Welcome to the First “Can Do” Street Blog for Parents and Teachers

“Can Do” Street is all about making choices.  It is a fun, safe place for young children to practice what they are learning from parents, family members and teachers about being safe, making friends, behaving appropriately and other life skills that are so important to their personal development.

My reason for creating “Can Do” Street for young children is to give them the chance to practice making tough choices in the comfort of their homes and classrooms. So, when faced with real situations, they will feel able to make good choices. Program content is based upon the  suggestions of parents and teachers who participated in focus groups and interviews during the planning stage of “Can Do” Street.

The Parent and Teacher blog is meant to be a resource and a means of sharing information about helping children make choices. This first issue  focuses on the  features of “Can Do” Street and additions to the site in the months to come. It includes a description of the confidentiality measures in place to protect children as  members of “Can Do” Street .

I look forward to receiving your suggestions for future programs , games and activities.

Best,

Jean Campbell

Can Do” Street… Where Kids Make Good Choices.

“Can Do” Street is a new virtual world for children 3-7 years old; a place where animated characters need help making good choices about the everyday things that come up in the lives of young children. As the children using the programs on “Can Do” Street assist the characters, they reinforce in themselves the values and problem-solving skills they are learning from family members and in school. Children also discover that even though they are young and may not think they have choices, they make many choices every day. They begin to become aware that they need to take responsibility for the choices they make as every choice has an outcome.

On “Can Do” Street the interactive programs have story lines of personal safety, friendship, sharing, school behavior, eating right, and staying healthy. Each program presents children with a set of situations and ask them to make choices. Children cannot exit a specific interactive choice scene until they make the correct choice from two possible answers. Children using the program are never corrected but asked to try again until they choose the right answer. When a child chooses the right answer, characters pop their tops, showering bubbles in the air.

Programs are fully narrated to insure that children who do not yet read can benefit from the programs. Characters are racially and culturally diverse and include characters that have disabilities. In addition to the programs, interactive games and activity downloads help to reinforce choice-making skills. Coloring sheets and short Flash movies can be downloaded just for fun. A feature, “Blog with Me” gives children and their family members a special activity to do together as they keep updated on “Can Do” Street and their favorite characters. They can also respond to information and activities in the blog via emails.

For parents and teachers  there are activity guides to help the children get the most out of each program’s content as well as membership and completion certificates for the children.

Safety Features of “Can Do” Street and Blogs

“Can Do” Street adheres to all safety requirements of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (C.O.P.P.A.) in protecting the privacy of children when using our website and blogging. During the membership application process each child is asked to pick a character and add 4 numbers. This combination of character and numbers becomes his or her ID when logging into the club house,  when emailing and when blogging.

“Blog with Me”, the  on-site blog for children, is an internal site function with children being invited to respond to the blog by email, using their ID and not their real name. This process eliminates the possibilities of potentially harmful conversations and blog bullying.  All emails responding to blog columns and content are screened and only appropriate responses appear in future blog issues.

Parent/Teacher blog responses to columns and content are also screened for suitability for print in future issues.