Eh, what’s up doc? The new Looney Tunes Cartoons on HBO Max!
Your favorite childhood classic is returning to television with brand new episodes starting this Weds., May 27. With modern animation that still pays homage to the cartoons of your childhood, the HBO Max reboot is fun for kids and parents alike.
Warner Bros. Animation is bringing Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd, Porky Pig and the rest of the gang in their traditional pairings, which means lots of funny stories with plenty of practical jokes––but with the best technology-driven animation of today.
The new series is made up of 80 11-minute episodes, each with varied length shorts. Viewers will also get holiday-themed specials throughout the year!
Stream the entire show starting May 27 only on HBO Max.
Healthcare workers and essential personnel working on the frontlines have shown their heroism during the coronavirus pandemic. Now Mattel is immortalizing them with a new line of action figures and toys. The popular toy brand has a new roster of #ThankYouHeroes Fisher-Price action figures and Little People figurines featuring these essential workers.
Fisher-Price’s #ThankYouHeroes assortment includes 16 different action figures featuring a selection of doctors, nurses, EMTs and delivery drivers. The brand is also introducing a special five-character Little People set made up of a doctor, nurse, EMT, delivery driver and grocery store worker.
#ThankYouHeroes will be available for preorder starting today through May 31, 2020. Each item will retail at $20, with $15 from each sale being donated to #FirstRespondersFirst. Items are expected to ship to consumers by Dec. 31, 2020.
All net proceeds from the line will go to #FirstRespondersFirst, an initiative created to support first responder healthcare workers as they serve on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Fisher-Price collection is the first of several brand efforts from Mattel designed to support today’s heroes, with others kicking off in the coming weeks as part of the Company’s broader “Play it Forward” platform, which is focused on leveraging Mattel brands to give back to communities in times of need.
“#ThankYouHeroes is designed to immortalize and honor healthcare and every day heroes, and to drive additional donations to support first responders,” said Chuck Scothon, Senior Vice President of Fisher-Price and Global Head of Infant and Preschool, Mattel. “Whether these toys are given as a gift to recognize someone working on the front lines, or used as a tool to help children have conversations about how they are feeling, it is our hope that Fisher-Price toys, and play in general, can ultimately make these difficult times easier for both kids and adults.”
In addition to the launch of #ThankYouHeroes, Mattel is helping combat the fight against COVID-19 by producing face shields and cloth face masks for medical professions and has provided toy donations to non-profit partners domestically and around the world including Baby2Baby, Feed the Children, LA Family Housing, LA Students Most in Need (through the Los Angeles Unified School District), Partners for Pediatric Vision, Save the Children and UCLA Mattel Children’s Hospital, among others.
The company is also providing toys to Bright Horizons Daycare Centers, which recently opened in partnership with #FirstRespondersFirst for the children of first responders. Additionally, Mattel recently launched the Mattel Playroom, a free online resource for parents and caregivers which features activities and content from the Company’s iconic portfolio of brands.
In honor of Earth Month, Disney has just re-released its retro Mickey & Co. apparel line. The updated collection is unique, made with recycled fiber from plastic bottles––and some are even from Walt Disney World!
Originally from 1984, the relaunched collection is made from up to 50% REPREVE® recycled fiber from the plastic water bottles, and is the ideal garb for vintage Disney fans. Currently, the throwback line is made up of nine street-wear inspired items for adults. More items are slated to launch later in the year in both the U.S. and the U.K. Keep scrolling to see the entire collection!
In 1989 my parents made a VHS recording of Into the Woods when the B’way show aired on PBS. That tape must have been made of strong stuff since I probably watched scores of times. I knew all the words, made up secret handshakes with my best friend to the Sondheim lyrics and dressed as Little Red Riding Hood for Halloween for three consecutive years, totally inspired by that show.
But it wasn’t until I became a mom that I understood the “Children Will Listen” song that the Witch sings about her daughter, Rapunzel. When I recently directed a group of kids in the Broadway Jr version, these lyrics cut me to the quick. The kids stood out simply and sang:
Careful the things you say
Children will listen
Careful the things you do
Children will see and learn
Children may not obey, but children will listen
Children will look to you for which way to turn
To learn what to be
Careful before you say “Listen to me”
Sondheim was wise.
“Listening” is one of those words that actors and acting teachers care a great deal about. When we really listen instead of planning what we are going to do on stage or in front of the camera, we can have authentic reactions. Why is it so hard to do this? Possibly because we don’t actually listen enough in our real life?
So what if we take words out of the equation. Can we listen to our kids, without language? Can we create a meaningful and intimate conversation where we are giving and receiving information but no words are exchanged? Where listening is with our body and our heart? Where talking is through gesture and emotion?
