Working with the Pennsylvania Department of Education, the seven PBS stations across Pennsylvania joined together to create Your Learning Neighborhood, your connection to thousands of hours of education and entertaining videos, activities, lessons, and games to support you. You can find out more at pennsylvaniapbs.org, in addition to our resources below.
Teachers, parents and caregivers: please explore! We are in this #TogetherPennsylvania.
WPSU’s fall PBS KIDS event is back! Make plans to attend Eventapalooza on Saturday, October 21, at the Outreach Building in Innovation Park, State College. This free indoor and outdoor family event will offer make and take crafts and games for kids ages 3 through 10. Pick up free take-home bags and capture photos of your kids posing with PBS KIDS standees.
Saturday, October 21, from 10:00 a.m.–2:00 p.m.
In partnership with PA Department of Labor and Industry, WPSU has curated free content for parents, students, and educators that align to state career readiness standards. Here are top resources to help parents, students, and educators explore various careers.
WPSU is delighted to have collaborated with the Hubert H. Humphrey Fellows Office at Penn State to create a video series presented by the 2021 Humphrey Fellows. These educational videos, suited for classroom and community viewing, feature each fellow talking about their home country, its culture, history, and people.
“Finding Your Roots: The Seedlings” follows 13 young people in a genetics and genealogy camp as they explore their family history and DNA ancestry with techniques never before used in an educational setting.
The Geospatial Revolution Project, from WPSU Penn State public broadcasting, provides schools with a look into GPS data gathering, which influences nearly everything. Explore these resources here!
Materials science is the study of stuff— what it’s made of, how it can be used, and even how it can be changed to create new kinds of stuff. Your mission? To learn how materials science and engineering is at work all around you.
Created by WPSU, Science-U@Home offers easy to advanced at-home science activities you can do with materials you have at home.
This summer your family can go on adventures to continents around the world and expeditions right in your backyard.
Travel around the world through music with this children’s concert produced and performed by the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra in front of a live, kid-filled audience! Carnival of the Animals: Remix presents the musical ‘personality’ of animals in short movements using a small orchestra.
Shana Davis and a young friend read DANDAN’S DREAM by Xiaowen Zhu and illustrated by Yanling Gong. During the story, Dandan dreams of sending herself by mail to the South Pole. Afterward, Shana and her friend use art supplies to create an imaginative stamp.
Lizzy is 18 years old and an athlete and a leader. She was born with spina bifida and has embraced herself and her GIRL Power. She is an archer as well as a basketball player. She played as a point guard for the Rollin Rockets in Charlotte NC. She has the goal of playing for the U.S. National team one day in the Paralympics and she has the tenacity to get there!
This video from KET helps preschool students identify the shapes that surround them every day so that they can begin building a foundation for skills they will need in the future. Children often view shapes as play things like blocks and other toys. But being able to identify basic shapes and how they relate to each other is the foundation for understanding more complex geometrical and problem solving concepts.
Read a book as a class and rotate through three activities that explore plants: fruit and vegetable matching, seed bombs, and parts of a plant. These activities are for children ages PreK-K.
Rosie is making a seashell museum at the beach, but she needs to find a service to trade for Crystal’s purple seashell. By trying to get Crystal’s seashell Rosie learns that trading isn’t just swapping things; you can trade by doing actions, called services, too.
Sign language transforms this popular nursery rhyme. This bilingual sing-along teaches “If you’re happy and you know it” in English and Sign language.
Travel around the world through music with this children’s concert produced and performed by the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra in front of a live, kid-filled audience! Carnival of the Animals: Remix presents the musical ‘personality’ of animals in short movements using a small orchestra.
In the video, Molly and Tooey are disappointed to discover that a popular comic book, Mighty McMann’s Alaska Adventures, doesn’t reflect anything about their lives in Alaska! So, they decide to create their own comic book featuring a superhero that reflects their own culture. They head to the library to learn how to make a comic book, but some of the texts don’t provide answers to their questions. In the lesson, students learn how to use text features to evaluate whether a source may contain information to answer an inquiry. They look broadly at the text’s title, table of contents, and sections before looking at the text itself.
Lizzy is 18 years old and an athlete and a leader. She was born with spina bifida and has embraced herself and her GIRL Power. She is an archer as well as a basketball player. She played as a point guard for the Rollin Rockets in Charlotte NC. She has the goal of playing for the U.S. National team one day in the Paralympics and she has the tenacity to get there!
