Add PEG + CAT to Your Child's Daily Brain Food Diet

Cute doesn't begin to describe Peg + Cat. It's smart, too. Yes, that's a plus sign in the title, announcing the show's strong math connections.

It's the brand new animated preschool series that follows the adorable, spirited Peg and her sidekick Cat as they embark on adventures and learn foundational math concepts and skills. The series will air in the PBS Kids line-up every weekday on WSBE Rhode Island PBS starting Monday, October 7 at 9 a.m., after Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That and before Sid the Science Kid.

Co-creators Billy Aronson (Rent, Postcards from Buster) and Jennifer Oxley (Little Bill, The Wonder Pets!) have teamed with The Fred Rogers Company 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.

Today, PBS KIDS launched a collection of new online and mobile games and activities. The collection includes a new app: the Peg + Cat Big Gig App for iPad, Kindle Fire and other Android devices, in addition to online games and offline activities that families can enjoy together. A new series for preschoolers, Peg + Cat premieres on PBS KIDS on October 7 (check local listings) and follows the adorable Peg and her sidekick Cat as they embark on adventures, solve problems and learn foundational math concepts and skills. The zany quandaries that Peg and Cat face happen in a variety of different worlds – from a farm to a distant planet, from a pirate island to a prehistoric valley, and more.

"At PBS KIDS, we are committed to providing educational and engaging content for children across media platforms, encouraging them to continue learning and exploring long after the screen is turned off," said Lesli Rotenberg, General Manager, Children’s Programming, PBS. "Peg + Cat was built as an on-air, online and mobile experience for kids, with related content for parents. With integrated episodes, games and hands-on activities, Peg + Cat will help kids learn math and problem-solving concepts in a variety of ways, deepening not only how much fun they will have with these great characters, but also how many critical skills they will build."

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 or at www.AppStore.com/PBSKIDS. 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.
• 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.

Peg + Cat  is funded in part by the U.S. Department of Education through the Ready To Learn Initiative, a program that supports the development of innovative educational television and digital media targeted at preschool and early elementary school children and their families, and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB).

"Peg + Cat is the first original preschool transmedia property developed as part of the federal Ready To Learn Initiative, a program that supports the development of innovative educational television and media content especially for preschool and early elementary children and their families," said Debra Sanchez, Senior Vice President for Education and Children’s Content, Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). "CPB is pleased to be helping kids build the skills they need to succeed in school and life through this long-standing partnership with PBS KIDS and the U.S. Department of Education."