Extra Credit @ Home

PLAY: With these four Mars Mission game challenges, kids will collect fun achievement stamps and earn their passport to space.

READ: These fun one-page articles will introduce your kid to life in space. Some are available at easier or harder reading levels.

• Exploring Mars: easier or harder
• Inside a Spaceship: easier or harder
• Space Careers

Plus, chat as a family about the space jobs you would enjoy.

1. Help your child get creative and brainstorm about this challenging time with these reflection prompts (“share what makes you feel grateful, show how people are staying connected...“).

2. Then have your child develop artwork, writing, or any other creative project that reflects their experience of the pandemic.

You can share your artist’s work on social media or a school site with the hashtag #weareallconnected.

By watching the film, your kid just might discover a passion for public speaking and learn great life lessons about the effectiveness of practice and preparation.

Movie night–Questions to ask after you watch:

• Which child’s speech was your favorite and why?
• How can public speaking make the world better?
• How did practice change the kids’ performances?
• For example, compare the boy’s practice at 3:07–3:50 with his performance at 48:42–51:47.
• What strategies did the students use to improve their speeches and get their audience’s attention?
• For example, see 28:20–30:42.

Take the Stage!

1. Prepare: Help your child find an excerpt of a famous speech online (see ideas below), select a poem from a book, or write their own words.
Try looking for speeches by: Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, Barack Obama, Mahatma Gandhi, Malala Yousafzai.

2. Practice: Explain that they can recite a sentence or a paragraph at a time to memorize it (or alternate looking down at their text with looking up at their audience). They can also write on paper or index cards any hand motions they intend to use.

3. Perform: You can even get your whole family involved and have a Family Oratorical Fest. (A videochat- and phone-friendly activity!)

1. Show a short video of an author discussing how they get ideas for their stories:

• Grades 1–4: video of author Peter H. Reynolds
• Grades 4–5: video of author Sayantani DasGupta

2. Give your child the Find Your Story! activity sheet to help them brainstorm a few ideas for problems and solutions to write about in a story. (Tell them that they don’t have to write about anything that upsets them.)

3. Get writing! And illustrating, if they want.

Take it further: When they’re done, celebrate by reading the story aloud as a family. Choose who will read the narrator, and who will read each character. You can even broadcast your reading to a relative over videochat.

1. Have your child watch this video of kids preparing an experiment using basic ingredients like water, oil, and gummy bears.

2. Then, they’ll use the scientific method and this experiment printable to try it themselves and find out what happens! You may wish to do this experiment together so ingredients are measured with care. (Feel free to substitute ingredients, like swapping gummy bears for dried fruit bits.)

Vocabulary to go over with your child:

• A hypothesis is an educated guess about what may happen in an experiment. It’s OK if a hypothesis is wrong—that’s the point of doing the experiment, to find out!
• When they design an experiment, remind your child to change just one thing, or variable, at a time, so there will be a clear cause and effect.
• It’s also helpful to have a control group (a version of whatever they’re experimenting with, where nothing has been done to it) for comparison.

Take it further: What other experiments can your kids come up with? For inspiration, direct them to browse kitchen ingredients, art supplies, plant cuttings from your block…

For younger kids: Skip the board game and focus on making sure your kiddos know:

• Wash your hands before and after touching food (especially with foods that we can’t eat without cooking, like meat).
• For foods that need to be stored in the fridge, it’s important to put them there right away.

For older kids: Discuss how your kids can help keep your home food-safe (help you quickly load groceries from the car to fridge; if perishable food has accidentally been left out for more than two hours, don’t eat it and tell an adult; and so on).

Spanish versions of the materials are also available.

Take It Further:

1. Ask your child to share what they learned. Get the conversation started with questions like, what is one thing you learned about how grass helps people and the environment?

2. Chat about how you can introduce or boost the presence of plants in your own lives, whether you have a backyard or are looking to start a windowsill garden.

3. Challenge your child to draw/collage/paint your home or community with increased plants (and perhaps even label them with how they are helping).

Grades 1–2: Help your child imagine what they want to be when they grow up with this step-by-step family activity. Kids will set a goal, share it, and learn about the power of education—an inspiring experience!

Grades 3–5: Use these charming career notebook printables to help students connect their interests and skills to possible jobs.

Here’s how:

1. Prompt your child to share their favorite interests.

• Show how interests can connect to careers.
• For example: If you love playing computer games, you might want to become an app creator who makes games.