I want Nathaniel to know that I hear him – to feel like I get what he is giving me. And in turn, I know that he will listen, like the lyrics say. So what can I give him to listen to that is simple, truthful and filled with love?
Mirrors are portals to the fantasy world—as in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass. They can also be portentous instruments of information as in Snow White or Beauty and the Beast. It isn’t hard to convince your child to play a Magical Mirror game.
Explain to your child that they get to do whatever they like and the Mirror (you) will follow them. The goal is not to leave the mirror behind so you have to go really slowly – slower than you normally would to do an activity.
Use this as a way to connect with your child when the incessant stream of language is overwhelming, when you hear yourself talking too much or when you just want a new way to bond.
I’d love to hear about your experience playing Magic Mirror—so chime in below and tell us how you did it!
Jocelyn Greene is a Brooklyn based educator, director and mom. With her company, Child's Play NY, she teaches hundreds of kids a year and is equally joyous adapting fairytales for 4s as she is staging Shakespaere with the teens. Check out http://www.childsplayinaction.com/ for video tutorials on game-based play to do at home!
Have you ever wondered how a baby’s brain works in the first few days of life? Within hours of birth, a baby’s gaze is drawn to faces. Now a new study shows that the brains of babies as young as six days old appear to be hardwired for the specialized tasks of seeing faces and places.
The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) published the findings of psychologists at Emory University. Their work provides the earliest peek yet into the visual cortex of newborns, using harmless functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).
“We’re investigating a fundamental question of where knowledge comes from by homing in on ‘nature versus nature,'” says Daniel Dilks, associate professor of psychology, and senior author of the study. “What do we come into the world with and what do we gain by experience?”
“We’ve shown that a baby’s brain is more adult-like than many people might assume,” adds Frederik Kamps, who led the study as a PhD candidate at Emory. “Much of the scaffolding for the human visual cortex is already in place, along with the patterns of brain activity, although the patterns are not as strong compared to those of adults.”
By understanding how a baby’s brain is organized may help answer questions when something goes wrong. Dilks says. “For example, if the face network in a newborn’s visual cortex was not well-connected, that might be a biomarker for disorders associated with an aversion to eye contact. By diagnosing the problem earlier, we could intervene earlier and take advantage of the incredible malleability of the infant brain.”
In previous studies, scientists have found that the visual cortex in adults is made up of two regions that work together to process faces along with another two that work to process places. More recent studies have shown that the visual cortex in children is differentiated into these face and place networks by as yound as four-months-old.
In this recent study, 30 infants, ranging in age from six days to 57 days, participated in the experiments while asleep. “We needed to get closer to the date of birth in order to better understand if we are born with this differentiation in our brains or if it’s molded by experience,” Dilks says.
“Getting fMRI data from a newborn is a new frontier in neuroimaging,” Kamps says. “The scanner is like a giant camera and you need the participant’s head to be still in order to get high quality images. A baby that is asleep is a baby that’s willing to lie still.” During scanning, the subjects were wrapped in an inflatable “super swaddler,” a papoose-like device that serves as a stabilizer while also making the baby feel secure.
To serve as controls, 24 adults were scanned in a resting state, awake but not stimulated by anything in particular. The scanner captured intrinsic fluctuations of the brain for both the infants and adults.
The results showed the two regions of the visual cortex associated with face processing fired in sync in the infants, as did the two networks associated with places. The infant patterns were similar to those of the adult participants, although not quite as strong. “That finding suggests that there is room for these networks to keep getting fine-tuned as infants mature into adulthood,” Kamps says.
“We can see that the face networks and the place networks of the brain are hooked up and talking to each other within days of birth,” Dilks says. “They are essentially awaiting the relevant information. The next questions to ask are how and when these two functions become fully developed.”
LEGO is known for helping to bring children’s ideas to life. Now the popular brand has delved into the minds of some of their biggest fans to create a video from a child’s point of view. LEGO’s newest ad is a blockbuster movie trailer made up entirely of ideas thought up by kids while playing with a LEGO City Police set.
There’s been a bank robbery in LEGO City, and the thief is armed with a titanium fish, too bad the hero is allergic. There’s action, helicopters and a musical number.
Your mother may have had four girls and no boys, but does that mean you are destined to only have daughters? A recent study says no. Researchers have found that whether a family is strictly made up of boys or girls or has an equal mix is simply a matter of chance.
“If you have a lot of boys in your family, or a lot of girls, it’s just a lucky coincidence,” said Dr Brendan Zietsch, co-author of the research from the University of Queensland.
These new finding debunk the long held theory that the sex ratio of siblings is not random, rather it is based on genetics.
