Young children need opportunities to explore creative opportunities as well, and often do in an art center, craft center, or dramatic play center in a classroom.  To the advantage of young children today, they have many more avenues than adults did to explore creative expression.  With the movement of maker spaces into elementary schools, young children are being given the opportunity to explore making, tinkering, designing, building, problem solving, collaborating, and communicating in new ways.  With the advancement of approaches to classroom spaces, alongside the significant advances in the devices we carry in our bags and pockets, making and tinkering now has a dimension known only to children in the last ten years.

Early childhood educators know that young children love fantasy.  They embrace their imagination whenever possible, becoming a new character or hero in a quick moment.  With the advances in our technology, we can help children embrace their imagination in ways not possible before.  Toca Builders, an application created by Toca Boca, offers the opportunity to use tiny robots to help you build your own land. 

In order to learn more about Toca Builders, take a look at this video:

TOCA BUILDERS VIDEO

As you can see, in this application, as children build and rebuild, they simultaneously explore and nurture their developing creativity and spatial sense.  Within the building, children gain exposure to early concept around computational thinking.  Within coding and programming, users eventually learn that computers and robots do only what a programmer tells it to do.  Toca Builders gently introduces this concept with the inclusion of friendly robots to help the child execute their commands for their builds.

In order to maintain a more explicit math skill based approach, consider these challenge examples for the use of Toca Builders:

• Build a tower that is more than 8 blocks tall
• Build a house that is less than 10 blocks wide
• As you build, determine if it is possible to construct a building in the shape of a circle or an oval?
• Can you create a building that is rectangle on the bottom and square towards the top?

There are a variety of applications out there that offer children creative outlets, Toca Builders is one of the fantastic few.  If you are looking for a step up , consider using Blokify, an application that focus on single structure, but provides the opportunity, with the help of an adult, to export their creation in a (STL) file format that can be brought to a 3D printer for printing. In order to learn more about Blokify by taking a look at this video:

Blokify Video

Have fun building virtually!

At Catherine Cook School in Chicago, we introduce the concept of stop motion videos at the age of four in Junior Kindergarten.  This introduction is done very carefully, paying close attention to what children this age can understand as well as what experiences the children have had previously with photography and videography.  In the introduction, we talk about the difference between videos created with a smartphone or video camera and a stop motion video.  Consider these examples as possible language to use to introduce the concept of a stop motion video. “I am sure you have seen a family member take out a phone and take a photo or video of you at some point.  When you watch a video, you will see that it is all continuous, as ever single movement is captured by the camera.  In a stop motion video, we take many photographs all after small movements has been made to a given scene.”

At Catherine Cook, we introduce these videos in curriculum based context.  For example, during a unit on sea creatures, Junior Kindergarteners in Ms Fisher’s class created a video that focused on the movements and actions of particular creatures in the sea.  Before this video was recorded using Stop Motion Studio, the group had to make some decisions.

“When making a stop motion video, we can decide to incorporate a short story to be told in the video.  Use what you know about the sea creatures you have been learning about to decide what that short story might be.”

After giving the group some time to think, we invited them to share their ideas.  Once we sifted through their ideas, we created our short story line.  Using our short story line, we created a plan for how we were going to move the characters we decided on. Take a look at the VIDEO we created!  Can you determine the storyline?  Spoiler Alert: The story line created by the group was that the large sea creatures are chasing the small ones, and then the small ones decided they wanted to chase the large ones.  After the chase is complete, they decided that all of them would join in a line and leave the stage.

In order to learn more about how Stop Motion Studio works, watch this video.

This video created by four-year-olds included a basic mathematical skill addressing sorting by the attribute of size.  There are several other mathematical concepts that can be integrated into the creation of a stop motion video using a child’s favorite snacks, consider these examples:

–     Use a favorite snack such as multi-colored goldfish to create a patterned-based school of fish

–     Use pretzels to create a video creating shapes such as squares, rectangles, diamonds, and trapezoids

o  Include gummy worms to add angles to shapes to create circles, ovals, and hearts

–     Use Lego bricks, starting a pile and slowly sort them by color, size, or number of pegs on the top.

What ideas can you come up with?

Create your video and share with family and friends via email, YouTube, Vimeo, or social media! ENJOY!!

P.S.  For those parents and teachers who are interested in taking these videos one step further to add sound effects, music, and other features by importing it into iMovie, an Apple-based video editing application, take a look at this video

The I Spy books by Jean Marzollo and Walter Wick as well as the Can You See What I See books by Wick are wonderful books that invite children on an exciting adventure to use their developing observation skills to look carefully for strategically placed objects in visually appealing scenic photographs.

