EQtainment entertained kids and classrooms while teaching valuable lessons through their game, “Q’s Race to the Top.” This year they bring us terrific TV episodes of Q’s learning curve on topics such as sharing, teamwork, patience and motivation. Each episode has a theme, taught through experience with Q at the center. One episode has Q and Vanessa building a soap box derby car that needs some work. Q wants to do it all himself but the lesson is “teamwork,” as friends “work together” to find the “solution.” Vocabulary around the theme of the lesson is repeated throughout the episode through dialogue and song, until my viewers were repeating important phrases by the end of the 10 minute story. The social concept is played out with kids and Sophia, Q and Vanessa. Next is “You Time,” where teamwork, and offering to help others is applied and demonstrated in real life situations–walking an elderly neighbor’s dog or volunteering at a dog shelter. “Q Time” shows Q finally understanding the lessons learned, that some jobs need teamwork. Songs and dancing to a beat cleverly use catchy rhyming phrases to reinforce the episode’s theme in “Music Time:” “You can count on me, I’ll be there for you, I’ll be what you need, I’ll be the solution!” Each episode clearly defines and demonstrates the meaning of essential vocabulary for social awareness and competence. In this case, the words teamwork, friends, solution, helping others, reliable and dependable are stressed. Other episodes taught sharing/caring, motivation and patience. Each TV show is an opportunity for multiple language lessons on social skills–describing the change in Q’s actions from the beginning to the end, what did he learn?, defining essential vocabulary to discuss feelings and emotions, and applying the concepts to every day experiences of children.
Available at EQtainment. Click here