“In some other animals, such as wasps, sex ratio is clearly not random, and scientists thought human offspring sex ratio may be subject to similar evolutionary forces,” said Zietsch. But, he added, the idea had problems. “Most theories were about the type of sperm men make, but no one had a good idea of a biological mechanism that would create tendencies for having more boys or girls,” he said.
An international team of researchers reported in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, how they looked into records for all people born in Sweden in 1932 or later and had at least one child before 2014. The study included more than 6.7 million individuals.
The team then carried out an analysis to explore whether first cousins tended to be of the same sex. The findings revealed that there was no link, even when researchers only based their evidence on firstborn children.
“Siblings are genetically similar. Therefore, if offspring sex ratio is heritable – ie influenced by genetic differences– siblings should have similar offspring sex ratios,” said Zietsch.
The team found that within a family unit, families with only two children tended to have a boy and a girl. This split occurred more often than could be attributed to chance. Families who had more than two children did tend to have more of one sex than the other.
The researchers deduced that this occurred due to the parents choosing to add onto their families in an attempt to achieve the balance they desired by continuing to have children until they reached their goal.
The team says that the sex ratio of offspring is completly random and not inheritable.
“To be honest it is a bit surprising,” said Ralf Kuja-Halkola, a co-author of the research from the Karolinksa Institute in Sweden, noting that almost all other complex traits in humans show some degree of heritability.
The researchers found that the findings overturn a number of theories. Fisher’s principle, suggests the approximately 1:1 sex ratio in a population is maintained by an equilibrium effect operating through natural selection. If the sex ratio skews one way, children of individuals with a predisposition to have offspring of the rarer sex will be more in demand, and hence have more children themselves, such that the imbalance becomes redressed.
Kuja-Halkola recognizes there may be environmental factors that influence whether an individual will tend to have offspring of one sex, but feels it is improbable based on links to other inheritable traits.
Although not involved in the research, Professor Stuart West of the University of Oxford, said, “It is interesting that offspring and parent sex ratio don’t correlate, but that could be because nothing is going on with the sex ratio – as the [authors] suggest– or because something is going on, such as sex ratio being adjusted in response to any of the things not measured.”
Professor Ben Sheldon, also of the University of Oxford, was not involved in the study but welcomed the results. He said, “The authors show here that there is really no hint of heritable variation in the sex ratio in their dataset, and this seems a really robust finding. We know that there is very good evidence for heritable variation in the sex ratio in some animals – though these are typically living in quite different situations from humans.”
Paid family leave just got a huge boost in Finland thanks to women. The coalition government, which is made up of five women-led parties, just passed a new policy which gives equal paid leave to both parents––for seven months each!
Just this week Prime Minister Sanna Marin announced the new policy that allows a total of 14 months paid leave, where each parent can take up to seven months. The policy also allows for an extra month of pregnancy allowance before the parental leave officially starts.
Finland is expected to institute the new policy as early as the fall of 2021. Designed to be gender neutral, it will replace the current program which only allows for four months paid leave to mothers and two months for fathers.
Additionally, parents can transfer up to 69 days of their own leave to the other parent, while a single parent has the ability to use the same allowance as a two-parent household.
With the United States currently being the only country of 31 studied by UNICEF who doesn’t provide a national paid leave for parents, hopefully the new changes in Finland become the new example for which the U.S. can follow suit.
Just in time to give fans a green Christmas, Universal Studios’ Green Eggs & Ham Café has re-opened.
Located at Seuss Landing in Universal Studios Orlando, the Green Eggs & Ham Café is now serving visitors a new holiday-inspired menu. Delight your palates with treats even the Grinch would love, like Who Hash, which is actually an adorable can of tater tots with peppers, onions, corned beef and cheddar.
Fans can also try Green Eggs and Ham tots, which is made up of green eggs, diced ham and cheddar cheese on top of tots . Other menu options include a variety of tater tot-topped selections, like Pizza Tots and Buffalo Chicken Tots.
This is the first time the cafe has been open since 2015. No word yet on whether this is just a temporary set up for the holiday season or if it will remain open in the New Year.
Looking for a birthday cake that’s sure to blow your guests away? Look no further than Walmart, where you’ll find an incredible unicorn cake for under $20!
Walmart’s magical unicorn cake is made up of two layers of pink and teal marbled cake covered in pink butter creme icing and colorful unicorn sprinkles. The seven-inch cake feeds eight to 12, but most importantly it’s priced at just $12.98 making it an amazing bargain.
photo: Walmart
If you prefer an ice cream cake, you’re in luck because Walmart is also selling and ice cream Unicorn cake made with cake batter-flavored ice cream and confetti cake. You can scoop this one up for just $14.98.
