We have received so many comments from fans about how much they love the fall theme at JumpStart.com that we thought it was only appropriate to make a variety of fabulous winter environments for your child to enjoy during the holiday season!

Your child will have the option of choosing from Christmas, Hanukkah or generic winter themes to use in their neighborhood during the months of December and January.

For you loyal blog followers, here is a sneak peek of what we are considering for winter decor:

General Winter

Christmas

Hannukah

Share This Sneak Peek with Friends!

We love it when people get a kick out of our crafts, and a number of you viewers took note of The Giving Thanks Tree. A couple of those who commented on the post requested a template for the tree’s outline, so we had the JumpStart team member who made our Giving Thanks Tree recreate the outline for you to print out. It’s been a long time coming, but it’s here now, just in time for the Thanksgiving holiday!

When you print out the two-page template, we suggest you orient it horizontally (Landscape setting) and reduce the top and bottom margins. When we scanned the tree in, a few gaps were created in the outline where the trunk and the branches meet, so connect those according to what looks natural to your eye.

Click the image to print.

If you have no idea what we’re talking about, you can find the thoughtful Giving Thanks Tree post here.  We hope that works for everybody.  We’re thankful for your comments; keep’em coming!  Hmm… looks like we need to cut and fill out another leaf!

Make your friends lives easier.  Share the update!

We hold the key to unlock all those Thanksgiving myths…the turKEY that is! We’ve done our research, we’ve examined the bird, and we’ve collected some gobblin’ good data! From the turkey gobble to turkey speeds, we’ve covered it all! Now ask yourself… how much do you really know about our favorite Thanksgiving bird?

• Could you imagine pledging allegiance to our proud national bird, the turkey? Our good old friend Benjamin Franklin actually wanted the turkey to be the national bird.
• A turkey’s field of vision is 270 degrees – one of the main reasons they’re able to elude some hunters.
• Wild turkeys can fly up to 55 miles per hour over short distances, but their domesticated cousins cannot fly at all.
• Gobble, Gobble, Gobble! Everyone knows that turkeys gobble, but did you know that only male turkeys gobble to woo their mates. Female turkeys actually make a clicking noise.
• A turkey’s head changes color when it becomes excited.
• The red fleshy growth under a turkey’s throat is called a wattle. Turkeys also have a long, red, fleshy area that grows out of the forehead over the beak, called a snood.
• Turkeys can actually have heart attacks. When the U.S. Air Force was conducting test flights to break the sound barrier, fields of turkeys would drop dead.
• The heaviest turkey ever recorded came from our British friends across the Atlantic. This gobbler weighed in at a massive 86 pounds and looked about the size of a large German Shepherd!
• Turkeys aren’t always turkeys. In fact, a turkey under 16 weeks of age is called a fryer. A five to seven month old turkey is called a roaster.
• The Turkey Trot, a ballroom dance in the 1900s, was named for the short, jerky steps of the turkey. It became popular mainly because it was denounced by the Vatican as suggestive.
• Turkeys can actually drown if they look up when it’s raining!
• Turkeys are known to spend the night in trees! (Maybe to escape the Thanksgiving table?)

Get your friends to get with the turkey trivia!

Thanksgiving is soon approaching, and with the Thanksgiving holiday comes the remembrance of the shared feast between Plymouth Pilgrims and a group of Native Americans.  Native Americans played a key role in the Pilgrims’ survival!  It’s no surprise that children enjoy recreating the feast scene, playing as Pilgrims and Native Americans sharing together.  To help their imaginations flow, we have a craft in the image of a Native American vest to help them feel more the part.

We made our Native American vest JumpStart-themed! From left to right: Kisha, Hopps.

Native American Vest

What you’ll need:

• 1 Brown grocery bag
• Pencil
• Paint or markers
• Scissors

Instructions:

1. Draw a thin line from the top, open end of the bag toward the bottom of the bag.
2. Make large circles at the bottom of the bag, and at the bag sides, towards its bottom.
3. Cut along the pencil line, including the circle.


Cut along the drawn lines, including the circles.

