Does your child enjoy music? PLAY! has plenty of activities for the musically inclined. In most cases kids can create music tracks and save their compositions. Here’s a list to check out:

• Animal Orchestra let’s players mix the sounds and rhythms made by the all-animal savanna band from the PBS KIDS series Mama Mirabelle’s Home Movies. Record them for playback any time!
• In Henrietta’s Musical Kitchen players make rhythms with homemade instruments. Choose from an ensemble of bottles, pans, pasta, dry beans and other items. Players can save their rhythm tracks.
• In the Sky Music activity music lights up the sky – literally! This unique and magical project introduces the concept of a musical scale and allows players to save their compositions.
• All Geared Up! is an activity with Curious George that’s, well, not exactly “musical” but is a fun little sound experimentation activity where the gears produce various sounds at different speeds depending on the gear size.
• Daniel’s Music Box (showcased this week) challenges the player to a memory game where she must name the musical instruments in the order in which they were played. This game has three levels and gets progressively harder.

We added a new printable (pencil and paper) activity to go with Daniel’s Music Box. See if you can help Daniel by classifying instruments into string, percussion and woodwind.

Cinco de Mayo reminds us all that great courage can tip even the most overwhelming odds. It is also a reminder for our young ones who do not have Spanish-speaking family members that Spanish is an important language for Americans to learn. It is spoken by as many as half a billion people worldwide, by our neighbors to the south, and by many U.S. residents and citizens. And, early childhood is a GREAT time to try out a new language! That’s why this week we’re showcasing Little Pim Spanish, a collection of three games in PBS KIDS PLAY! that introduce 60 words and phrases about mealtime, play time and bedtime. ¡Feliz Cinco de Mayo!

Last week we celebrated Earth Day (April 22nd) and added some fun new decorations to your child’s home room. Why not extend the Earth Day theme by trying some “green building” with Bob the Builder? Then check out our two new Curious George TV episodes!

In the game “Mission: Build It!” we see how Bob uses green building techniques. For example, he chooses his building sites with care and recycles materials after demolition. Kids can build with a windmill or solar panel on the roof! Or, design the outdoor landscape using items such as a garden or birdhouse that provide homes or food for animals.

The Curious George TV episode “Something New Under the Sun” shows one cool advantage of building with renewable energy. I won’t spoil the surprise, but let’s just say that, thanks to solar power, somehow by the end of the episode you will end up with a wonderful lasagna!

In “Everything Old Is New Again,” the city is awarding the “Golden Arrows Award” to the apartment building that collects the most recycling. George is eager to help. Too eager… He doesn’t realize that he should only recycle products AFTER they’ve been used! But we’ll forgive our favorite little monkey, right?

In our second Dinosaur Train game, “Build a Scene,” your child can build a dinosaur-era landscape using plants, animals and other objects from the Cretaceous, Triassic, or Jurassic time periods. Stickers and backgrounds change to match the period that the player chooses.

It’s easy to save your masterpieces, too, with the “Save” feature (it’s the icon on the bottom nav bar that looks like a little paper-cut man). When you hit save, the scene will be stored on the bulletin board in your child’s “Home Room.” The save feature is available for all of the creativity games in PBS KIDS PLAY!

This summer we just launched our first two Dinosaur Train games on PBS KIDS PLAY!, with two more coming soon. Our first game, “Life Cycles,” is a Life Sciences game. Buddy, the T-Rex character (and star of the show), is finding lots of plants, fish, frogs and other life in a pond he’s discovered and would like to know how little things like seeds and eggs turn into grown-ups. Kids help him figure out this knotty problem by rearranging picture tiles into the right order. (Each picture tile shows a plant or animal at a certain stage of development.)

What I like best about this game is that, after getting the life cycle sequence right, Buddy shows a recap of how that creature grows. Note: Since this is a three-level game, there’s going to be more tiles thrown into the mix at the higher game levels. Hope you enjoy!

Today we added a new creativity project based on the TV series “Franny’s Feet.” In this game the player creates a dance routine based on one of four genres: ballet, disco, tap, or western. Your child can build a simple choreographic sequence for Franny, the animated girl character, and then watch Franny perform on stage.  The dress, music and movement elements are specific to the selected dance style. Hope your child enjoys!

Subscribers to PBS KIDS PLAY! may notice that a new landing page went live overnight. This page displays for all subscribers who visit www.pbskidsplay.org using our auto-login feature. (See end of this post for more on “auto-login.”)

Why the new landing page? The old design treated subscribers and first-time visitors the same. This meant subscribers would have a promotional video start to play with every return visit to our site. Instead, now the page presents information that is more targeted and useful to subscribers… like a link to this blog, for instance!

Landing page features:

• A “What’s New” section displays recent headlines from this blog.
• A “Did you know?” section provides tips on how to get more out of the PBS KIDS PLAY! program. These rotate every few seconds, or you can click on the green flash cards to skip to the next tip.
• “Last Played” shows the last game or video your child played and links directly to it.
• “Next Recommended” offers a suggestion for the next educational game to play, based on your child’s learning progress. (If you have multiple child profiles in PLAY! it will display the recommendation for the child who played last.)
• Links enable subscribers to share a “friends and family” offer (10% off) by email, Facebook and Twitter.
• Our toll-free 24×7 support number at the top of the page.
• If you have ideas on how we can make this landing page more useful to subscribers, please post them here!

What’s “auto-login” and how do I turn it on?

Auto-login enables you or your child to access your subscription without having to type in an email and password. It’s a good option when you’re using your own computer to access PLAY. Here’s how to turn on auto-login:

1. Open PBS KIDS PLAY! (e.g., go to pbskidsplay.org and click PLAY).
2. After the program loads, if you have auto-login, you should see the page that says “Click an icon to play.” If you see a page that asks you to sign in, you don’t have auto-login.
3. If you want to turn on auto-login, just check the box that says “Keep me signed in” before you sign in.

Now next time you open PBS KIDS PLAY! you will not need to type in your email and password.

Happy Chinese New Year! To mark the Year of the Rabbit, we just released “Little Pim Mandarin,” a new three-game set that introduces 60 Chinese words and phrases related to mealtime, playtime, and bedtime. The games are based on LITTLE PIM, the award-winning foreign language immersion series for early childhood. We’re particularly excited about this because LITTLE PIM was created by Julia Pimsleur Levine, the daughter of Dr. Paul Pimsleur, who created what is arguably the most effective method for adults to learn to speak a foreign language (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Pimsleur). Well, that and Angelina Jolie uses Little Pim with her daughter. (See http://www.littlepim.com/angelina-jolie-uses-little-pim/.)

PLAY! also features three-game sets for Little Pim French and Spanish, as well as a number of video clips from the series. Each set is organized into three games with the themes bedtime, playing and eating (20 vocabulary words on each topic). To get the most out of this program, we recommend that you encourage your child to repeat the same theme multiple times before moving on to the next theme. So, for example, he or she could try the bedtime game several times before tackling playtime. Repetition in this sequence will result in better retention than moving around from theme to theme. Also note that with the Mandarin games we include Chinese characters and “pinyin” (the sounds spelled out in the Latin alphabet). The written characters, which are the “simplified” characters used on the mainland of China, are not required to play the games. They are only there to show the connection between the spoken and written languages for those that are interested.

Of course, three games with 60 words will not instantly turn your child into a native speaker; the point with this content is to start getting kids interested and engaged with other languages at an early developmental stage when language learning is optimal. We hope our games will inspire your child to continue with the Little Pim DVDs, picture books, flash cards or other early learning resources.