Pollywog Pond :
Bringing Quality Media to Children for a Better Future.
Whooplah's Mission Statement
Our mission is to teach and instill the values in early learners to be kind, be gentle, be respectful and to be healthy. Preparation and reinforcement of skills needed for Pre-K to Grade 3 success are within the curriculum. We also promote caring for the environment to encourage positive stewardship for our planet's future.
Who is Whooplah LLC?
We are a media company creating family-oriented entertainment. Our lead project is Pollywog Pond, a new broadcast video series for early learners based on our award-nominated video game portal, Pollywog Pond. RIPBS is our fiscal sponsor (501(c)(3) tax-exempt status) and the primary distributor of our production along with The Puppeteers of America (501(c)(3) tax-exempt status) . We work with the RIPBS's educational department, independent educational consultants and Social Emotional Learning (SEL) specialists for curriculum content advisement.
What is Pollywog Pond?
Pollywog Pond is a new, award-winning video series for early learners, broadcast on RIPBS and the PBS network. Accompanying the show is a video game portal, updated to enhance and reinforce the 29-minute show episodes. The curriculum is SEL along with conservation.
The show features a moderate pace, with fun, colorful puppet characters, each with well-defined personality traits in a colorful, lush environment. Segments in the episodes feature stories, reading, songs and creative play.
How many individuals will benefit?
According to HRSA, in 2022, children under 5 years old represented 5.1 % of the RI population (approx. 50K). This is our target viewership (3-7 year old youth). RI PBS’s broadcast range extends into SE Massachusetts and Eastern Connecticut. The 15 shows will be broadcast multiple times over several years and be streamed worldwide. The show will be offered for distributed nationwide with the PBS Network. The shows will be available to teachers within the RIPBS Educational Services to schools in RI classrooms.
Our mission is to teach and instill the values in early learners to be kind, be gentle, be respectful and to be healthy. Preparation and reinforcement of skills needed for Pre-K to Grade 3 success are within the curriculum. We also promote caring for the environment to encourage positive stewardship for our planet's future.
Who is Whooplah LLC?
We are a media company creating family-oriented entertainment. Our lead project is Pollywog Pond, a new broadcast video series for early learners based on our award-nominated video game portal, Pollywog Pond. RIPBS is our fiscal sponsor (501(c)(3) tax-exempt status) and the primary distributor of our production along with The Puppeteers of America (501(c)(3) tax-exempt status) . We work with the RIPBS's educational department, independent educational consultants and Social Emotional Learning (SEL) specialists for curriculum content advisement.
What is Pollywog Pond?
Pollywog Pond is a new, award-winning video series for early learners, broadcast on RIPBS and the PBS network. Accompanying the show is a video game portal, updated to enhance and reinforce the 29-minute show episodes. The curriculum is SEL along with conservation.
The show features a moderate pace, with fun, colorful puppet characters, each with well-defined personality traits in a colorful, lush environment. Segments in the episodes feature stories, reading, songs and creative play.
How many individuals will benefit?
According to HRSA, in 2022, children under 5 years old represented 5.1 % of the RI population (approx. 50K). This is our target viewership (3-7 year old youth). RI PBS’s broadcast range extends into SE Massachusetts and Eastern Connecticut. The 15 shows will be broadcast multiple times over several years and be streamed worldwide. The show will be offered for distributed nationwide with the PBS Network. The shows will be available to teachers within the RIPBS Educational Services to schools in RI classrooms.
How will Pollywog Pond Benefit our viewing Audience?
There are a number of ways that the Pollywog Pond world will engage and integrate into the Rhode Island community and beyond. Parents and guardians will have access to the locally produced, quality show developed specifically for their early learners. Pollywog Pond is a safe place that they can trust to positively enrich and stimulate their early learner’s developing minds. For the viewer, are creating a secure media environment with characters they can identify with and relate to. The four main characters, the viewer’s age, encounter the same new experiences viewers are in the real-world. Through viewing and listening, the young viewer will have the opportunity to observe, process and learn social-emotional skills, as well as cognitive and physical skills, skills needed for Pre-k – Grade 3.
Two of the additional regular appearing characters are Dave, a young boy and Red, a Rhode Island red rooster. They serve as conduits between Pollywog Pond and the outside world. Having their roots in Rhode Island brings a local identity to the program. They make visits to local locations as part of some of the storylines. This will helps to create a sense of pride in our community for both the viewers and their parents.
Pre-K and teachers through Grade 3 will have classroom access to the episodes through the RIPBS Educational Services network, available to schools throughout the state, on-demand. We will provide informative online episode guides with curriculum content to accompany the show, for both teacher and parent to access. Teachers will have the ability to access content that reinforces classroom concepts or possibly to introduce new concepts as part of their lesson plans. There are many possible opportunities to integrate the curriculum into the classroom.
RIPBS has a number of activities and events for kids throughout the year. From character meet and greet to activities, Pollywog Pond characters will certainly become part of their programs through video, live or other media.
What do we hope to accomplish with Pollywog Pond?
