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Summer Fun with KLRN – June 8 to June 12, 2020

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by
Melissa Galvan
• Published on
PBS Summertime is Learning Time
KLRN Education

Dear Parents,

As the school year comes to an end, we know that many children will not be able to participate in many of the traditional summer time activities that we all look forward to year after year. We want you to know that KLRN is here for you and your family.

Our Education Team is working hard to create engaging virtual summer sessions for students of all ages. For families, we will continue to provide a weekly parent newsletter along with these weekly blog posts with fun activities for children of all ages. Starting next week, our newsletter format will change so that we can include activities for students of all ages.

We hope that our summer resources for families will help you keep your child engaged and learning over the summer.

With appreciation,
KLRN Education Team
education@klrn.org

This week we will focus on activities that deal with math, music and movement!

Infant/Toddler

  • Freeze Dance
    Watch the video together and move along! Just like the kids in the video, move your hips while the drummer drums. When the drumming stops, freeze like a statue! Try making up your own rhythms by drumming your fingers on any surface, like a counter top, the bottom of a cup or a plastic box. Take turns—children will love making up their own rhythms for you to dance to.
  • Monster Music
    Decide on something to do with someone they love. Some ideas are:
    Make up songs in the car, Do something fun outside once every weekend, Draw together, Put music on and dance.
  • Take it Outside!
    Use sidewalk chalk to write the numbers 1-10 on the sidewalk. Help your child think of items to gather for each number. For example, they might find one pinecone, two fallen leaves and three rocks. Many children thrive when their learning environment is moved outside

Preschool Activities

  • Count on Apple Seed Math!
    This activity covers multiple math skills including: subitizing (the ability to recognize amounts quickly without counting), counting, adding, and using manipulatives.
  • Play an Addition Game
    Make math more fun with this easy-to-make, frugal game! You can make it more difficult for your older children by using higher numbers or doing speed rounds.
  • Roll & Bead: make Jewelry With Math
    This multiplayer game is super simple and develops counting, subitizing (recognizing amounts without counting), as well as fine motor and hand-eye coordination skills. Children will get to make a cool bracelet too!

Elementary Activities

  • Music: Re-Mix Studio
    In this interactive activity, students can practice being music producers. They can select a type of music and re-mix it.
  • Majesty of Music and Mathematics: Elementary
    Learn about the fundamental connections between math and music, in four Acts: Rhythm, Frequency, Harmony and Fractals. Concepts presented in the video documentary are reinforced by hands-on experiments using the Google Chrome Music Lab Experiments.
  • The Science of Movement!: What’s Good
    Join us for What's Good, a new, six-part video series where inspiration and information meet the power of science. In this video and accompanying series of activities, parents and children will explore the topic of forces and motion through observing the world around them, letting loose with fun dance moves, and interacting with various simple machines in their local play area. Shake a leg!

Middle & High School Activities

  • Ancient Math & Music
    Explore how Pythagoras and Plato found mathematics in music and nature in this video from NOVA: The Great Math Mystery. The ancient Greeks identified three pleasing musical intervals: an octave, a fifth, and a fourth. Pythagoras discovered that the beautiful musical relationship between the notes was also a mathematical relationship: the harmonious sounds are produced by vibrating strings with particular ratios of string length. Plato believed geometry and mathematics exist in their own ideal world and that certain shapes (now known as the Platonic solids) were associated with the classical elements from which the world was made: earth, fire, air, water, and the universe.
  • Math with Jake: Music Transposition
    Composer and ukulele artist Jake Shimabukuro describes the concept of transposing notes in music and how ratios are applied in this video from Center for Asian American Media. Shimabukuro explains why it is necessary to transpose music written for a piano, or other instruments with a large range, to the corresponding notes on an instrument with a small range, such as a ukulele. In the accompanying classroom activity, students use ratios to transpose a short piece written for the ukulele back to a lower key for the piano.
  • Oscillators Experiment
    Learn how the different shapes of sound waves create different effects at various frequencies.
  • Sound Waves Experiment
    Learn about the behavior of sound waves at different pitches (frequencies).
  • Strings Experiment
    Learn how dividing strings into different ratios (lengths) changes the sound they produce.

We hope you enjoyed some of these activities. If you follow KLRN on your facebook account please be sure to share your activities and use the #KLRNeducates and #KLRNLearnatHome tags.

Tune in next week for more learning fun with your favorite PBS Kids programs.

Parent Resources:

Every week, celebrities and PBS KIDS authors are reading aloud their favorite books on the PBS KIDS' Facebook page and YouTube channel. Watch them all again here and find fun activities for the whole family to do!

  • PBS KIDS Backgrounds for Your Next Video Chat
  • KLRN is offering NEW PARENT Sessions go to the Events Page to register for these upcoming FREE sessions on Social Emotional Development 5/14, Healthy Kids 5/21 and Energy Conservation in the Home 5/28.
  • For a list of FREE Wi-Fi locations around the community go here.
  • The most recent KLRN Family Newsletter can be foundhere.
  • Welcome to Frontline Child Care! On this site you will find information on child care options for Texas' frontline workers fighting to stop the spread of COVID-19.
  • Find food assistance, help paying bills, and other free or reduced cost programs, including new programs for the COVID-19 pandemic here.
  • New Sesame Street site with Autism resources in English and Spanish. Resources highlight that all children are amazing in their own ways. And, at a time when many families are experiencing unprecedented uncertainty, the resources provide coping strategies for parents of children with autism, supporting them as they adjust to a “for-now” normal while still addressing their children’s unique needs.
  • United Way of San Antonio various resources.
  • Temporary emergency childcare assistance (up to 3 weeks) will be provided for licensed and registered childcare center or licensed/registered home care. Info here.
  • Mental Health & Substance Use Resources from Texas Health and Human Services

Recursos para Padres: