Playful Learning Challenge: Making Math Fun for Families
An LSX Project
Blog Post
Screen shot from video of Playful Learning Challenge
Aug. 10, 2022
The Learning Sciences Exchange (LSX) is a two-year fellowship program that brings together experts from five sectors (journalism, entertainment, education policy, social entrepreneurship, and the science of learning) across multiple countries. In addition to learning about each other’s fields and sharing insights about their work, LSX fellows are matched up to form three groups, with members of each group working collaboratively to design research-based and innovative projects that advance children’s learning. This is one of those projects. For more, see www.learningsciencesexchange.org
People may think preschool-age children are too young to understand or learn math. “That ends up creating these developmental gaps as children get older,” says LSX Fellow Puja Balachander.
This LSX group wanted to tackle that misconception. “We bring 10 gamified activities based on early math development into homes,” says LSX Fellow Cathy Mitchell. For example, one of the games is a “treasure hunt” that uses spatial language and counting as children look for treasures hidden in the house. Another game, “monster drawing,” uses language about shapes to help parents and children use words about space and shapes as they draw silly monsters. As LSX Fellow Liz Gunderson points out, these games are based on the latest research on how children learn early math. For example, Gunderson says, some games reflect the Cardinality Principle, which is based on the fact that “when you count something, the last number that you get to is the quantity of the whole set.”
Finding ways to bring families a fun and joyful experience—harnessing the power of entertainment—was a key tenet of this project, says LSX Fellow Jeff Kleeman. Another was to make this a social media challenge, encouraging parents to make little videos of playing these games with their children and sharing those videos with others.
Members of the team include Puja Balachander, Jack Graham, Elizabeth Gunderson, Jeff Kleeman, and Cathy Mitchell.
Hear their story in the video below, and explore their research-based games and activities in the Playful Learning Challenge Pre-K and Kindergarten Math Kit.
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