Today is the day… after months of waiting, PEG + CAT will make it’s debut on PBS KIDS (check your local listings for times)! The latest offering from The Fred Rogers Company seeks to bring young viewers a new way to experience math through Peg and Cat’s relatable, and often hilarious, adventures. Each PEG + CAT episode features original songs and fascinating stories in which Peg and Cat encounter a problem that requires them to use math and problem-solving skills in order to move forward. To bring the experience beyond the television, PBS KIDS has launched several interactive PEG + CAT features, including the rockin’ PEG + CAT BIG GIG APP, 11 online games, and numerous offline activities. I’ve got details on all of them, right here on The Rock Father!
PEG + CAT Big Gig App
Designed for children ages 3 to 6, the PEG + CAT Big Gig App leverages the original music from PEG + CAT to help kids understand math concepts such as numbers, counting, patterns and more. The app includes two activities: Big Gig and Sound Check. The PEG + CAT Big Gig App is available from the App Store on iPad. The app is also available for Android tablets on the Amazon Appstore.
· 
Big Gig: Big Gig invites children to pick an instrument and play songs with Peg, Cat and their friends wherever they may be – on the farm, Pirate Island, the Magic Forest, even on the Purple Planet! While playing “warm-ups” and simple melodies from PEG + CAT, children practice counting up and down by ones and twos, adding ones, and extending patterns. Once they play the song, the show begins and kids can watch and sing along as the characters rock out. There’s even a karaoke-style feature that helps players follow along with the lyrics.
· Sound Check: In Sound Check, children are invited to explore and make music on their own. They’ll find a chorus of chickens ready to cheep, musical instruments, song loops, and characters who will sing and shout on cue. Players can even record little ditties and play them back.
The PEG + CAT Big Gig App will be made available for free to families in low-income communities through the PBS KIDS Mobile Learning Program, a national outreach program in collaboration with PBS stations nationwide that distributes free app download codes so that educators and families can better support children’s learning in Head Start centers, Title I schools and other community-based organizations in low-income neighborhoods.
Online Games
Through this series of online games, players join Peg and Cat as they travel to a variety of whimsical worlds and help complete the “rockin’-est” rock collection in the galaxy. The Totally Rocks collection includes eight online games (each set in a different world from PEG + CAT), plus three open-ended activities, including a global reward system called Peg’s Rock Collection, where players can use these colorful rocks to make art and to practice counting skills. In these games, kids practice counting, 2D and 3D shape recognition and spatial skills, location and direction, and measurement, all while helping Peg and her friends solve a story-based problem. The games, listed below, are all available on pbskids.org/peg and will also be made available to educators on PBS LearningMedia.
8 Interactive Games:
- Magical Shape Hunt – Players join Peg to find 3D shapes.
- Star Swiper – In this game, players clap their hands to help add stars to the sky, using counting and addition skills.
- Chicken Blast Off – Kids use their powers (of geometry and compound shape selection) to build a spaceship.
- Hungry Pirates – The Pirates are on the hunt for the buried treasure chest full of delicious snacks! Players must follow the maps and some clues to where X marks the spot.
- Peg’s Pizza Place – Players use counting skills to make pizzas that have the right number of toppings.
- Chicken Dance – Players learn patterns as they help the chickens complete their dance routines.
- Scrub-a-dub – Kids help farm animals get clean by matching them to containers that are the right size.
- 3-2-1 Snack – Players use their numbers and counting skills to help feed Cat his snack.
3 Free-play Activities:
- Rock Art – Players explore Peg’s out-of-this-world collection of rocks.
- Costume Box – Kids dress up characters like Peg, Cat, Ramone and Pig in wild and silly outfits.
- Paint-a-long – Kids doodle to their hearts’ content in this digital paint activity, and they can use one of the pre-made templates to learn how to draw shapes or characters from PEG + CAT.
Offline Activities
Related offline activities are also part of PEG + CAT Totally Rocks. Parents and kids can do a variety of things together to explore math along with Peg and Cat. The activities, listed below, are all available on pbskids.org/peg.
- 4 PEG + CAT flip books that kids and parents can print, cut out and assemble.
- Pirates and Peaches – Kids and parents collect and share peaches in this fun make-it-yourself Peg + Cat board game for 2 – 4 players.
- Peg + Cat Stick Puppets – Using paper, wooden craft sticks and a little yarn (for Peg’s hair), it’s easy to make these shapely stick puppets.
- Recipe: The Pirates’ Great Banana Fruit Salad – Make a tasty fruit salad, counting each fruit yourself. Then turn it into little treasures by dividing it among special, make-it-yourself treasure chests. [Note: We actually did this one here at Rock Father HQ. Click here to see our results!]
- Recipe: Peg’s Perfect Pizza – Make, or cut, this pizza into different shapes, with some “dough-it-yourself” edible geometric fun.
- Recipe: Peg and Cat’s Incredibly Popular Honey Cake – This cake is fun to make and even more fun to decorate with fruity patterns.
For more rock delivered daily, including the latest in great music, cool toys, and fun for the whole family – “like” The Rock Father on Facebook.
