Check out exclusive new wall art featuring the characters from “Jim Henson’s Chatter Zoo” – a brand new iOS app from Mindshapes with an emphasis on early language acquisition. This cool, new wall art, valued at approximately $20 when it debuts at retail, was specially created exclusively its debut.
DID YOU KNOW:
·
In the first year of life,
children gobble up words at an incredible rate, learning 2-4 words a day in
their second year of life and 4-5 a day by the time they reach their 5th
birthday?
·
By 6 years of age, children in
the U.S. have learned at least 10,000 words on average.
·
And, by adulthood, we have
learned a vocabulary of anywhere between 50,000 and 100,000 words, by
conservative estimates.
Yuuko Uchikoshi, Ed.D.
Associate Professor, School of Education at the University of California at
Davis, expands on the importance of vocabulary, “Children who are exposed to
and addressed lots of language in their environment have much larger
vocabularies than children who are exposed to fewer words, and vocabulary size
is correlated not only with language abilities later in life, but also with
important academic outcomes.”
Learning while having fun
is a top priority at The Jim Henson Company, and as the digital space has developed to be a highly
powerful tool for preschool learning in the last several years, they teamed up
with a language specialist as well as award-winning app developer Mindshapes,
to create and launch a new app that provides opportunities for the youngest kids
(24 to 42 months old) to master specific language goals while caring for their
new friends in Jim Henson’s Chatter Zoo!
Available
now in iTunes, Jim Henson’s Chatter Zoo was created
by Alex Rockwell (Pajanimals, Bear in the Big Blue House) and centers on
four adorable zoo babies --FRANNY the baby cheetah, BAILEY the baby elephant, PIP
the baby wallaby, and LULU the baby panda. The big idea of Chatter Zoo is
that young kids at home, who are just a little bit older than our adorable baby
animals, get to ‘take care of’ and ‘teach’ these characters the very skills
that they themselves are in the final stages of mastering using interactive
play. This offers them a sense of pride and accomplishment
while simultaneously reinforcing the skills they are modeling. Behind all of
this interaction is a curriculum that supports vocabulary acquisition and early
language building. The zoo babies need the users help to learn lots of skills,
but in order to do this, they must first master the most important skill of all
-- how to talk!
Screen shots from Jim Henson’s Chatter Zoo
BAILEY THE BABY ELEPHANT
LULU THE
BABY PANDA
Ms. Uchikoshi, language
specialist for the new app further explains. “Chatter Zoo teaches and
reinforces language acquisition by transforming screen time from a passive
activity into an active learning experience through engagement and interaction
and—utilizing techniques drawn directly from a growing science on child
development and language learning—incorporates three important factors that
facilitate the learning of new words and concepts: frequency of exposure,
comparing and contrasting, and routine and rehearsal.”
APP DESCRIPTION
The Chatter Zoo
‘appisode’ includes two “Learn & Play” activities and two interactive stories,
animation and music content immersing children into a kid-friendly,
entertaining, and intriguing day in Chatter Zoo. Together with the zoo
babies, children will experience meal time where they help to feed the zoo babies
their favorite food; play time; bath time fun after a busy day of playing; and
bed time. Each part of the app focuses on a few key words. In every
story, the characters use the key words, and then repeat them in a simple song
form at the end. The learn-and-play activities allow the child to interact with
objects and learn their names while playing with the babies.
The
zoo babies have a very joyful relationship with the audience at home. Through “Direct
Address” they communicate with the user in order to play with them and to learn
from them. The babies also think the user is their best, best friend. And Mindshapes’
custom Livebook™ format allows children to interact with and bring them closer
to the characters through a variety of touchscreen interactions. The
characters in Chatter Zoo are not only adorable, they also have a unique
relationship with their young audience – they need them!
Follow The Jim Henson Company:
Follow Mindshapes:
Jim Henson’s Chatter Zoo – Wall Art
The
Jim Henson Company and Mindshapes are offering you to win the
Jim Henson’s Chatter Zoo app on your iOS device. And as a special gift, they are
offering you the opportunity win a specially created wall
graphic featuring these adorable baby animals. The wall art is 12” x 12,” features 16 useable graphics, and
will have a retail value of $20 when available to the general public.
To enter just fill out the rafflecopter form below Open to the US only. The winner will be notified via email and will have 48 hours to reply. Giveaway will end on 9/6/13 Thanks again to Mindshapes and The Jim Henson Company for offering this fantastic prize.
To enter just fill out the rafflecopter form below Open to the US only. The winner will be notified via email and will have 48 hours to reply. Giveaway will end on 9/6/13 Thanks again to Mindshapes and The Jim Henson Company for offering this fantastic prize.
a Rafflecopter giveaway
7 comments:
BAILEY THE BABY ELEPHANT
Well I've never seen this before but I'm partial to elephants so probably the fave would be the baby elephant :)
Lulu the panda, I love pandas :)
I love LULU the baby panda but the elephant is cute too.
bailey!!!!
BAILEY the baby elephant for sure!
Lulu the panda
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