Creative activities for kids that develop social-emotional skills
The Catbears teach children ages 3–12 to handle everyday conflicts through kids’ craft activities, coloring pages, and creative project ideas that build social skills, self-awareness, and self-confidence.
“Pure joy! My child gets far more than just another craft activity.”Adam, Emma's dad
How it works
Jordi the Crocodile explains and demonstrates in a short video how Catbears works.
Create step by step
Children create independently while the app guides them step by step with short, clear videos — so you can focus on helping them and practicing the important skills: social‑emotional skills and teamwork.
There is no better time than today to equip our children with life skills and tools for social challenges. The Catbears app provides this solution.
Creative Projects for Kids Using Household Materials
The app is packed with creative ideas for kids, suitable for preschool and elementary ages. The activities work well at home, in school, or in kindergartens. Just open and start creating.
Eco-Friendly
Glue, scissors, colors, cardboard boxes, and paper bags. We encourage the use of recycled materials to help build environmental awareness in children.
Safe Tools for Kids
The projects use materials and tools that are kid-friendly – no hot glue guns or utility knives, so every child can create safely.
Printable Activity Pages
The projects include printable activity pages. You can print them on any home printer, A4 size, black and white.
Why kids love the Catbears activities
“The videos are funny and the kids burst out laughing — and that matters because it lets me reach them. When they laugh and have fun, we can talk about anything. The videos present social challenges from children’s everyday lives and touch the most important topics — taking turns, insults, a shy child, a child who needs help — all handled with humor, wisdom and gentleness. Many children find it hard to self‑regulate and see the other side, and from session to session I see trust forming; they feel more comfortable and remember everything we learned.”
FAQ
Very little. Gather the craft materials available in every home - markers, glue, scissors, cereal box, etc., print the activity pages and press play. The Catbears guide the activity itself through short, clear videos. The adult's role is to supervise and encourage children to use the social skills learned in the activity.
At Catbears, creative activities generate social change. Each activity combines guided creation with the development of social-emotional skills, and is built after extensive field testing in an approved Ministry of Education workshop.
Catbears operates on two complementary levels: an educational field workshop and a digital initiative.
The Catbears workshop, approved under Gaf"n program number 45381, operates in kindergartens and elementary schools and serves as a precise pedagogical laboratory. There, each activity is tested with real children: difficulty level, guidance, frustrations, how children cooperate, and whether the emotional skill is actually transmitted and absorbed.
In parallel, the team collects feedback from parents and children creating from home, conducts usability tests and in-depth interviews, and fine-tunes the digital creative experience to be clear, feasible, and well-guided.
Based on all this, activities are built by an experienced product team that ensures children succeed in completing tasks, understanding emotional tools, and applying them.
The goal is to achieve a creation that children are proud of, together with a process that generates change in behavioral habits, so that from activity to activity we see real and meaningful progress in exactly the places that are usually hardest to teach: children will cooperate better, cope differently with frustration, listen, wait, and talk - this is the essence of Catbears.
The principle of Catbears is to leverage the natural moments of frustration that arise during creation as a perfect environment for social-emotional learning. In each activity, children learn a different skill such as how to take a breath to calm anger, how to help a friend, and how to accept differences.
The principle of Catbears is to leverage the natural moments of frustration that arise during creation as a perfect environment for social-emotional learning. In each activity, children learn a different skill such as how to take a breath to calm anger, how to help a friend, and how to accept differences.
Gradually, children identify emotions in real-time, manage to stop before outbursts, and improve their coping with conflicts from daily life.
The emotional model works on breaking the automatic response by training the brain to stop the emotional reaction and choose a conscious response. Repeated practice of "stop-breathe-think" turns this response into an automatic habit, essential for emotional regulation and conflict resolution in real life.
Parents and educators report that children begin to use breathing tools even outside the activity, when there is difficulty or frustration in daily life.
The activities are suitable for children aged 3 to 12, and work excellently at home with siblings and friends, in educational institutions (can be run with a class divided into small teams), and also in non-formal education settings such as after-school programs and community centers. They are suitable for both groups and individuals - an ideal solution for rainy days, holidays, and weekends.
At home: Catbears activities encourage cooperation between siblings by forcing them to work together on a shared project. Parents are "freed" from endless searching for easy craft ideas for children, and enable immediate activation with minimal preparation. The activities are especially suitable for rainy days or holidays, when parents are looking for meaningful activity that encourages cooperation instead of arguments. Children stay engaged and focused, and the final product gives a sense of achievement and pride.