4. Trim the circle as needed to make enough room for your child’s neck.
5. Cut fringe into the bottom of the vest, as in the picture.  Shorten the vest to prevent the child from tripping, if needed.
6. Use the paint or markers to decorate the vest with designs.

Frankie swinging by the river to get a drink of water.

Enjoy your Thanksgiving-themed attire!

Tell your friends to diversify their kids’ closets with a new vest for this holiday!

November has really been a busy month for us here at JumpStart, and we’re only halfway in!  Yesterday concluded our Time to Escape! Sweepstakes.  Between the Tweets and the story responses on the contest’s page, we received nearly 600 entries, and many of those were simply amazing stories of family adventure and imagination.  If you entered, be sure to check your email inbox and/or Twitter account to find out if you are a winner.   All winners will be receiving a notification by tomorrow!  Thank you, entrants!

In other news, we’re releasing some new rides, including the popular magic carpets!

These well sought-after vehicles will be available for purchase tomorrow for 125 JS coins.  You’ll really be soaring along in style on these mobile home furnishings.

Given their powers, magic carpets come pretty cheap at 125 JS coins.

Hovering is always a thrilling way to be.

Also coming to the JumpStart online world will be new pets!  Some old favorites, such as the Robot Cyclops, will become available in new colors, and some pets will be appearing in the Petz Store for the very first time!

Look who's up to bat!

As always, pets and rides do not come cheap, and JS coins aren’t super easy to collect.  Those learning games still are the ticket to bags of coins, so have your kids stay active in their learning through JumpStart, and they’ll be soaring along on their magic carpet in no time.

Want to relay these announcements to a buddy?

Click here and here for other road trip games that we have recommended in the past!

While the entire family looks forward to celebrating the Thanksgiving holiday and eating delicious food, there is one thing that most people do not look forward to: the long car drive to and from a relative’s home! Boredom is really almost a guarantee.  However, with a few fun car game suggestions, you and your family can enjoy the hours of driving together.

Alphabet Race. The goal of this game is to find each letter of the alphabet, in alphabetical order, on the road signs you see throughout your journey. This game may seem easy, but just wait till you get to letters such as “Q” or “X”! See how fast you can accomplish this feat.

Hug Bug. You might have played this game a little differently when you were growing up, but we are making it much less…painful.  If you see a Volkswagen Beetle or “Bug” you get to give one other person in the car a hug or blow them a kiss!

The Frankie Game. In this game, the word “Frankie”, as in our lovable mascot, is substituted for a verb. To play, one person picks a secret verb like “swim”. Then everyone else asks questions using “Frankie” in place of the verb. “Can you Frankie in the ocean?” “Can you Frankie in the house?” The person who correctly guesses the secret verb gets to choose the next one.

Your Ideal Car. This game requires your family to use their imaginations! Pick a car on the road -even yours- and have each person say one thing that they would want to add onto the car to make it into the car of their dreams. For example, you could say, “I would add on a frozen yogurt machine to the car, so I could have frozen yogurt whenever I wanted!” Keep going until your family thinks they have created their ideal car!

The Teacher’s Dog. We at JumpStart love learning, so this game is perfect if you want to build up your child’s vocabulary on the road! In this game you will go through the alphabet using words to describe the teacher’s dog, the first letter of the descriptive word corresponding to the letter of the alphabet you are on. For example you could say, “The teacher’s dog is an Angry dog.” Then the next person would say, “The teacher’s dog is a Boring dog.” See if your family can find adjectives to describe the teacher’s dog from A-Z!

Question Game. In this game, you are only allowed to speak in questions to everyone in the car. For example one person could ask, “When are we going to get there?”  The next person would ask, “Do you have a watch?” The next person would ask, “Did you take it?” If you do not answer in a question, you are out. The winner of the game is the person who can carry on the conversation in questions the longest!

What are your favorite car games?

Share with some families that are in for a loooong drive.

Is your child a daredevil?

New thrills coming soon at the Sky Dive building!

