In honor of Mother’s Day, Samsung partnered with The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon to spotlight and surprise six heroic moms working on the frontlines as part of their Put Mom in the Picture #withGalaxy campaign. Powered by the Galaxy S20 Ultra 5G, Fallon video chatted with the moms to hear their stories and learn more about their important work on the frontlines while they also continue to support their families at home.
From spending vacation days traveling to New York City to work on the frontlines, to balancing grad school and everything in between, these moms have provided us with the inspiration to support our neighbors and greater communities.
After their inspiring conversations, Fallon surprised the moms with a special gift: in addition to keeping their new Galaxy S20 Ultra smartphones, they all received $25,000 and a Samsung Galaxy Bundle, featuring the Galaxy Watch Active2, Galaxy Tab S6, and the Galaxy Buds+.
This Mother’s Day, Samsung and Fallon celebrate Dennaia Carter from Severn, Maryland; Jean Kim from Temple City, CA; Cathy Jones from Rochester, MA; Marti Miller from Springfield, MO; Denise Deberry from Woodbury Height, NJ; and Jen Moncada from Carle Place, NY, and all the inspiring Moms around the world who are serving others through daily acts of heroism.
Barbie has teamed up with Star Wars on its latest collaboration paying homage to Star Wars, by putting a high-fashion twist on iconic characters. Last year, Mattel introduced a line of Star Wars x Barbie dolls inspired by Princess Leia, Darth Vader and R2-D2. This year, they have unveiled additional dolls inspired by Chewbacca, C-3PO, Rey and Stormtrooper characters.
The Star Wars Stormtrooper x Barbie takes design inspiration from their legendary look to capture their plastoid armor in a runway-ready silhouette.
Star Wars Stormtrooper x Barbie is striking in head-to-toe white over a black bodysuit with a shiny patent-leather look. A platinum bob, dark glasses, cuffs, a utility belt and boots with a knee protector plate detail complete the battle armor-inspired look.
The Star Wars C-3PO x Barbie® doll takes design inspiration from C-3PO’s legendary look to capture his golden armor in a runway-ready silhouette.
Star Wars C-3PO x Barbie shines in a head-to-toe liquid gold look with accents of sheer organza and golden sequins. Polished details include a golden collar, bangles , C-3PO-inspired glasses and a brilliant cincture echoing the droid’s primary power coupler outlet.
The Star Wars Chewbacca x Barbie takes design inspiration from Chewie’s legendary look, bringing a glamorous edge to signature costume elements.
Star Wars Chewbacca x Barbie wears a lavish faux fur coat over a strapless dress with a fur skirt and bodice of vinyl and sheer organza.
Chic details include a furry headband and knee-high boots, as well as cuff bracelets and a handbag inspired by Chewbacca’s signature bandolier and satchel.
The essential workers putting their lives on their line to keep us safe are true heroes. Random House Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, will publish a picture book honoring essential workers entitled THANK YOU, HELPERS: Doctors, Teachers, Grocery Workers, and More Who Care for Us. The ebook will go on sale Jun. 9, 2020, followed by the print paperback edition on Jun. 30, and will be accompanied by a donation to Americares, a global health-focused relief and development organization that is providing critically needed protective supplies, training and emotional support for health workers in the United States and around the world.
A celebration of all essential workers, THANK YOU, HELPERS features upbeat, rhyming text from Patricia Hegarty and illustrations by Michael Emmerson. From health care workers to delivery people, grocery workers, teachers, and more, this joyful read-aloud honors those who help us every day and provides caregivers an opportunity to practice gratitude with the young children in their lives.
Barbara Marcus, President & Publisher, Random House Children’s Books said, “This book celebrates the heroic efforts of essential workers everywhere who keep us safe and healthy all the time, and especially now during the crisis we are facing. Thank You, Helpers provides an important opportunity for families to talk about the role of, and express their appreciation for, the many helpers in their communities. Our donation to Americares will support the transformative work done by the health care workers in America and across the world.”
“Now more than ever, health workers need our support,” said Christine Squires, Americares President and CEO. “Random House Children’s Books’ generous donation will allow us to provide more protective gear and training to keep these brave men and women safe and supported during this difficult time.”
