Ashley Mannetta wrote:

Remember The Flintstones, the animated television series from the 1960s, in which a prehistoric family scrambles about in a stone car and cares for their pet dinosaur?

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In celebration of Earth Day this month, we collected some of our favorite kids' media about ecology.

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Kids ask a lot of questions when they're exposed to something new. But don't worry, you don't have to have all the answers to support their learning. Our handbooks are here to help!

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As we dug into all of the incredible ways our planet changes over time for our newest app, The Earth, we became particularly interested in volcanoes. The more we learned, the more we wanted to know. Some of what we uncovered made it into the app and handbook. Here are a few things we (reluctantly!) had to leave out:

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As we build apps at Tinybop, we play-test. Observing kids playing with our apps is the only way to tell whether kids will enjoy and learn from them. But we don’t just watch kids play our apps alone. After play-testing, we let kids share the app they’ve tested with their parents. If parents are as engaged with an app as their kids are, that’s a good sign.

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“What is a machine?” We asked dozens of kids when researching Simple Machines. Machines use electricity, they said. Machines are big, complicated, metallic; they’re like dishwashers, windmills, or trains.

Next we asked, “What is the simplest machine you know?” Many kids named computers, tablets, and phones. Their answers surprised us, but they shouldn’t have.

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Where are the robots? By now, they were supposed to be everywhere: cleaning our homes, replacing our pets, and saving our lives. The optimistic 50s futurist would be terribly let down by today’s robots. The year 2001 passed without any deep space travel, never mind HAL, and it’s nearly 2019 and we’re far from developing Blade Runner’s replicants. Sure, Curiosity is up finding nitrates on Mars, and there are some pretty sophisticated military robots in the works.

But the robots we’ve got in our homes are a lot simpler than we expected. While I was researching robots for Tinybop’s new app, The Robot Factory, one thing became increasingly clear: we’ve got Big Hero dreams and we live in a Roomba world.

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Frogs generally need water to survive and reproduce, yet some species live in areas of the desert with little surface water and scant rainfall. These amphibians’ secret to survival is a mix of incredible adaptations and serious patience.

During dry stretches, desert frogs dig deep and bury themselves in the dampest mud they can find. Some will secrete a layer of mucus around the edges of their burrow. The mucus hardens and protects the moist frog from drying up. Once their burrow is in order, frogs aestivate, falling into a dormant state similar to hibernation.

Desert frogs can wait up to three years for rain. When it falls, they surface, enjoying a swim in ephemeral rainwater pools and overflowing oases topped with fresh blooms of tasty algae. They quickly eat, mate, and lay their eggs before the water evaporates. Then they return to their underground lairs to wait, again, for rain.

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An interactive diorama of the earth’s biomes, Plants brims with secrets and surprises—we’ve even made a handbook of hints and fun facts for you and your kids. In these posts, we’ll peer into the sometimes-strange truths behind the worlds in our apps.

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Heat weighs heavy in the arid desert. Rain offers little relief; it often evaporates even before it hits the ground. So how do oases—those lush breaks in the monotonous landscape—form?

Once you dig deep enough, it’s surprisingly easy to find water. Beneath desert sands, porous rocks like limestone hold huge reserves of water, called aquifers—imagine a sodden sponge, not a freely flowing river. Layers of hard, impenetrable rock above and below these stores keep water in place. Cracks along the hard rock layers let water in and out. Occasional rain seeps underground to recharge aquifers. When water surfaces, it springs forth to form shimmering oases.

Oases can be quite large. Four great springs feed the Ein Gedi oasis of Israel, generating a total of three million cubic meters of water per year, enough to fill 1,200 Olympic swimming pools. The result is a verdant oasis known for its botanical gardens and copious bottled water production.

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An interactive diorama of the earth’s biomes, Plants brims with secrets and surprises—we’ve even made a handbook of hints and fun facts for you and your kids. In these posts, we’ll peer into the sometimes-strange truths behind the worlds in our apps.

Read more…

Early in the summer, fireflies flicker around forest trees. Their twinkling patterns seem random and uncoordinated, but that’s not always the case.

In the Great Smoky Mountains of North Carolina in the United States and dense forests of southeast Asia, some firefly species have rhythm. For about a half-minute, firefly males blink together to their own secret beat, then pause, as though waiting for a response. Scientists think these coordinated light shows may help these fireflies attract the right mates in places where multiple firefly species share a home. We like to imagine that the appeal of a good sense of rhythm is universal.

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An interactive diorama of the earth’s biomes, Plants brims with secrets and surprises—we’ve even made a handbook of hints and fun facts for you and your kids. In these posts, we’ll peer into the sometimes-strange truths behind the worlds in our apps.

Read more…