do we recycle?”  

Ask your child to share one or two facts they learned in the movie.

Prompt your child to share ideas in Make-a-Map, and vary the activity by grade level. Kindergarteners may list several facts while second graders connect ideas. You can also use the Draw About It feature to have your child respond to the movie with a drawing. Meanwhile, Word Play and Write About It support vocabulary related to the topic. 

These features can be found on each Topic page, below the movie player:

Watch the movie together. When a new question appears on Annie's Notebook, the pause button turns red. Pause and discuss the question with your child.  

Pause to discuss new vocabulary and concepts, and to prompt your child to make connections to their own lives. To find activities for extending learning at home, click the yellow Lessons Idea button below the movie player:

No baking-soda-and-vinegar volcanoes here—these ideas for self-directed learning are sure to pique your child's innate curiosity.

Explore the Conservation Unit. After watching Natural Resources and Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, invite your child to try these easy-to-do activities:

Recycle It!: Make a sign to hang on your recycling bin—write and draw pictures of items that can be recycled. 

Reuse It!: Search your home for items you can reuse instead of throwing away, and use Make-a-Map to brainstorm ways to reuse the items.

Reduce It!: Millions of unwanted or broken toys end up in our landfills each year. Have your child reduce waste by repurposing or fixing an old toy for a fun art project!

Grown-Up Involvement: Low

Watch the Plant Life Cycle movie together, and have your child identify the stages of the life cycle using Make-a-Map. 

Finally, make a real-life connection by helping your child grow their own plant inside a terrarium. This activity page provides all the steps. All you need is a plastic bottle, soil, and seeds!

Grown-Up Involvement: High  

Invite your child to play the animal-themed Sortify game, then prompt them to explore the topics in the Animals Unit. 

Once they understand the material, help them design their own offline Animals Sortify Game, challenging family members and friends to play!

Grown-Up Involvement: Medium  

Empower your child to get creative while learning about colors and shapes.

Talk about colors with your child. What are their favorites and why? Have them watch the BrainPOP Jr. movie Colors. After, have them go on a tour of your home, looking for objects of different colors to create a real-world color wheel! Objects can include clothing, toys, food, buttons—whatever you can find. Arrange the objects in a circular color wheel, and have them present the color to your family, describing each color and explaining whether or not it’s a primary color. (If it’s not a primary, they should explain what primary colors blend to create that color!)

Grown-Up Involvement: Medium 

Explore the Pablo Picasso movie. After, invite your child to experiment with color and shapes just like Picasso. Have them complete the online Picasso Activity, drawing a picture inspired by Picasso’s Blue, Rose, or Cubist Period. Or have them do this activity offline. 

Either way, display their masterpiece in the house for the whole family to enjoy!

Grown-Up Involvement: Low 

These activities will strengthen your child's reading, writing, and oral language skills.

Look for a phonics topic your child is learning about in school in the Phonics Unit. Have them watch the movie, listening carefully to the sound the featured letters make. Pause as needed, encouraging your child to repeat the sound—you can model the sound, too! 

After watching, challenge your child to find words in and around your home that make that sound. As your child searches, have them keep a list of the words or draw pictures of their findings. For example, if the sound is long e, they may find these in your home: cheese, bead, meat, tree, key, jeans. 

Grown-Up Involvement: Medium

Go to the Authors Unit, and have your child choose a favorite author or learn about a new one. After learning about the author, read aloud a book by that author mentioned in the movie. Then, challenge your child to make a picture book that retells the story with pictures and words. They can snapshot and save pictures from the BrainPOP movie and add them to their book. Depending on your child’s writing development, they might include one word per picture, a phrase, or a full sentence. Or, you can write what your child describes. They can use a story map to plan, then use the notes to make their book.

Grown-Up Involvement: Medium/High 

Explore one of BrainPOP Jr.’s poetry-related topics, such as Poems, Rhyming Words, or Writing with the Senses. Then invite your child to write their own poem! Some ideas include:

Acrostic: First letter of each line spells out a word. Your child may enjoy making an acrostic of their name.

Shape: Poem is formed in a shape, like a heart.

Rebus: A poem with pictures that stand for words.

Haiku: A 3-line poem based on syllables. The first line has five syllables, the second has seven, and the third has five. (Note: Haiku may be the hardest because your child needs to understand syllables!)

Grown-Up Involvement: Medium

Switch it up! Lots of real-world learning happens right in your very own kitchen. From counting and measuring ingredients to watching moisture form on a glass with ice cubes, your child can apply and observe real math and science.

After watching the BrainPOP Jr. movie Changing States of Matter, ask your child: Do all liquids freeze at the same rate? Investigate by pouring small amounts of different liquids into labeled cups, such as water, milk, juice, fresh water, and salt water. Put them in the freezer. Prompt your child to predict which will freeze fastest? Which slowest? 

Have them record their prediction and compare those to the results of the experiment.

Grown-Up Involvement: Medium  

Watch movies from the Measurement Unit that focus on skills you use when cooking, such as Cups, Pints, Quarts, Gallons, Temperature, Grams and Kilograms, and Ounces, Pounds and Tons. Then select a favorite recipe to make together. Following a recipe’s steps is a great opportunity to discuss the concept of "sequence"—what do you do first, second, and so on. As you follow each step, have your child count and measure ingredients. When setting the timer, review how long a minute is and how many minutes in an hour!. When the food is done cooking or baking, have your child test the temperature. 

Grown-Up Involvement: High

Explore the topics in the Matter Unit together. After watching the movies, go on a matter scavenger hunt around the home finding examples of:

• The three different types of matter (solid, liquid, gas). 

• Changing states of matter (an ice cube melting, water boiling, steam appearing from a kettle, and so on). 

• Physical changes, such as water droplets of condensation forming on an ice-cold glass. 

And don’t forget about mixtures! There’s lots of those, especially when cooking and baking. 

Grown-Up Involvement: Medium

Developing social and emotional competencies, such as managing stress, resolving conflict, persevering, and more are important to success in school and at home! Be sure to explore BrainPOP Jr.'s complete Feelings Unit.

Watch the Emotions movie with your child. Then encourage them to use Make-a-Map to identify different emotions they feel and connect each emotion to a moment that made them feel that way. 

For example, if they write "sad" in a node, they might connect it to another node where they write "lost a toy." Remember—you can add words, images, and even clips from the movie to your concept map!

Grown-Up Involvement: High

Watch the Conflict Resolution movie together. After, read aloud a fairy tale, such as Goldilocks, where a conflict was not resolved in a good way—they aren’t in most fairy tales! Then help your child come up with a new ending for the fairy tale in which the characters use conflict resolution strategies.  

Bonus: Use a story map to tell the new story in words and drawings. 

Grown-Up Involvement: High

Watch the Mindfulness movie with your child. Pause at around 3:30, when the movie describes the idea of gratitude. After you see what Becca and Moby are grateful for, ask your child to share aloud what they're grateful for. 

After the movie, have them use Draw About It to draw what they're grateful for. Or, go offline and draw pictures on paper. Put their drawings together in a Gratitude Picture Book.

Grown-Up Involvement: Medium

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