It’s been seven weeks since school closed. Sometime during week one, I woke in the middle of the night and caught the teaching bug. You see, our son attends a completely play-based preschool, and therefore writing, not even letters were happening for him in the near future. So, I stepped up to the challenge and gave the whole homeschooling thing a shot. Welcome to “Mama School.”
It worked! I believe it’s still working because it dawned on me that as a parent teaching a young child, you need to have a happy medium. Our medium is “kid’s choice.” Every Friday I let my four and a half-year-old son choose every day’s subjects for the following week. Nothing is gawked at, or off-limits. We use a single black and white notebook to keep it old school, inexpensive, and most importantly, we’ll save it as our quarantine notebook and re-read it together when he’s older.
Each day’s subject is written at the top of the page in my neatest handwriting (which doesn’t say much for a leftie). We start our lesson with his re-writing of the topic just underneath mine. Poof! He’s writing and reading the letters back to me. All of the ABC songs since birth are making sense to him now, and are finally being put to work. On the first day, he chose Jupiter as our subject (you can guess what the next two week’s subjects consisted of). Today, it was sailboats! And there’s been everything in between, from sunflowers to sharks.
He sets up our “Mama School” corner with pride and I grab my laptop. We even wear special necklaces for school time—his is an acorn on a string and mine is a pinecone. They’re self-made of course. Anyway, I google the day’s subject, for example. ‘sailboats for kids’ or ‘sailboat facts for kids’ and I talk to him about the main points from the best three or four webpages. If a fact is a number, I write the number down and he re-writes it underneath. Now he’s learning more about numbers! If I need to lengthen a lesson on certain days (due to weather or my husband’s home-work schedule), I simply click on any highlighted sub-topics. It could go on forever, thanks Google!
Our lesson can fill up to two notebook pages and lasts thirty minutes to an hour. Homeschool is “scheduled” for 10 a.m. with a snack nearby for full energy and a pleasant mood (wink). It helps to break up the day and set goals surrounding it—like walking the dog together beforehand or a chore. To close our lessons he gets two rewards, one that includes a video of the subject (always a plethora of choices thanks to YouTube). And that’s how I incorporate entertainment for his only screen-time on weekdays. The other bonus is a printed coloring page of the subject. There are so many free coloring sheets and even activities for parents to choose from and print at home.
My favorite lesson to date was New York because he wanted to see where mama was from. Lots of images to show, and stories of course. He knows a bit about what’s happening in the world, so I shared some of the city’s heroic tales during this pandemic. After this week’s boat line-up, I’ve already been warned—next week we’re covering insects. Sigh!
I shared this idea with our friends and classmates in quarantine and it’s been a cool success. Some families with older siblings have even joined in on the lessons or were able to incorporate participation with their curriculum. The simplest ideas can show beautiful results. My son might remember “Mama School” forever so that potential is worth sharing on my favorite family tool, Red Tricycle.
Jenni Dawn lives just outside of Los Angeles with her husband, newly rescued dog, and four year old son. She has a background in everything Entertainment, so it makes perfect sense to cover how to entertain family at home. Jenni's also a Cancer survivor with a passion for spreading hope and prevention advocacy.
Now you can stream the entire Skywalker saga all in one place. Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, will begin streaming two months early on Disney+ in honor of “May the 4th,” otherwise known as “Star Wars Day” by fans around the world. Starting with the original film in 1977, the nine-part saga is available within Disney+’s extensive collection of Star Wars movies and series including The Mandalorian, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.
Lucasfilm and director J.J. Abrams joined forces once again to deliver Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, the thrilling climactic chapter in the Skywalker saga, bringing the heroic struggle to restore peace and freedom to the galaxy to an epic, resounding conclusion.
The film stars Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill, Adam Driver, Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Anthony Daniels, Naomi Ackie, Domhnall Gleeson, Richard E. Grant, Lupita Nyong’o, Keri Russell, Joonas Suotamo, Kelly Marie Tran, with Ian McDiarmid and Billy Dee Williams
In addition to new content offerings, Disney+ will also honor the artistry of Star Wars with a week-long concept art takeover on the service. Like a commemorative gallery, each film and series’ artwork will be updated on May 4th to feature its original concept paintings.
