Boone Productions and The Gadfly Project Launch Fruit Snack Streams, Purpose-Built Transition Support for Early Childhood Classrooms
Detroit-based social enterprise partners with The Gadfly Project to build new digital infrastructure for calmer, more connected childcare environments
DETROIT, MI — Tuesday, Oct. 27 — Boone Productions, the family-owned Detroit media company behind The Nap Time Show®, today announced the launch of Fruit Snack Streams (FSS), a platform built specifically for licensed childcare and early learning environments.
Developed in partnership with The Gadfly Project through its in-kind software development grant program, Fruit Snack Streams gives childcare providers developmentally appropriate, gently paced content for the everyday moments that can make or break a classroom: transitions like cleanup, arrival, pre-nap, rest time, calming moments, and other periods when educators need additional support.
The Hardest Minutes of the Day
A typical childcare classroom moves through 8 to 12 transitions every day: arrival, cleanup, lining up, coming in from outdoor play, lunch, nap, and pickup. Research has found that preschoolers can spend as much as a third of their day in routines and transitions, the moments when a room of two-, three-, and four-year-olds is asked to stop something they love, wait, and start something new, often all at once. That is when order breaks down. Challenging behavior spikes when children are left waiting with nothing to do, and findings from early education platform Lillio point to idle time during transitions as a primary trigger for dysregulation.
Children feel it first: the noise rises, bodies collide, and one meltdown sets off three more. Teachers feel it next, repeating the same prompt fifteen times and losing ten minutes or more to redirection, all day long. Losing their voice is next. Lillio found that 65% of teachers name managing difficult behaviors as the top reason they burn out and leave. Directors get pulled from enrollment and licensing work into whichever classroom is unraveling. Across a year, transitions become a quiet engine of the childcare crisis. The workforce turns over at 30-40% annually, each departed teacher costs a center an estimated $25,000, and when classrooms can't stay staffed, families lose the care they depend on.
Meanwhile, screens are already in the room. In a 2025 RAND survey, 92% of public pre-K teachers reported using online video and audio platforms daily or weekly. Teachers are already reaching for media in these moments, usually YouTube, with its ads, autoplay, and algorithm. The question isn't whether screens will be used during transitions. It's whether what's on them was actually built to help.
Unlike consumer platforms designed primarily for entertainment, Fruit Snack Streams was created around the realities of early childhood education specifically.
The platform brings together short-form music and movement, calming content, mindfulness and breathing activities, nature and animals, gentle learning, storytelling, and other programming that educators can use without navigating advertising, recommendation algorithms, or the overstimulation often associated with children's digital media.
At its core, Fruit Snack Streams provides emotional infrastructure for early childhood classrooms: a reliable, purposeful resource that supports children's regulation and engagement while giving educators a trustworthy tool to protect their own capacity.
"Childcare providers are doing incredibly complex work in environments where there is very little room for additional stress," said Sierra L. Boone, Co-Founder and CEO of Boone Productions. "We built Fruit Snack Streams because we believe technology should make that work easier, not add another layer of noise. The goal isn't to put a screen in front of a child and walk away. It's to give educators a thoughtful tool they can use during the real moments of the day when a classroom needs a little more support."
A Social Enterprise Approach to Early Childhood Technology
Fruit Snack Streams represents the next phase of Boone Productions' work at the intersection of children's media, early childhood education, and community well-being.
Through The Nap Time Show®, Boone Productions has spent years creating calm, culturally responsive programming and bringing that work directly into early learning communities through public media, childcare partnerships, live performances, literacy programming, and community initiatives.
Fruit Snack Streams extends that mission into a technology platform built for childcare providers, particularly those already using media to support high-friction classroom moments.
The company's social enterprise model centers the needs of early childhood educators and children while creating a sustainable business that can keep investing in high-quality children's content, technology, and community programming.
"We've always believed that children's media can and should do more than entertain," Boone said. "Mister Rogers taught us that it can help create environments where children feel safe, seen, curious, and connected. Fruit Snack Streams gives us a way to bring that philosophy into the everyday rhythm of modern childcare classrooms at a scale that live programming alone can't reach."
Building the Technology Behind the Vision
To turn that idea into a scalable software product, Boone Productions partnered with The Gadfly Project, a technology company and social enterprise specializing in custom software, cloud solutions, application and database development, user interface development, and other technology infrastructure.