If so, Free Fall Mountain might be his or her new favorite feature at JumpStart.com!  In just a few weeks, this sky diving arena will be added to the Speed Drome off of MainStreet. After suiting up in flight gear, Jumpeez will be teleported to the bottom of Free Fall Mountain. There they will find a series of launch pads and portals to send them rocketing skyward. But these aren’t just ordinary JumpStart launch pads – these will take Jumpeez higher than any launch pad anywhere else in the world! 

Launch in 3, 2, 1...

Whoohoo!

Once airborne, Jumpeez will be able to soar through targets, past waterfalls and over cliffs. The most skilled flyers may even be able to land on the moving platforms! 

Can you swoop down onto that platform?

Just missed it!

Free Fall Mountain will take your kids soaring to new heights – stay tuned for news about its release!

Get Your Friends Excited about Free Fall Mountain Too!

It’s certainly Thanksgiving when the family is cooking, the game is on, and the kids are scrambling around. Why not reel in the children and have them help you make dinner with this entertaining science experiment!

Make Your Own Butter

All you need is:

• ½ pint of heavy cream
• 1 clean pint jar or other similarly-sized container with a tight cover or lid, preferably plastic
• 1 clean marble

Directions:

1. Take your jar and place the marble inside
2. Pour the cream into the jar and screw the cover on tightly.


Three Materials and You're in Business

3. Have the children shake the jar. A figure-eight motion seems to work best, but let your kids go wild (not so much, if the jar is glass). If you have a plastic container with a tight lid, you can even roll it back and forth.
4. Listen for the marble bouncing up and down.
5. After the marble cannot be heard anymore, you’ll know the cream is thickening.  Keep shaking, and you will soon start to see the glob of butter form.


The Marble Will Go Silent as It Is Enveloped by the Butter

6. Once a good amount of butter is created, drain out the buttermilk. You can throw it away, save it, or drink it!
7. Wash the remaining lump of butter by running cold water into the jar and draining it. This will remove any trapped buttermilk.
8. Find and remove the marble
9. Place the butter into a container of your choice to store or use.

The End Result: a Delicious Scoop of Butter

What is this science magic that has just unfolded before your eyes?

Heavy cream is what is called an “emulsion”.  An emulsion exists when tiny droplets of one type of liquid are floating around in another type of liquid that does not like to mix with the first. In the case of heavy cream, tiny globules of fat are suspended in mostly water. By shaking the heavy cream in the jar, you are forcing the fat globules to slam into one another. If they hit each other with enough force, they will simply stick together, the fat collection becoming bigger and bigger with each extra globule.  After enough shaking, the fat globules form a chunk of butter.

To bring this experiment even further, have your children try different types of cream, such as light cream or whipping cream; each of which has different fat content. They can compare the shaking time needed, the amount of butter created, and the butter’s taste at the end.

This experiment is definitely a workout and will require a good amount of shaking, so, if you have a child that is smaller or has a short attention span, think of using two smaller containers (and a marble in each one) to speed up the process.

Tell Your Friends to Shake It Up

Following the popularity of our spooky scavenger hunt for Halloween, your child will now be invited to participate in a Thanksgiving-themed scavenger hunt starting today, in the online world at JumpStart.com.

We’ve placed 20 Thanksgiving items throughout the world.  10 of which will be located on MainStreet, and the other 10 will be found in the Downtown district.  This post will unveil the secret locations of all the hunt items, but Shhhh!  Keep this revelation quiet, unless your explorers are really having a tough time.

Some items will be easy to find.

Others will be more challenging, such as this set of Pilgrim clothing off a Downtown beach.

Our designers did a good job hiding the items, so don’t be surprised if your smaller explorer might need some extra direction.  If that sounds like your child, dive into these spoilers.

Spoilers start HERE!