2. Direct your child to think about strengths and skills they have (reading, writing, drawing, problem solving, sharing, etc.).

• Chat about how professionals use those skills.
• For example: A journalist uses writing and listening skills to help report the news.

3. Give your child the career notebook printables. (Younger children can just do the first page.)

• Show how to cut the pages in half and staple them to create a booklet.
• Point out that the pages will help your child collect the details they’ll need to choose and research a career.
• For research, they can use the internet or any relevant books you have handy (tip: your local library may have ebooks available for borrowing).

Level Up: Role play a scene with your child acting as the future professional they want to be! You pretend to be a customer or a client and share a problem with your child. Let your mini-professional use their future career skills to solve it.

Start off with Mirror, Mirror on page 1—an easy, creative activity that uses symmetrical movements.

Take it further by encouraging your child to create a piece of artwork that shows symmetry—a great activity for winding down if your child makes it through all six movement activities! Fold a paper in half to begin.

Solo child, one room? The Yes, Crew Chief and Top Racer activities work well with limited space, with or without a partner.

Grades 1–2: Outer space, the Wild West, and clocks?!? Try this popular online game and app to help your kiddos practice how to tell time.

Grades 3–5: Is your kid a spender or a saver? Play this family board game to help them practice saving, giving, and budgeting.

Level Up: Challenge your kid to make a daily schedule or build a budget!

1. Research
Grades 1–2: Have a chat about animal features like beaks, wings, feathers, fur, tails, antennae, gills.
Grades 3–5: Ask your child to find three to five animal or plant features online, then draw, label, and describe them.
Inspiration: Animal Cards and Fantastic Beasts Fact Files

2. Reflect
Grades 1–2: Ask your child: What one or two animal features would you like to have? Why? How would you use it?
Grades 3–5: Have your child imagine they could have any plant or animal features. Then ask: What three features would you choose? Why? How would you use them?

3. Create (this could take several days!)
Grades 1–2: Have your child write a story or draw a comic (start with three blank squares) starring themselves with their new animal features.
Grades 3–5: Prompt your child to write a script or draw a storyboard for a scene that shows off those animal features in action.
Bonus: Act it out—with siblings if possible.

Level Up: Do a video chat with friends and family and have your kid showcase their work!

You might do the videos all at once on a weekly basis. Yoga Saturdays, anyone? You might also try building them into your family’s day for added structure.

• Try the Boost Energy video right before it’s time to start learning.
• Turn on the Improve Focus video as a break during the afternoon slump.
• Tune in to the Calm Down video to transition from the end of the learning day to the evening.
• Freestyle! Or do your own thing. After learning a few moves, try a different one each day.

1. Share this student article (or this simpler version) with your child (or have them read it aloud to you). The article explains how and why spending too much time on screens can harm their developing brain and body.

2. Ask your tween to use this screen time/sleep chart to track and analyze their habits and moods.

Take it further: Have your kid pretend to be a scientist (lab coat optional). Challenge them to use what they learned to write or record a Q&A about screen time. Ask them to answer the following questions from “the public”:

• Why does using your phone before bed sometimes make it hard to sleep?
• What do scientists know about the connection between screen time and mental health?
• Can the amount of time you spend staring at a screen affect your brain development?
• How can teens reduce screen time to support better health?

1. Help your child get creative and brainstorm about this challenging time with these reflection prompts (“share what makes you feel grateful, show how people are staying connected...“).

2. Then have your child develop artwork, writing, or any other creative project that reflects their experience of the pandemic.

You can share your artist’s work on social media or a school site with the hashtag #weareallconnected.

By watching the film, your kid just might discover a passion for public speaking and learn great life lessons about the effectiveness of practice and preparation.

Movie night–Questions to ask after you watch:

• Which speech was your favorite and why?
• How can public speaking help address problems in the world?
• How did practice change the kids’ performances?
• For example, compare the boy’s practice at 3:07–3:50 with his performance at 48:42–51:47.
• What strategies did the students use to improve their speeches and get their audience’s attention?
• For example, see 28:20–30:42.

Take the Stage!

1. Prepare: Help your child find an excerpt of a famous speech online (see ideas below), select a poem from a book, or write their own words.
Try looking for speeches by: Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, Barack Obama, Mahatma Gandhi, Malala Yousafzai.

2. Practice: Explain that they can recite a sentence or a paragraph at a time to memorize it (or alternate looking down at their text with looking up at their audience). They can also write on paper or index cards any hand motions they intend to use.