Helping children know as much about the process of observation and creating searching games will not only make the experience more fun, but it will also provide them with more information for how to best approach the activity.  Take a look at this video of a walk through Walter Wick’s studio.  The process he uses to build his scenes for his photographs is fascinating.

At Catherine Cook School in Chicago, we have observed even our learners as young as three years old enjoying the experience of creating their own I Spy-like scenes.  There are many ways to approach the creation of these scenes, and embracing a mathematical focus can be extremely exciting for children, as well as informative for parents and teachers.  Consider these steps to create a video:

Step 1 (Parent/teacher):

Identify the mathematical skills or concepts you hope to observe and/or invite the children to explore.

For example:

• The I Spy video will focus on basic shapes: “Find 3 squares, find 2 circles, find 4 rectangles.”
• The I Spy video will focus on number identification: “Find 3 number 2’s, find 1 number 10, find 2 number 8’s”
• The I Spy video will focus on quantities:  “Find 3 pieces chickens, find 6 kittens, find 8 light bulbs”

Challenge: Depending on the abilities of the children in your care or class, consider combining skills and concepts.

For example: The I Spy video will focus on quantities AND shapes: “Find 3 red squares, find 2 yellow circles, find 4 blue rectangles.”

Step 2 (Parent/teacher and child(ren)):

Make/write a visual list of the items to be found in the I Spy scene.

Step 3

Invite the child(ren) to search for those necessary items around the house or classroom as well as other items to assemble and create the scene.

Step 4

After carefully arranging the items together on a table or tray, grab your tablet and a take clear photograph of the scene.

Step 5

Install the application, Draw and Tell by Duck Duck Moose on your tablet.

Take a tour of the Draw and tell app by Duck Duck Moose here.

Step 6

Launch the application and use the photograph taken of the scene from the Camera Roll/Photographs and use it as the background.

Step 7

Use the recording feature of the Draw and Tell application to tell and point out where the items are in the scene.

Step 8

Save your video to the Camera Roll/Photographs and share with friends, family, teachers, or whomever you like via email or social media.  When sharing the video via email or social media, be sure to include the list of items to find in the scene!

Enjoy creating your own I Spy videos!

For more information regarding computational thinking, take a look here!

The question then becomes, what does this look like with our youngest learners? To begin, consider how you organize files on your laptop or computer.  I imagine you have them in folders.  If you are at all like me, perhaps even  folders within folders, within folders.  The files within these folders are similar and/or relevant.  I keep my documents , photos, and videos, related to my daughter in a folder titled, “Lydia”.  Translating this to the early childhood classroom, consider common spaces and routines: art center, reading corner, cubbies, dramatic play, etc.  When children enter their classroom, they find their own cubby, they put their own coat on a hook, they may put their lunch on a particular shelf, as well as put their own change of clothes in a particular bin.  In the art center they put their scissors with the other scissors and their crayons go in the bin with other crayons.  At an early age, they are already beginning to develop the skill to organize items into particular and relevant spaces and places.

By engaging in coding and programming activities, young children can explore foundational concepts such as:

• Sequencing/directions
• Directional coding
• Conditions/If-than statements
• Patterns/Looping
• Problem-based or goal-based design

Daisy the Dinosaur is a free iPad application that invites children to explore early programming and the above skills related to computational thinking.  Take a look at this quick video:  

You will see that this application is visual and textual at the same time.  From an early reader standpoint, this application utilizes high frequency words which would be taught in kindergarten and first grade.  As seen, there are two modes, “free-play” and “challenge”. Use what you know about your group to determine how you might introduce this application to them.  In my experience, I have found using the “challenge mode” first most successful because it slowly introduces new functions.  Once they have developed the understanding of the provided functions, the “free-play” mode is more understandable, intuitive, and of course fun.

Challenge idea:  Consider having children create challenge cards for each other.  On these cards, they can write/draw their own challenges to code Daisy.  Some of the common challenge cards I have observed created include:

• Make Daisy as big as you can
• Make Daisy disappear
• Make Daisy spin for a long time

Have fun!!