In educational institutions: Catbears activities were developed to address common emotional and social difficulties among children, including emotional restlessness, regulation difficulties, challenging social dynamics, and feelings of loneliness. The structured format of activities combined with guided video makes them an ideal tool for educators and therapists, such as speech therapists and art therapists, as well as for kindergarten teachers, teachers, and after-school program leaders.
The activities are adapted for small groups of up to six children, and are successfully run in kindergartens, elementary schools, communication kindergartens, after-school programs, community centers, and emergency settings. The clear structure and guided pace also allow children with emotional or social difficulties to integrate safely and experientially.
Yes. The first activity is free. To enjoy the activities that follow, you will be asked to subscribe to a monthly or annual subscription, for access to all activities, content, and additions - new activities added to the site. Can be canceled at any time.
Catbears is a groundbreaking EdTech initiative developed by Maayan Malka, an educational and social entrepreneur, senior product designer, and learning technologies expert (formerly of unicorn Simply), together with a multidisciplinary team from the worlds of education, therapy, and design. Catbears content is based on field work within the approved Gaf"n program of the Ministry of Education, adapted for kindergarten and elementary school children.
Catbears was developed by a multidisciplinary team of experts from the worlds of EdTech, education, therapy, and design. Content development was done through close and continuous field work with therapists, speech therapists, occupational therapists, kindergarten teachers, and teachers. The technological team and creative personnel combine deep knowledge in learning experience design, video, illustration, and animation, and translate clinical and pedagogical knowledge into accessible language that children can understand and apply.
Institutional validity: The Catbears workshop, which serves the digital initiative for developing and testing content in the field, is approved and included in the Gaf"n program of the Ministry of Education (program number 45381). The meaning of the approval is that Catbears content and activities meet the pedagogical, professional, and practical standards of the Ministry of Education, and are adapted for work with children in kindergartens and elementary schools.
In addition, the program has received recommendations from leading experts in the fields of education and therapy: Michal Dalit ("Super Nanny"), Dr. Ofer Marbach ("Kolot Paamonim"), Dr. Gish Amit ("Shnot Limud"), and Rotem Ganot (R&D Division, Ministry of Education) and many other good people.
The course creates a group dynamic where children must cooperate to succeed in tasks - they progress from stage to stage only when everyone has finished, practice taking turns, learn about helping others and listening - building blocks for conflict resolution and accepting others.
Catbears shifts the focus from the adult to the children. The child learns to cope with conflicts from self-awareness of their emotions, which frees them from the need to use an adult as an arbitrator. The characters (the Cat and the Bear) serve as a model for accepting opposites and inclusion - "even a bear and a cat can be friends!". Children learn that the power to resolve the conflict lies within the child themselves.
The course creates situations where children must work together, for example, waiting for everyone to finish a stage before progressing, or helping a friend who encounters difficulty. Repeated practice of cooperation turns these skills into second nature.
Children practice practical skills: asking for help, giving help, waiting for turns, and using calming strategies when frustrated. "Team steps" create short, fun interactions that turn friction into learning.
Yes. We use only available and child-safe materials: paper, thin cardboard, tape, glue sticks, colors/markers, yarn, and rounded scissors - no hot glue and no sharp tools.
The system comes with activity pages and short videos that guide step by step. The equipment includes safety scissors, glue sticks, thin cardboard (like a cereal box), tape, and colors/markers/watercolors. All materials are safe for children - no need for hot glue or sharp tools.
We use only available and child-safe materials: paper, thin cardboard, tape, glue sticks, colors/markers, yarn, and rounded scissors.
The adult simply activates the video and ensures the basic tools are available. During the lesson, the course itself takes command of the pace of progress, while children help each other and develop social skills.
It is much easier to teach social-emotional skills in early childhood than to try to change existing habits later in life. Catbears provides accessible and practical tools that are perfectly suited for this age, and allows children to develop a strong foundation of social-emotional skills that will accompany them throughout their lives.
The course ensures that no children are left behind: when a child needs extra time to cut or glue (attention/frustration regulation), the adult waits, and the other children practice patience and mutual help.
Each lesson is divided into balanced stages with built-in pause points. Progress only when all children are ready. The system operates on the principle of "everyone together, at individual pace" - when children are ready, the group moves to the next stage.
This pace supports inclusion and reduces frustration for both fast and patient children. This flexibility allows each child to complete the project safely and strengthens a sense of capability.