Grow Big Hearts with Sparkler
Sparkler helps parents and caregivers support their children’s healthy early development through play and everyday engagement. We call the four domains HEART, WORDS, MIND, and BODY. What do we mean by “heart” and what types of resources can you access through Sparkler to help children grow big hearts?
What is "Heart" in Sparkler?
“Heart” in Sparkler encompasses three main areas:
- Emotional skills (identity, feelings, and self-regulation)
- Social skills (trust and empathy)
- Outlook (curiosity and persistence)
By exploring these big ideas through playful activities and interactions, children learn to understand themselves and relate to others, manage their own emotions and solve problems by working with others. Working on these skills early makes everything else possible — helping to boost academic achievement many other long-term outcomes.
Parent Tips Related to Heart
Parents can browse through Tips for Adults in the app to find tips related to social and emotional learning — and YOU, as a provider, can suggest a particular unit to a parent who has a concern or question about a topic through the Library tab in your dashboard.
Relevant units include:
- Grow Big Hearts: Little Kids, Big Hearts Podcast
- Kind Kids
- Heart: Identity
- Heart: Independence
- Heart: Feelings
- Heart: Self-Regulation
- Heart: Empathy
- Heart: Trust
- Heart: Curiosity
- Heart: Persistence
- Family Traditions
- Teaching Consent
- Bedtime
- Stress
- Upstanding
- Let’s Talk About Race
- Growing Gratitude
- Book List: Diversity and Inclusion
- Book List: LGBTQ+ Pride
Play Activities Related to Heart
Parents can browse through Play cards in the app to find fun prompts for playtime activities that will support social and emotional learning — and YOU, as a provider, can suggest a particular play card to a parent who has a concern or question about a topic through the Library tab in your dashboard.
Here are a few of the available activities by skill:
Identity
- A Poem about YOU (Littles)
- Big Dreams (Littles)
- Community Colors (Toddlers & Littles)
- Face Time (Baby)
Feelings
- Animal Feelings and Farm Animal Feelings (Littles)
- Little Miss Muffet (Toddlers & Littles)
- I Love You! (Baby)
- Bear Hug (Baby)
Self-Regulation
- DIY Hourglass (Littles)
- Feel Your Heart (Littles)
- Animal Stop and Go (Toddlers & Littles)
- Bug Hunt (Toddlers & Littles)
Trust
- Run From the Wolf! (Littles)
- One Line, Two Hands (Toddlers & Littles)
- Here’s the Plan (Baby)
- Baby Talk (Baby)
Empathy
- Big Rescue (Toddlers & Littles)
- Feelings Wand (Littles)
- Copycat (Baby)
Curiosity
- Big Rescue (Toddlers & Littles)
- Feelings Wand (Littles)
- Copycat (Baby)
Persistence
- Butterfly Dance (Toddlers & Littles)
- Find Things That Go (Toddlers & Littles)
- Ice Rescue (Toddlers & Littles)
