Parents
and Families
Help your child become a science explorer!
This site provides ideas for using family time to help your child explore
and learn about the natural world.
Activities with hands-on learning experiences,
videoclips, books, and games to enjoy with your child. These tools help
connect the fun-filled science adventures in the programs to your child's
own science explorations and observations. You'll find suggestions for continuing
your child's learning experiences inside and outside your home, including
places you can visit with your child such as grocery stores, playgrounds,
parks, science museums, aquariums, and zoos.
Viewing Tips to help you promote your child's
active viewing and learning from the episodes.
An
Explorer's Guide with tips and strategies
to help you facilitate your child's science learning and inquiry during
everyday explorations and activities in and around your home.
The kids website for
The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That!TM
is a companion to the television show that encourages children to go on
science adventures with Sally, Nick, and The Cat in the Hat. Developed with
the support of science advisors and educational experts, each interactive
game and activity models scientific inquiry and discovery in an approachable
manner for preschoolers.
With The Cat in the Hat as their guide, children can actively participate
in science exploration as they migrate with Purple Martins, control the
weather with Thing 1 and Thing 2, play hide-and-seek with geckos, and more.
Plus, the Snap-o-Rama camera will allow children to browse through photographs
from their adventures and play picture games designed to reinforce careful
observation, classification, and memory skills.
In addition to the interactive games and activities, the website features
a wide variety of printable activities and also offers the opportunity to
view full episodes and clips of the show.
See below for complete game descriptions.
Autumn is here, so it’s time to fly south for the winter. In this game, the player steers the Cat in the Hat’s Thinga-ma-jigger to follow a flock of birds on their journey toward warmer weather and more plentiful food. But players will learn that, just like birds, they can’t make the whole trip in one stretch. They’ll have to keep a sharp eye out for appropriate landing spots along the way, where they can rest, eat, and drink before they run out of energy.
Can you find the animals hiding in these scenes? In this game, kids learn how various animals use camouflage as they play hide-and-seek with geckos, fish, and butterflies.
In this activity, kids can create their own backyard scene with the Cat in the Hat, Thing One, and Thing Two. But the fun really begins when kids change the weather and turn a sunny summer day into a wintry blizzard, or a windy day into a sudden cloudburst! As they play, kids learn about cause and effect, states of water, and the impact of weather.
Flowers aren’t just pretty. To some animals and insects, flowers are sources of food, water, or shelter. Here, players think about the attributes of different flowers as they help animals and insects find the flowers they need. Afterward, kids can design, color, and print a flower of their very own as a reward.
When kids go to bed, nocturnal animals are just starting their day. In this game, kids will learn how these animals find their way in the dark—as they listen like a bat, sniff like a possum, and see in the dark like an owl to help the Cat find his lost hat.
Sally and Nick are up a tree—a tree in the rainforest, that is! Players will help Nick and Sally learn to move like various rainforest creatures, so that they can climb the tree to reach their goal. Along the way, players will discover some of the different methods that rainforest creatures use to move through their environment, as they slither up a tree like a snake, use “suction cups” like a tree frog, and swing like a monkey.
Sally and Nick want to fly their brand new kite, but the valley of Huff-Puff-Maguff has lost its wind! Luckily the Cat in the Hat has a Huff-Puff-a-Tron handy, an ingenious contraption that gobbles up colorful shapes and spits out gusts of wind. Kids feed the right shapes into the machine to keep it blowing. As the kites get bigger players need more wind and will have to feed the machine faster and faster. Advanced levels introduce patterns, colors, and shape combinations.
The Thinga-ma-jigger arrives just in time for the Great Shape Race. To complete the race, kids guides Sally and Nick back and forth across the lanes, collecting shape fragments and avoiding physical obstacles. At frequent intervals, the track narrows to a single lane and the player is challenged to fill the pothole ahead with multiple shape patches.
Face off against the world’s best builders — termites! On the right side of the board kids see the termites, hard at work, as they construct a tower that reaches higher and higher. Players and their teammates are on the left side, drawing their own blocks that magically transform into actual physical objects, then tumble into place following the basic rules of physics. It is Doodle Jump meets Jenga meets Tetris and you are center stage.
Tucker the Hermit Crab must be eating right! He’s constantly outgrowing his shell. In this game, kids can help him pick the perfect sized new shell as he grows and grows. This HTML5 game challenges kids to match sizes and patterns in a beach adventure!
Open up the Snap-o-Rama camera for some picture-perfect activities. Kids can browse through your photographs or use them to play one of three mini-games that each focus on a different observational skill every young scientist needs. Mini-games include matching, puzzles and sorting. Kids can add even more pictures to their Snap-o-Rama camera by playing many of the other games on the site.
