Meet the Hopscotch Team
Teacher + Musician with a dream to make learning enjoyable for all ages.
“We love what we do! It is incredible to see the confidence and joy as kids learn through song and enjoy the process. Thanks for your continual kindness and support!”
Joanna Pace
Joanna does the educational and visual side of Hopscotch - collaboration, market research, working with animators, etc. She is currently taking a break from teaching to work on a masters’ degree. She loves reading, making friends, being outdoors, exploring her new city, and spending time with family.
Matt Pace
Matt is the head songwriter, music producer, co-creator, and YouTube specialist for Hopscotch. Outside of Hopscotch, he enjoys playing sports (most recently Ice hockey), writing musicals, and going to see shows. You can see some of his other work at https://www.mattpacemusic.com/
It all started when…
I (Joanna) was looking for a video to use in my lesson plan about continents for my 2nd graders back in 2017. I was hoping for something with music to help with memorization. At the time, I couldn’t find much, and what I could find wasn’t fun to listen to. I went home and asked Matt (my husband) if he would write a song for my kids to help them learn the continents…..he agreed, a little reluctantly because kids music “isn’t really my thing”. (Maybe we should be glad of that - Matt got to re-imagine what kids’ music can sound like).
Well, my students loved it, and other teachers and classes in my school did as well. He wrote a few more skip counting songs for me. As we thought about our visual learners, it seemed like a good idea to add some animation, so we found some super nice, generous animators to do the first few on a very tight budget, and they rocked it…next came the question: how to share with other teachers? With big file transfers seeming a bit complex, YouTube seemed like an easy way.
After our first few, we were advised by some to keep them private or charge money. I didn’t love that idea -kids with less financial resources deserve quality content to help them learn. So YouTube became our platform of choice - free, accessible, and ready to help people learn.