3. Perform: You can even get your whole family involved and have a Family Oratorical Fest. (A videochat- and phone-friendly activity!)

1. Give your tween:

• This student magazine as an intro to coding
• This thought organizer for brainstorming a hero and their challenge

2. Then visit the CS First site for step-by-step videos on how to code a hero.

1. Give your child this graphic organizer, perfect for brainstorming and planning a story.

2. Ask them to write a story or poem, draw a graphic novel, or act out a play. (If your kid chooses to act out a play, suggest that they make costumes too!)

3. Have them choose from these story starters and start creating.

• What if plants had feelings? Choose a plant or tree in your neighborhood and describe its thoughts during a typical day (or an unexpected day!).
• Imagine the life of a piece of litter. Think about a discarded item by the side of the road. Does it get recycled, and turned into other objects? Is it homesick, or happy to be traveling around the world?
• You’ve found a magic leaf! If plants let you step into any nature space in the world, where would you go, who would you meet, and what would happen there?

Tips

• Remind your child that strong stories generally have a problem and solution (or conflict and resolution).
• Consider tone: light, serious, sarcastic, inspirational…
• Look for ways to show how characters have unique personalities and are different from each other.

Take it further: As a family, record your tween’s story. Choose who will read the narrator, and who will read each character. Have fun!

Take it further Discuss how your kids can help keep your home food-safe (help you quickly load groceries from the car to the fridge; if perishable food has accidentally been left out for more than two hours, don’t eat it and tell an adult; and so on).

Not into cooking? Play a fun, food-related charades game.

Spanish versions of the materials are also available.

Do any of these math topics confuse your kid?
Percentages, scatterplots, fractions, geometry, equations, and more? Get ready for engaging videos, interactive practice tools, and quizzes that will explain tricky math concepts in fresh, easy ways.

What To Do

1. Have your child make a username with one click (there’s no password, so they should write their unique username down).

2. Choose a workshop and start learning.

3. Optional: They can save their results at the end of each workshop to share with you or their teacher.

1. Tell your child that they possess some skills that they can use in future jobs. Ask them to reflect on what those skills may be.

2. Explain that hiring managers want job candidates with hard skills and soft skills.

• Define hard skills as skills and knowledge used for specific jobs. Hard skills include coding, operating specific machines, proficiency in Spanish.
• Define soft skills as behaviors for interacting effectively with people professionally. Research shows that soft skills such as adaptability, the ability to work in teams, and decision-making are key to success in almost every workplace.

3. Share the Make Your Own Dream Board planning sheet. It will help your child develop an inspirational collage that reflects their vision for the future.

4. Chat about their goals and how they can work to attain them. Consider discussing what elements of the plan are your child’s responsibility vs. elements your family can help with.

Start off with Mirror, Mirror on page 1—an easy, creative activity that uses symmetrical movements.

Take it further by encouraging your child to create a piece of artwork that shows symmetry—a great activity for winding down if your child makes it through all six movement activities! Fold a paper in half to begin.

Solo child, one room? The Yes, Crew Chief and Top Racer activities work well with limited space, with or without a partner.

1. Read about the fascinating science of sleep in this student magazine and digital interactive tool.
2. Research sleeping patterns with this sleep tracker chart.

Level Up: Have your tween use the writing organizer (page 2) to practice persuasive writing.

Have your child:

RESEARCH

1. Find five animal or plant features online.
2. Write notes recording why those features function well in the specific ecosystem the animal or plant lives in.
3. Draw, label, and caption the features.

Inspiration: Animal Cards and Fantastic Beasts Fact Files

REFLECT

1. Choose: Which of those plant or animal features would they like to have? Explain why.
2. Analyze: How would these features work in your environment? Is there a better environment for those features?
3. Imagine: How would having these features change their life?

CREATE

1. Write a story or draw a comic featuring their new animal features. Try these brainstorming and drawing tips.
2. Develop a script or draw a storyboard for a scene that shows off those animal features in action.

Bonus: Act it out—with siblings if possible.

Level Up: Do a video chat with friends and family and have your kid showcase their work!

You might do the videos all at once on a weekly basis. Yoga Saturdays, anyone? You might also try building them into your family’s day for added structure.

• Try the Boost Energy video right before it’s time to start learning.
• Turn on the Improve Focus video as a break during the afternoon slump.
• Tune in to the Calm Down video to transition from the end of the learning day to the evening.
• Freestyle! Or do your own thing. After learning a few moves, try a different one each day.