Meet Mr. Magic! Megan has hired a cool magician for a birthday for her friend Flea. But how should she send the funds to pay him for his services? Here’s a hint—it’s not magic! In this video, starring Rock & Roll Hall of Famer Bootsy Collins, learn about methods of payment, transferring money, and how we buy things.
Oh Noah!, (formerly known as Noah Comprende) is designed to teach Spanish to children ages six to eight through animated videos with embedded games that help build vocabulary. In each video, a misunderstanding launches a comic misadventure. Kids learn language better when they can put it into meaningful context.
Soledad Fernandez-Whitechurch, a self taught artist based in Austin, Texas, has created a mural for a modern building that celebrates the land beneath it. In Muraling Austin, journey into some of Austin’s most inspiring public murals and portraits of the artists and activists who made them. From large-scale installations to intimate painted walls, these murals celebrate people, honor histories, and transform physical spaces. Muraling Austin provides an inside look at some of Austin’s most expressive and impactful public art.
This WPSU interactive The Detective’s Notebook Game is designed to get students to think about what they are reading and to answer questions that require inferencing. In the game the student has access to an amateur detective’s notebook in which several clues or events have been observed. From these clues, some inference or prediction can be made. The game is part of Blue Ribbon Readers, a collection of games designed to help elementary school students learn to read. This game is best for students in grades 3 – 6.
The AIM Buddy Project is a supplemental social, emotional, and character development curriculum that uses interactive media, the characters from the PBS series ARTHUR, and cross-grade buddy pairs. Students partner with a buddy to work on interactive comics and games that focus on five important topics –empathy, honesty, forgiveness, generosity, and learning from others. As buddy pairs engage with the ARTHUR characters they talk about and reflect on things like feelings, perspective-taking, and problem-solving. Begin learning all about the AIM program by watching the Welcome to AIM video.
Reflect on the importance of teamwork in this colorful story about a family restaurant. LeVar Burton talks about the different ingredients that are used to make pizza dough. The featured book, Little Nino’s Pizzeria, is read by actor Josh Saviano. LeVar demonstrates how to toss pizza dough. After watching, use the provided classroom guide, math activities, and discussion questions to further explore the topics covered in this book.
Due to the internet and the 24-hour news cycle, we constantly swim in a sea of information that is not always reliable! Solid media literacy skills can be your life vest. This episode of Social Studies Shorts dives in to explore questions to ask when consuming content and techniques to use to spot misinformation and disinformation.
Learn to identify the parts of a flower, including the pistil, carpel, stigma, style, ovary, ovules, petal, anther, filament, stamen, and sepal. Also, discover techniques for selecting the best flowers for dissection and identification. Access a student handout for categorizing the flower parts.
Visit Ivy Green, the birthplace of Helen Keller, in this episode of Yellowhammer History Hunt. Helen lost her sight and hearing as a young child but overcame her handicaps to become a renowned writer and activist who traveled the world to advocate for the rights of people with disabilities.
Oh Noah!, (formerly known as Noah Comprende) is designed to teach Spanish to children ages six to eight through animated videos with embedded games that help build vocabulary. In each video, a misunderstanding launches a comic misadventure. Kids learn language better when they can put it into meaningful context.
Learn about the work of artist Roberto Juarez. Inspired by his memories of childhood, Juarez combines collage, painting, and printmaking to make large-scale artworks. In the related activity, students will work with these techniques to create their own mixed media piece. The video and discussion will take one class session.
In a time when opportunities for people with disabilities were few, one young woman who was both blind and deaf became a world-renowned voice for change. To this day many still marvel at the accomplishments and perseverance of author and activist Helen Keller. Through two activities and a short biographical video, students will understand Helen Keller’s accomplishments.
Mind Frame is a peer-hosted collection of videos targeted at middle school audiences to help de-stigmatize the act of talking about mental health and illness. Topics include Depression, Anxiety, Suicide Prevention, Substance Use Disorder, and Wellness – shared by one of two hosts, Rylee Davis or Griffin Greear.
This video explores scale models, including 1:12 dollhouse models, 1:24 railroad models, and 1:192 architectural models. It explains what the different ratios represent and asks students to consider how they can use measurement and proportional reasoning to create their own scale models. The accompanying classroom activity gives students hands-on practice with creating models to scale and with real-world measurement.