Through The Gadfly Project's in-kind software grant program, the two companies collaborated to transform Fruit Snack Streams from a concept and early product into a production-ready platform. The partnership combined Boone Productions' deep understanding of children's media and early childhood environments with The Gadfly Project's software development expertise.
With straightforward UX design and custom-coded approaches built for the broadest possible web-based adoption, the resulting cloud-based platform is meant to work without demanding caregivers' mental bandwidth. Fruit Snack Streams includes secure account access, administrative content management, performance on slower internet connections, multi-tiered subscription infrastructure, and device and classroom access, all built around the specific needs of childcare providers and the young children in their care.
"It's been exciting hearing of such an innovative idea coming to fruition," said Ryan Johnson, CEO of The Gadfly Project. "Sierra and the entire Boone Productions team have proven to be highly capable and valued partners on this project. We are proud to be the developer for this innovative early childhood software solution that enables a wholesome learning environment."
Rachel Lea, Onboarding and Project Liaison for The Gadfly Project, pointed to the working relationship behind the build. "We were so impressed with the focus, earnestness, and professionalism with which Sierra approached every aspect of development that we dubbed Boone Productions our favorite grant awardee of the quarter," she said. "Serving as the main point of contact for custom software development while maintaining and growing every other aspect of an expanding organization is no small feat, but Sierra handled it all with grace and expert-level leadership."
"Having forged a professional relationship of trust on the Fruit Snack Streams project," Lea added, "Boone Productions and The Gadfly Project are now primed to partner on further innovations for the long term."
The Gadfly Project's in-kind grant program provides software development expertise and resources to organizations working to improve human well-being and expand their reach through technology. The Fruit Snack Streams project reflects that model, using custom technology to help a mission-driven company extend its positive impact into more early childhood settings.
Designed for the Realities of Childcare
Before venturing into tech, The Nap Time Show was doing dozens of early learning live performances at childcare centers and preschools each year. That experience shaped a core belief behind Fruit Snack Streams: the goal is not more screen time for children. Screens are already in many childcare classrooms, and what matters is what children and educators are given when those screens are turned on. And, furthermore, contributing to environments that are less dependent on screens in the first place.
Fruit Snack Streams is made for deliberate, shared use on classroom TVs, SmartBoards, and other group screens, never as an individual-device experience. Children watch, move, sing, and breathe together, so a few minutes of programming becomes a cue for meaningful engagement with each other and with their teachers. Content is organized around the routines of early learning environments, letting educators and directors find what they need by length, theme, and the classroom moment they are trying to support.
For providers, the vision is simple: less searching, less overstimulation, and more reliable support during the moments that happen every day.
For children, that can mean a calmer transition, a movement break, a moment to breathe, a story before rest, or a familiar character helping them feel at home in their classroom.
For educators, it means having another thoughtfully crafted resource available when they need it.
At the heart of it all is one word: consistency.
Fruit Snack Streams is now available to childcare providers at FruitSnackStreams.com.
About Boone Productions
Boone Productions is a family-owned Detroit children's media company creating entertainment, educational experiences, and community programming designed to help children and families thrive. The company is the creator of The Nap Time Show®, a rest-centered children's media brand distributed through public media and community partners.
Through its work in children's media, live programming, literacy, and early childhood partnerships, Boone Productions is building a broader ecosystem around children's well-being, creative expression, and learning.
Learn more at thenaptimeshow.com.
About The Gadfly Project
The Gadfly Project is a technology company and social enterprise providing custom software and cloud solutions, including web application development, database development, user interface development, cybersecurity planning, and SaaS solutions. Through its in-kind grant programs, The Gadfly Project partners with organizations seeking to use technology to improve their operations, expand their outreach, and advance work that contributes to human well-being.
Learn more at thegadflyproject.org.
About Fruit Snack Streams
Fruit Snack Streams is transition support for licensed childcare classrooms. Arrival, cleanup, pre-lunch, post-recess, nap time, and pickup are where classrooms fall apart and where teachers burn out. Fruit Snack Streams turns those moments into calm, predictable routines. Teachers answer three questions in its SnackByte Timer and get PBS-quality programming matched to the moment, with no training and no new equipment. Directors get AAP-aligned screen time tracking and automated compliance documentation for licensing visits. Calmer transitions give teachers the capacity to connect with every child and give children the regulation they need to connect with each other. Fruit Snack Streams is a product of Boone Productions, creators of The Nap Time Show® on PBS Michigan.
Learn more at FruitSnackStreams.com.
Media Contact
Sierra L. Boone
Boone Productions
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