Hopster Unveils New Educational Initiatives

The preschool educational and entertainment platform Hopster has announced a number of new educational initiatives, including a new theme, original content and a free one-year subscription for library cardholders in the U.K.

A brand-new area within the Hopster app, Hopster School features academic and social-emotional topics aligned to the Early Years National Curriculum and Hopster’s Discovery Learning Framework. Children will be directly taken to the new themed area upon opening the app, and will receive a daily pop-up highlighting content aligned to the topic each day. Language and Literacy will kick off the campaign, followed by Arts and Crafts, Maths and Science, The Wider World, Family and Community, Healthy Body and Mind.

Further, Hopster is providing a Weekly Home Learning Guide for parents that corresponds to the weekly topic and features parent-and-child talking points based on the daily content pop-up, Hopster-branded themed printables and recommended themed activities to accelerate learning. The company is currently working with its global partners to roll out the campaign to territories around the world, offering tailored content schedules, translated weekly Home Learning Guides and blog posts and marketing materials.

Hopster has sold its Stay Safe Tales originals to Hop in Israel, which has translated the shorts into Hebrew. In May, Hopster will also be releasing an additional COVID-19 response song by Phil Evans that aims to help children understand the two-meter social distancing rule.

Additionally, Hopster has developed a new original series by Hopster Studios, Daily Hopsters, which will premiere in summer 2020. The narrated animated series will consist of 13×1-minute episodes that are designed to teach 2- to 4-year-olds key vocabulary and high-frequency words on different topics. The series will be localized for partners and for further distribution.

To strengthen its educational offering, Hopster has partnered with 43 libraries across four boroughs: Camden, Brighton & Hove, Slough and Richmond upon Thames to offer their library cardholders a free one-year Hopster subscription. Families will be able to redeem their subscription via a voucher code that will go live in May. The partnership was forged with DCA London, a company dedicated to promoting e-resources that increase usage of library content and services.

Miki Chojnacka, chief content and creative officer at Hopster, said: “We are enormously proud of what we have achieved in the last month, as a children’s edutainment digital brand we have a responsibility to support families, our customers and our partners during this unprecedented time. We have seen a natural uplift of downloads and screen time consumption since lockdown and we want to sustain these figures by creating useful and valuable experiences and educational content both off and online for both children and parents.”