This collection, which includes videos, blog articles, student handouts, lesson plans, and tip sheets for families, helps students identify, analyze, and investigate the news and information they get from online sources. Media literacy is an essential skill for all students across a range of subjects, from Science to Social Studies to English Language Arts. The collection is also useful for a behind-the-scenes look at journalism and how information is researched, shaped, and reported. Check out the resources in the collection topics.
Meet medical doctor Cheri Blauwet in this media gallery from NOVA’s “The Secret Life of Scientists & Engineers.” When Cheri was 18 months old, she sustained a spinal cord injury and became disabled. In high school, she was convinced by her track coach and family to try wheelchair racing. She eventually participated in three Paralympic Games, winning gold in Athens in the 800 meters. Following her athletic career, she became a doctor specializing in sports medicine and promoting disability rights.
Learn about Judy Heumann, a lifelong advocate for the rights of disabled people. She helped spearhead the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the law which makes it illegal to discriminate against those with disabilities in the United States.
When meningitis left Valerie Shirley’s son, Musab, deaf at 5 months old, she learned sign language, eventually became an ASL teacher, and co-founded the Minnesota Deaf Muslim Community (MDMC) as a result.
AJ Isaacson-Zvidzwa is a BIPOC woman, violist, composer, and musicologist who lives with mental illness. AJ wrote the song cycle, Angels Sang to Me, for a soprano and string quartet to explore her journey with mental illness.
Now celebrating its 200th anniversary, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was a revolutionary text that pioneered the sci-fi genre. On the surface, it’s a novel about a scary monster, but the sympathetic description of a soulful creature makes us rethink the label.
Ken Burns Presents Hiding in Plain Sight: Youth Mental Illness, A film by Erik Ewers and Christopher Loren Ewers follows the journeys of more than 20 young Americans from all over the country and all walks of life, who have struggled with thoughts and feelings that have troubled—and, at times—overwhelmed them. Hiding in Plain Sight presents an unstinting look at both the seemingly insurmountable obstacles faced by those who live with mental disorders and the hope that many have found after the storm.
Learners take on the role of cryptologists to decode clues using pre-algebraic substitution and order of operations. Can you crack the code and stop an international smuggling ring? The activity integrates geography and mathematics, and is best for grades 8 – 12.
Scientific information is shared through the news, advertisements, and social media platforms by sources with differing intentions and levels of expertise. Unfortunately, science misinformation, information that contradicts what established science tells us to be true, can mislead and confuse people and potentially endanger their health and wellbeing. Learn the science behind why misinformation is shared, why it’s believed, and what we can do to address its spread across digital media. Use this collection to help prepare students to be critical consumers of science content and to make informed judgements about the science media they encounter.
In this lesson, students learn about Stephen Hawking – his personal history, his struggle with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), his thought processes and how he developed his groundbreaking ideas about Black Holes, the Big Bang, and the discovery of Hawking Radiation.
Individuals with developmental disabilities and their families often endure deficits in social services they receive. He’s My Brother tells the story of a close-knit family impacted by this deficit as they are faced with considering the future wellbeing of eldest sibling, Peter, who was born deafblind. Peter requires intensive daily support, not only to get basic needs met, but to lead a meaningful life. While day programs for adults with disabilities have dwindled in their community, his parents remain dedicated caregivers with help only from their daughter, Christine.
In this interactive lesson, students explore the rich diversity within Latino culture using WGBY’s bilingual program Presencia. The lesson explores the variety found within Latino food, music, and art and introduces individuals who honor and celebrate their culture. Students build their vocabulary with Spanish words and expressions and grow in their appreciation of how diversity can enrich society.
These resources are curated monthly based on new PBS LearningMedia content and recent events.
A growing list of resources from PBS and trusted partners, to use as tools to support anti-racist learning and growth. Free and open for all. (pdf)
Centre County Local Interagency Coordinating Council (LICC) resource book, a guide to services and supports for children birth to five (0-5).
Sonia Manzano, known as Maria on Sesame Street, will speak about how parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and those working with children can learn how to talk to kids about race.
Find parenting tips, hands-on activities, games, and apps for grades PreK-3 to help you raise kind, curious, and resilient children.
Hundreds of multi-media tools to help kids and families enrich and expand their knowledge during the early years of birth through six.