This is a unique opportunity to support the teaching and promotion of positive social and emotional values for our future community members and leaders. To quote Angela Santomero, creator of Nickelodeon’s Blue’s Clues, “It’s been proven time and time again that good, quality media can teach kids to read, gain kindergarten readiness skills, understand life lessons and even foster kindness. Kids who were raised on a diet of good, quality media have expansive vocabularies, go to college and score better on standardized tests than kids who didn’t watch educational media.” We target the early learning experience in the important foundational years. According to HRSA, in 2022, children under 5 years old represented 5.1 % of the RI population (approx. 50K). This is our target viewership (3-7 year old youth). RI PBS’s broadcast range extends into SE Massachusetts and Eastern Connecticut. The 15 shows will be broadcast multiple times over several years and be streamed worldwide. The show will be offered for distributed nationwide with the PBS Network. The shows will be available to teachers within the RIPBS Educational Services to schools in RI.
We will produce an additional twelve (72 individual segments, high quality, fun 29-minute episodes for the Pollywog Pond video series that will be repeatedly broadcast on RIPBS over the coming years. The episodes will be available through the RIPBS Classroom Services for schools throughout the State. The episodes will also be available through the station's web streaming services and will be available on the main PBS streaming network as the first three episodes are.
Additional supporting interstitial segments will be produced for promotion and supplemental activities on the Kids page of the web site. We are hoping you will support our project, investing in the children who are Rhode Island’s future.
What obstacles do we face in reaching our goal?
Funding is our only major obstacle. Our production is currently produced on ‘the tassel at the end of a shoestring’ budget. We are producing a high-quality children's series that has already received national recognition. When the first season is complete, we anticipate adoption by stations across the PBS broadcast and streaming network.
We have created a professional studio recording space with broadcast quality 4k video cameras. It took two and a half years to develop and perfect the chroma-key process we use to film our furry Muppet-like puppets successfully. Having produced and broadcast three successful episodes of the series, we have been able to refine our procedures and processes to streamline production. We made a lot of mistakes getting started, requiring re-shooting, etc. By the third episode, we had worked out the bugs and were efficiently shooting scenes. In video post, the same can be said. Editing is more standardized and efficient, improving quality. As we have garnered attention from the industry, we are attracting high level talent from writers to audio engineers. We are also attracting noted talent for guest appearances. Our small team is composed of extremely talented, enthusiastic and dedicated local individuals. We are ready to go, with written scripts already written.
Educational Development
Pollywog Pond is a safe place for early learners. Our utmost concern is ensuring that parents and guardians can trust our productions to promote positive growth in cognitive and physical development. Our mission and focus to create quality, educational content aligns with the “seven essential life skills” all kids need for their future success, as defined by Ellen Galinsky, president and co-founder of Families and Work Institute:
- Learning to be focused and have self-control,
- learning to take on life’s challenges,
- being able to communicate well with others,
- having empathy and ability to take someone else’s perspective,
- the ability to think critically and
- make connections to the world around you, and
- being motivated to continue to learn.
According to Harvard University’s Center on the Developing Child, “Children aren’t born with these skills – they are born with the potential to develop them.” Our content for is designed and developed to foster that development.
Developing our video game, we did research into children’s motor skill development. We tailored the mouse and keyboard controls appropriately for the age group. When we tested the game, the first player, a seven-year-old boy, could not control the mouse or keyboard, despite our research indicating he should have been able to. The second player, a three-year-old girl, jumped up on the chair, grabbed the mouse and worked the keyboard without any issues. We learned a significant lesson. The girl’s parents had exposed her to technology, the boy’s parents had not. He was four years older but already behind in terms of preschool preparedness. When it comes to technology, often, exposure is as relevant as developmental rate. We are promoting and providing safe exposure to technology for school preparedness.
Another important area we concentrate on is communication skills. Preschoolers are at an amazing time in their development featuring huge growth spurts in all aspects of communication and language. This includes the skills related to listening. They learn simply by listening to what is happening around them: from recognizing what the spoken or sung words mean to understanding and following multistep spoken directions. Pollywog Pond promotes listening skills through the stories, songs and dialogue. Characters often “break the fourth wall,” speaking directly to the audience, engaging the viewer directly.
Our media also promotes play. Play is an essential aspect of a preschooler’s brain development, broadening and deepening cognitive development. Through our curriculum, we promote five types of play: dramatic, physical, expressive, manipulative, and intellectual. Play encourages preschoolers to be actively engaged and intrinsically motivated. Our scripts include encouragement for spontaneous play, they introduce guided play and include adult guided/directed play. We strive to enhance and extend our viewer’s learning experience through play.
The above is a sampling of our curriculum intent. Hopefully, it demonstrates that we are serious about providing and producing quality educational content. The Rhode Island Foundation’s website states “Rhode Island's children will succeed with learning opportunities and learning environments that inspire success.” Pollywog Pond presents an educational opportunity unlike any seen before in Rhode Island. Content for the show is supported by RIPBS Educational Services and reviewed by nationally recognized educational advisors. Working with the educational resources in the State, we are positioned to provide quality, meaningful content to all our early learners, with the unique ability to integrate into the home and school through distribution across multiple media, utilizing Rhode Island PBS and the PBS network.
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Contact us
Would you like to join us on this journey, to secure the future of our community through financial support of Pollywog Pond, an investment in our children? Please contact us at: Bill Culbertson Whooplah LLC 32 Warren Ave. North Smithfield, RI 02896 USA [email protected] |
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