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Click here to visit the Curious George website.
Curious George is a series about a little monkey who lives to find new things to discover, touch, spill and chew. His life is rich with discovery, physical gags and escalating chaos. Is there a better guide through our initial steps into the fascinating world around us than the world's most curious monkey? George's insatiable curiosity leads him into unexpected problems and conflicts. Trying to solve one problem leads George to more problems and new conflicts. Complications keep piling up because George has a lot to learn about the consequences of his actions.
Everything is new to George and worth investigating. Of course, in George's hands - all four of them - this investigation leads to unintended consequences.
Like George, kids are intrigued by new things. They're built to learn and anxious to know how things work. Wouldn't you like to hitch a ride on a bunch of helium balloons and see where they go? George can, and he'll take you along. While you're along for the ride, there's plenty to be discovered - why things fall; which way the wind blows; and have you ever been up high enough to see the curve of the earth?
This is the Curious George that we know from the books. The world, the look, and the interaction of the characters all feel like natural extensions of what we're so familiar with from reading the books and having the books read to us. You'll feel, "This is the George I already know," so I'm ready to grab that balloon and go.
Science, Math and Engineering
Many parents and caregivers know how to support literacy development in their children. They read aloud to their children; they fill their homes with letters, words and labels. These same parents and caregivers, however, know little about how to support children's development in science, engineering, and mathematics. Few are aware that by harnessing children's insatiable curiosity, they are, in fact, supporting their children's educational potential in these fields. Our goal with Curious George is to nurture children's innate curiosity, to encourage hands-on exploration, and to motivate parents and caregivers to support these activities.
Science, engineering, and mathematics are disciplines representing years of accumulated knowledge. Our objective with the Curious George show is to help children appreciate these disciplines and the wealth of knowledge contained in them. Appreciation and understanding begins for young children with exploration, observation, discovery, and most importantly, curiosity. Curious about the world around them, children begin to observe properties, discover how things work, and, ultimately, develop scientific thought processes.
Curious George is the most well-known and well-loved representation of curiosity. Exploring the world around him with wonder and intrigue, George embodies the preschool child's potential in the field of science. George's desire to use his four little hands to skillfully take things apart and figure out how they work will expose children to the basic concepts of engineering. And his interactions with patterns, measurements and geometric shapes will help introduce mathematical concepts.
The All-Animal Recycled Band
Age Range: 3-5
Give children (or monkeys!) some simple everyday materials, and their imaginations will help them create all sorts of things. By building and experimenting, your child will also learn some basic engineering concepts.
1. Imagine: Look at the materials together with your child. What possibilities do you see? What could you build? A castle from juice cartons and paper towel rolls? A guitar from a tissue box and rubber bands? A robot? A rocket ship? Let your imaginations go wild!
2. Design: Draw pictures of your ideas on plain paper. Talk about them, then choose one to build.
3. Build: As you build your invention, talk about what's working and what's not. Do you need to change your design? Do you need to scale back, or can you go even further than you thought?
Take It Further
Store all those initial design drawings in a folder or binder and pull them out whenever the mood strikes! When the time comes, talk about those original ideas with your child. Would you change anything? Do you have any new ideas? What will you build this time?
Age Range: 3-5
The All-Animal Recycled Band
Workshops are available for parents and teachers.
PBS Ready To Learn is supported by a cooperative agreement from the U. S. Department of Education, PR/Award Number R295A00002.