Electronic music is not often considered a vehicle for young children to explore music or mathematics for that matter.  At Catherine Cook School, where I am the Director of Education Technology, I oversee our AV Studio which is equipped with a sound proof recording room and separate editing room.  In the editing room we have various controllers and launchpads for our older students to explore mixing electronic music.  We are heavily invested in providing any opportunities we can for our students at all ages to explore creativity in all subject areas.  These devices of course are incredibly too sophisticated for younger children, but we have identified entry points to mixing music for our youngest learners.  A few include:

DJ Mix Kids, an application that invites children to remix instrumental versions of nursery rhymes:

Keezy, an application that allows children to mix recorded music or start from scratch and record and mix their beats and lyrics:

ButtonBass provides users with the ability to turn on cubes which have a certain sound assigned to them.  When combined, having multiple cubes on simultaneously, interesting and fun music is composed.  In order to turn off the cubes, depending on the device being used, simply tap the particular cube or click it with the computer mouse.

Here is a quick video demonstration using the web version:

ButtonBass is available:

Web: www.buttonbass.com, Free

App: Android, Free

Note: This resource is solely instrumental music and sound.

The web version provides access to cubes in a variety of genres including:

• Electro
• Trap
• Electronica
• Reggaeton
• Dubstep
• Hip Hop
• House

Consider the following as a list of possible challenges to use with ButtonBass:

• Create a pattern of cubes turned on/off
• Turn on as many rows of 3 cubes as you can
• Turn on as many corners as you can
• How many cubes can be turned on without any two cubes next to each other both being on?
• Turn on all cubes on one entire side of the cube?
• Turn on any cube that has five of its sides up against another cube.
• Turn on a 4-square

What challenges can you come up with?

This particular exercise gets children thinking about spatial sense, patterns, and geometry in a music composition experience.  When I have used this resources in the past, I often create “dj pairs” so that children can work together to tackle the challenges and appreciate their successes as well as the music they are co-creating.

If children find that a particular combination of cubes turned on is worth revisiting at another time, users can turn on the keys, “SHOW KEYS”.  This will indicate with keys on the keyboard to push to turn on that particular cube.  Taking note of these keys turned on will make it easy to recreate the particular sound again.

Young children are usually up for the challenge of an exciting game whether it be a board game, hide and seek, or simply guessing something.  Scavenger hunts provide children with the opportunity, at its best, to develop skills around collaboration, observation, and communication. Taking technology out of the home and the classroom provides children with an authentic way to see how technology can help us in a variety of environments.  Consider creating scavenger hunts for these popular locations for children:

• Grocery store
• Mall/shopping center
• Neighborhood walk
• Library
• Park/playground
• Museum
• Airport
• Restaurant
• Bus stop/station
• Zoo

For parents, the list above can be a great way to mathematically engage your child(ren) in errands and family trips.  For teachers, this list can provide a new way to engage children and their chaperones with a mathematical lens on a field trip.

Book Creator is an application which can be used to create and publish eBooks.  This application can be used to collect/capture images of found objects for a given scavenger hunt. For example, if a child was at the grocery store, the adult could have their shopping list which may include:

• 3 apples
• 1 gallon of milk
• 2 loaves of bread
• 5 bananas
• Half of a pound of deli ham*

*As indicated as “half of a pound”, this item used as a scavenger hunt item may be better suited for young children with a more solid mathematical foundation. 

For this example, in order to facilitate this experience, you will need:

• A hand-written grocery list
• A writing utensil
• A smart phone or device (Apple or Android)

The grocery list can be used as the same list for the scavenger hunt.  The adult and the child(ren) can work together to find the items on the list.  As they find the items, they can take a photo of each item with the device, adding one photograph per page.  As items are found, the child(ren) can cross them off of the list.  Along with the images taken of the items, children can write what they have found.

As well as photographs, there are other features that children can add drawings, typed text, audio recordings, and shapes such as arrows and stars.

Book Creator provides a very intuitive and open-ended space for children to collect what they have observed on a given trip. Once, completed, these eBooks can be shared as videos, PDF’s, and ePubs depending on how they are intended to be shared (social media, email, etc).

Book Creator is available on:

Chrome:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Tr6S-_ZlSc

iPad:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVvLxkomU6k

Price: Chrome: Free, Apple: Free (with in-app purchases), otherwise $4.99

Consider your home or classroom curriculum and reflect on where an eBook scavenger hunt activity might enhance the overall experience of the unit.  If you are a teacher, try it out with your child or relative to see how it goes.  If you are a parent, try it out with your child and tell your child’s teacher how it went.

