technology – Early Math Counts

Exploring the “T” in STEM

Diann Gano, M.Ed — Sat, 10 Jul 2021 09:32:06 +0000

Science. Technology. Engineering. Mathematics. We teach STEM by fostering a love of exploration and discovery as we awaken children’s curiosity about the world they live in.

Through this play-based process, children develop STEM skills that lay the foundation for lifelong learning and problem-solving.

It was easy for me to introduce my early learners to science, engineering and math. But technology (the “T” in STEM) posed more of a challenge. Why? Because my family child care center, Under the Gingko Tree, is a screen-free program.

At first, I assumed that teaching technology would require the use of computers, tablets and other digital tools. But, after some experimentation, I discovered that children can learn about technology and how things work by experimenting with the most rudimentary tools and machines. This epiphany changed everything!

When James (above) realized that one of the screws on our wagon was loose, he immediately told me that he needed a hammer. I brought out the hammer, only to be met with a confused look. James knew what he needed, but he had not yet learned the correct name for a screwdriver. This small moment in our day helped James focus on the best tool for the job—and learn the name of that tool in the process. As simple as this was, James understood that I had brought him the wrong tool to solve the problem, and this made him think more deeply about various tools and their functions.

“Hudson, come over here! There is some really tall grass!”

This spring, our group went scissor crazy cutting the grass. We love cutting the grass! It never leaves a mess, the kids beg for it and the parents love that this “kindergarten” skill is being addressed. Our students are developing their fine-motor skills while shaping their environment and experiencing the instant gratification of seeing the grass getting shorter.

We can also throw in STEM vocabulary words and phrases such as FORCE, DENSITY and CAUSE AND EFFECT. Who knew that teaching technology could be so easy? Children develop measurement skills as they explore size, length, height and weight. They strengthen their math and observation skills when they make comparisons by size and other attributes.

Ready to incorporate the “T” in STEM into your curriculum? Just add tape measures, a scale, a few simple tools and some building blocks to your classroom and outdoor play. With some gentle guidance and a few well-placed questions and vocabulary words, your early learners will do the rest.

STEM is all about EXPLORATION. Whenever we give children the time and the freedom to explore their world, make predictions and form hypotheses, we are setting them up for STEM success. By promoting this type of play, you’ll empower your early learners to use their emerging STEM skills in the classroom and in the larger arena of life.

When engaged in activities that support STEM learning, young children can follow their curiosity, maintain their focus, participate in discussions, expand their vocabulary and remain actively engaged for surprisingly long periods of time.

STEM exploration involves hands-on, active participation to effectively solve problems. Children control their own learning as they ask questions, propose ideas, collect data and test out their theories and ideas.

Imagine a place where mistakes and failed attempts are positive experiences that lead to a deeper understanding of STEM principles. This is what STEM looks like in the early learning environment!

Now that you know how simple it can be to teach your early learners about the “T” in STEM, join my tool party and let the play begin. Happy grass cutting!

Designing Virtual Lands!

Brian J. Puerling, MS, NBCT — Fri, 22 Feb 2019 18:57:35 +0000

Wooden blocks, Magna-tiles, and Lego bricks have taken quite a residence in the childhood of young children. Toys like these and other building materials provide children with a fascination with creative opportunity. As an adult, I am still astounded by the ideas that come to mind when I open one of the Lego containers I have from my childhood. I ask myself, should I build a plane, a train, a house, or a bus? The ideas I come up with are endless. These creative inspirations come from all around us, much like someone who might have a multitude of ideas come to mind when entering a fabric store like JoAnn’s or Michael’s. Should they make a blanket, a set of napkins, a shirt, or a pair of mittens.

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!

Creating Stop Motion Pattern Videos

Brian J. Puerling, MS, NBCT — Fri, 15 Feb 2019 18:56:52 +0000

I have consistently found that young children are always fascinated by anyone viewing photographs or videos on a smartphone. “Can I see, can I see?” they say as they mosey their way into your lap. Where children viewing what has been taken by a camera is important, it is also just as important to get them behind the camera taking the shots and making decisions about what is being captured.

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

Using ChatterPix to Animate Number Stories

Brian J. Puerling, MS, NBCT — Wed, 07 Feb 2018 06:40:05 +0000

posted by Brian Puerling

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:

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?
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?
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?
How will the illustration be created?
1. Pencil? Paint? Sculpture (clay)?
2. Photograph of actual items and individuals?
3. An application-based illustration?
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?