Disney+ announced a new animated short film featuring Maggie Simpson in Playdate with Destiny. The film will stream globally on the service starting on Apr. 10. The Simpsons creator Matt Groening shared a handwritten note on social media revealing the big news with fans around the world.
According to the press release, “The film begins on a day that seemed like just another day at the park for Maggie Simpson. But when Maggie faces playground peril, a heroic young baby whisks her from danger — and steals her heart. After a blissful first playdate, Maggie can’t wait to see her new baby beau again the following day, but things don’t go exactly as planned. Will fate (or Homer) get in her way?”
There’s a brand new way to join the PAW Patrol Rescue Team for some cozy, creative play with a new line from Cubcoats.
Previous Cubcoats styles have included popular characters like superheroes and Disney Princesses. The latest collection features your pint-sized explorer’s favorite puppy crew, the PAW Patrol.
The new PAW Patrol collection from Cubcoats brings three of the heroic puppies to life. Chase, Skye and Marshall are all featured in the new collection for these clever 2-in-1 coats.
The unique Cubcoats are the perfect go-to when you’re headed on a road trip, a sleepover or even the movies. When the coats aren’t being worn they can be zipped up to transform into a cuddly pal.
All three coats will be available in February at Cubcoats online for $50.
When you hear the phrase “nursery rhyme,” you probably think of “simple”. They’re short, and obviously have to be able to be understood by the youngest of us. But a lot of our feelings of simplicity come from the fact that they are so familiar. We hear them thousands of times by the time we’re adults and I’m sure you can recite dozens by heart without a second thought. But many of the rhymes hide a deep complexity. To me, they prepare us for the greater stories and experiences we’ll have throughout our lives.
Take “The Itsy-Bitsy Spider.” I’ll use that as my example today because it’s one of my favorites and has been one of the favorites of every kid in my family growing up. The
First thought: It’s a boringly simple story. Not true! It follows perfectly the five act structure made famous in Shakespeare’s plays. It starts with some exposition (“The itsy-bitsy spider went up the water spout.”), the tension rises with the conflict and rising action (“Down came the rain and”) till the climax hits and calamity strikes (“washed the spider out.”). The matters begin to resolve in the falling action (“Up came the sun and dried up all the rain,”) and finally we are left with the conclusion or denouement (“and the itsy-bitsy spider climbed up the spout again.”). It may have simple concepts, but that’s anything but a simple story.
Now, I’m not saying you should go explain Gustav Freytag’s Pyramid to your child so they can understand the deep hidden meaning of this tragedy of the tiny spider, but it’s a great introduction to the stories we love best. Whether it’s Hamlet or Endgame, we learned to appreciate heroic tales sitting on our mother’s lap.
The poem contains some pretty complex language structure, too. Take a look at the rhyme broken down as a sentence diagram. (Don’t worry! There won’t be a test. I know many people break down into panic sweats when they remember diagramming sentences in school.) Notice how involved those middle two bits are. When a sentence is simple, you can basically read the diagram left to right, but you can’t do that here. That’s not to mention all the tails and branches and implied words they contain! Plus, do you notice the symmetry? Without even knowing it, your teaching your child the beauty and the complexity of language and getting them ready to enjoy the language of poetry.
Finally, nursery rhymes not only help teach story and language, they’re an introduction to social interaction as well. For my family, who live so far apart from each other, Skype has fundamentally changed how we stay in touch with each other. My little niece has been so lucky that despite living so far away from aunts and uncles and grandparents, she still gets to see our faces almost every week. It’s so normal to her that my sister has to explain to her that sometimes she won’t be able to see our faces if it’s just a normal phone call. (I’m still not sure she fully understands this). I bring this up because, like me, The Itsy-Bitsy Spider is her favorite story and she lets us know that. Before she could even really talk, she would sit in front of the camera and touch index finger to index finger and thumb to thumb, over and over again until we obliged and sang the song to her. She’d join in the motions, and clap her appreciation when we finished. Or maybe (if the adults were having a conversation) we’d say no, and she learned to patiently wait and ask again when the timing seemed right. That’s incredible social knowledge that you can’t impart on a kid by explaining it, we pass it down through interactions like this. In this day and age of screens and instant gratification, those kinds of social skills are getting harder to impart on our kids, it’s important that we continue these old traditions that do just that.