In 2016, I had the honor of being an Early Career Fellow for the Fred Rogers Center.  In this role, my charge was to develop a concept for an application that brought art, communication, and language together.  This open-ended application invites children of many ages to create stories independently or collaboratively without having to have their co-creator sitting next to them.  Once a child creates an illustration, they can record a narration and send it to a buddy.  Their buddy receives the illustration, listens to the narration and then can make any changes they want to the illustration as well as their own narration and send it back (up to ten exchanges). Take a look at this video for a quick tutorial:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_Qqqph7Ta0

This application is currently available for iPad only.  There is an update in progress which includes adding the color brown to the crayon selections. Price: Free

One of most popular opponent views to technology in early childhood is that is isolates children from other children and valuable social experiences.  One of my goals with this application was to an experience where children can be creative together without having to be sitting next to each other.  Soon after this application was released I was overjoyed to see my 3-year-old daughter Lydia co-creating a scene with her cousin Jaelyn who lives in Appleton, WI. Their scene included all sorts of items, similar to an I Spy scene.  Jaelyn’s challenge to Lydia was to find 4 apples that she added to her illustration.  Lydia was then to circle those apples.  From there is turned into finding other characters that were added.

In this experience Lydia was able to meaningful engage with her cousin in a both creative and mathematical experience.  If we were to pull apart the skills exercised here, Jaelyn, who was five years old at the time had to come up with the challenge, identifying the specific number of items she chose, and then strategically place them in the illustration.  Lydia then had find those items and keep track of how many she had found as she observed the illustration.  Lydia then made an attempt to add her own items and assign Jaelyn the task of finding the items Lydia added.

In supporting children creating their own Number Challenges in ChromaKids, consider this approach to creating a plan:

1. Who do you want to send the challenge to?
2. What characters would you like to include?
3. What are the items you would like to hide?
4. How many items would you like to hide?
   1. Will there be more than one item?
   2. How many of each item?
5. How will your buddy let you know that they have found the items?
   1. A circle around them?
   2. A square around them?
   3. An audio recording telling where they are?
6. What will you say when you make the audio recording of your challenge?
   1. How will you make sure you include the full directions for your buddy?

You will be amazed to see what children can come up with.  Don’t forget to join in on the fun in creating these challenges!

Note: Strategies provided in all four of February’s blog posts can be facilitated in both the home and the classroom, as well as other contexts. 

Young children are often intrigued by the sense of magic that today’s technology seems to possess.  Though there is not magic in the devices, we can harness that intrigue to introduce new and innovative ways to explore mathematics using technology.  ChatterPix, created by Duck Duck Moose (also ChatterKid), is a tablet device application that allows for users to add a mouth animation providing a voice for a character. These animations are saved in the form of a video which can be shared via email, social media, text, etc.  This video shows a quick tutorial for how this application works:

Caption: At this time, ChatterPix is available for iPad and iPhone only.  If you are interested in ChatterPix on other devices, I encourage you to reach out to Duck Duck Moose, they are very responsive to feedback: https://duckduckmoose.zendesk.com/hc/en-us

Price: FREE

As you can see there are endless possibilities for how this application could be used.  As Director of Education Technology at Catherine Cook School in Chicago, I am always amazed by the ideas teachers come up with to support collaboration, creativity, communication, critical thinking, character, and other skill development.  We have used this application in a multitude of ways, such as providing a voice to familiar story book characters. In the consideration of early mathematics, children could use Chatterpix to create their own animated number stories.  Consider this process to help the child(ren) create a plan for their number story video:

1. Identify a character
   1. Will it be the child themselves?
   2. Will it be a favorite book or movie character?
   3. Will it be a brand new character they create?
2. What are the items being added or taken away?
   1. If it’s the child themselves, do they have a favorite toy? Food?
   2. If it’s a favorite book or movie character, what do they know about the character that could give them some ideas?
3. What is the story around the addition or the subtraction?
   1. Is this a true story?
   2. Is this a story made up in the moment?
4. How will the illustration be created?
   1. Pencil? Paint? Sculpture (clay)?
   2. Photograph of actual items and individuals?
   3. An application-based illustration?
5. Who and how would we like to share this video?
   1. Remain on family/school device?
   2. Share with family members or friends?
   3. Post to an eportfolio resource such as Seesaw?

In the example I created below, I decided I wanted to include myself in the video and then tell a simple short story of how I once shared a chocolate chip cookie with my sister which left me with two cookies to enjoy for myself.  Parents and teachers may consider creating their own number story videos to not only provide an example but to also get familiar with the application and discover the fun while enjoying art, technology, and mathematics. The most powerful experiences with technology is when multiple subjects or disciplines come together.

screenshot provided by Brian

Outside of number stories, what other ideas are coming to your mind?