Downtown District Item Location Explanations:

1. Cornucopia Feast – In between the Ridez and Petz shop, near the gas pump at ground-level
2. Fall Harvest – Under the rock arch on the Beach to the east of Threadz, ground-level
3. Ship – Northeast corner of Downtown’s northern-most ocean, near the boundary behind some standing rocks at sea-level
4. Balloons – By the rocks and wood bridge in the back lot, beyond the backside of the Newsstand, at ground-level.
5. Ship – In Downtown’s southern-most ocean, east of the orange slide drop-off, at sea-level
6. Balloons – At the base of Downtown’s southeastern-most waterfall, at second-story-level.  Walk along the cliff ledge, accessible by walking up the stairs at the blue slide base and over the two wood bridges.
7. Fall Harvest – Behind Petz shop’s back  brick wall in the corner, at ground-level
8. Cornucopia Feast – behind the brick wall behind the House Hut in the corner at ground-level
9. Pilgrim Clothing – by the blue stairs at the blue slide base, at ground-level
10. Pilgrim Clothing – On the south side of Downtown’s northern-most ocean, behind some beach rocks on the sand, at ground-level

MainStreet Item Locations Explanations :

1. Pilgrim Clothing – By the movie theater’s front-left corner, behind the art billboard, at ground-level
2. Fall Harvest – By the tree on the left from your very starting position near the stone ramp, at ground-level
3. Fall Harvest – On the beach north of the AdventureLand Sub, at ground-level
4. Balloons – In front of the Adventureland Sub, on the boardwalk, at ground-level
5. Ship – In the southeast corner of the ocean, beyond the MarineLand portal and lighthouse, at sea-level
6. Cornucopia Feast – On the beach, leading up to the lighthouse, to the southeast of AdventureLand, accessible by swimming through the ocean, at ground-level
7. Balloons – Up the stairs to the Hall of Fame entrance, at ground-level
8. Cornucopia Feast – by the West giant waterfall with the aqueduct, in front of the statue to the right of the water, at ground-level
9. Ship – At the base of the small waterfall north of the Speed Drome near the western wood bridge, at ground-level
10. Pilgrim Clothing – Between StoryLand and the FutureLand back-entrance, hidden behind a tree and a pile of leaves, at ground-level

Click to enlarge this map with numbered item locations, marked with stars.

Know Somebody Who Needs the Inside Scoop?

Thanksgiving can be a particularly hectic holiday for the family.  There are plenty of things to keep an eye on, including, but not limited to, preheated ovens and the kids running around with their cousins.  However, Thanksgiving is a holiday meant to take us beyond our everyday pleases and thank yous and to draw up in our minds those things that have such positive impacts in our lives.  This fun craft is a great catalyst for having the family gather around and reflect on all that they have to be thankful for.

A Tree Full of Thanks.

The Giving Thanks Tree

Materials:

• Large, brown cardboard box
• Construction paper in yellow, green, red, and orange.
• Scissors
• Tape
• Pencil
• Sharpie

Instructions:

1. Cut manageable, large panels out of the cardboard box.
2. Have your child draw the outline of a tree in pencil, complete with big roots, a trunk, and strong branches, on the brown cardboard.  *Update*: Here is a printable template of the tree outline we used.  When you print out the two-page template, we suggest you orient it horizontally (Landscape setting) and reduce the top and bottom margins. Fill in any gaps created in the outline by the scan, according to what looks natural to your eye.
   

   Click the image to print.

3. Cut out the tree.
4. Trace around the new tree cutout on another panel of brown cardboard, and cut out the duplicate tree.


Trace and cut out a duplicate tree.

5. On one of the trees, cut a slot up the center from the bottom of the tree and ending an inch before its top.
6. Cut about a one-inch slot down the center of the other tree, starting from its top.
7. Combine the two trees by sliding them perpendicularly into the slots you’ve made.  The root bases should end up solidly on the surface you’ve been working on.  Adjust your slot cuts if you need to even-out the lengths.


Set up the tree trunks perpendicular to each other.

8. Cut out leaves from the construction paper and have the family write down what they are thankful for on each of the leaves with the Sharpie.


The JumpStart Team's items worthy of thanks.

9. Adhere the leaves to the branches with the tape.

Tape the leaves to the tree branches.

When completed, the Giving Thanks Tree can act as a truly eye-catching and thought-provoking Thanksgiving decoration for a mantel, coffee table, or centerpiece.  Here at JumpStart, we’ve had a blast filling out the leaves for our Giving Thanks Tree, and we’re certainly thankful for your viewership.  Have a Happy Thanksgiving!

Tell Your Friends About the Giving Thanks Tree and How Thankful You Are for Them