There are so many other benefits that I could list. They teach us history and metaphor. They teach us patterns and numbers. They teach us humor and morals. I’m sure you could list more. (And I’d love to hear some of them in the comments!) So I hope we never look down on our trusted nursery rhymes for being too old and simple, because they are wonderfully complex and some of the best tools we have for preparing our children for tomorrow.
I'm a mom of two lovely chilren living in LA. I trained as an engineer and worked in banking and for Disney. Now I create musical board books for children like those I found in France, my home country. I loved books since childhood and wanted to introduce children to the joyous world of words and music.
When it comes to the best animated films, Disney and Pixar have led the pack with Oscar gold—but this year that reign came to an end when Spider-Man into the Spider-Verse took home the Oscar for best animated feature on Sunday night.
The Best Animated Film category was established in 2001 with the first award being given to Shrek in 2002. Since then, Disney has dominated the category with 12 films taking home the Oscar over the last 17 years. Now Spider-Man into the Spider-Verse has made history by breaking Disney’s six-year winning streak. The win also marks the first for Sony Pictures Animation.
photo: Courtesy Sony Pictures Animation
The film centers around Miles Morales, a half-black, half-Hispanic boy from Brooklyn—and it also made history for being the first animated film directed by a Black director to be nominated for and win in this category. Peter Ramsey shared the win with his co-directors, Bob Persichetti and Rodney Rothman.
“We wanted to put our best foot forward and create something that people would be able to relate to and love,” Ramsey said in an interview with NPR. “It means a lot for young black and Latino kids to see themselves up on screen in these iconic, heroic, mythic stories. It’s a need being fulfilled.”
Ramsey continued, “There’s so many exciting black creators and creators of color and all genders, and the realization that this kind of diversity really does give rise to more interesting movies,” he says. “It just feels like it’s going to help unlock a key, creatively, for a lot of people in a lot of different ways that we don’t even realize yet.”
Are you ready to saddle up for a new show? Corn & Peg (produced by Nelvana Studios) is Nickelodeon’s latest addition to its preschool line-up, galloping onto the scene with everything you’d want your kids watching: considerate characters who love to do good in their “hood,” curriculum components that will set little ones up for success later on in kindergarten, and tons of fun examples of how helping the community helps us all—and makes us feel pretty heroic while doing it. Read on for all your preschooler can learn from Corn & Peg, one dynamic doing-good duo!
Who are Corn and Peg? Only the cutest duo to grace the small screen since Peppa Pig and her little brother George stole your preschooler’s heart. Corn, a la uniCORN and Peg, a la PEGasus (why didn’t we ever think of that!), are sure to do the same as they do good in their community of Galloping Grove. With loads of energy and athleticism, Corn is the lovable jokester and Peg is a playful and big-hearted optimist. Adventure ensues whenever these steeds set out to do good deeds.
Why are they good role models for preschoolers? You’ll love that the premise of the show is doing good for friends and other members of a diverse community, like Chef Rigatoni, Mayor Montagu, and Coach Clydesdale. It’s a great way for kids, from an early age, to see positive interactions among their peer group as well as their community at large. As Corn and Peg do good deeds, your preschoolers will have great examples of how helping out helps the great big world around them. And all “good doers” have an inspiring new superhero on the Galloping Grove block—Captain Thunderhoof!
What else will preschoolers learn from this show? Ever notice the “kind” in “kindergarten?” When it comes to kindergarten readiness, a big theme during the preschool years, Corn & Peg makes sure kindness is a key part of what should be brought to any table. Whether kids are picking up on their colors or directions, you’ll love that loads of creativity, early math and literacy skills, health and wellness and emotional intelligence also go along with the adventures. That theme song sure is catchy, too. “Do Gooders Unite!”
Get excited about Corn & Peg by watching this fun video:
Tune in weekdays to Nickelodeon to catch fun-filled original content your kids will love. Catch clips of Corn & Peg here anytime!
