Holiday time is just around the corner - an exciting and busy time of year for children, full of family time, travel, celebrations at school, and more. Even in the midst of our hectic schedules, the holidays also offer wonderful opportunities for learning. Read more...

Every Child is an Artist

by Tara Higgins PhD on 10-06-2009 02:06 PM

Pablo Picasso said, “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.” Read more...

Save Recess!

by Tara Higgins PhD on 09-08-2009 09:26 AM

Back to school means fewer opportunities for free play and physical activity. So when do our children get the physical activity that they need to support learning? Read more...

Bringing Geography to Life

by Tara Higgins PhD on 07-20-2009 10:13 AM

I am fascinated by maps.  I always have been, but today there are so many amazing ways you can use the web, a GPS, or even your phone to help find the nearest coffee shop, the fastest route home, or to check the traffic and find an alternate route.  I'll admit it - I'm completely addicted to my navigation system in the car.  How did I live without it?

It is difficult for children to connect an abstract map with symbols and lines to their real world.  As a fourth grade teacher in California, I taught lessons on the state’s four geographical regions: coast, mountains, desert, and the central valley.  By the end of the unit, my students could easily recite the four regions, and label them on a map. But if you asked them to draw their own maps of the state, it quickly became clear that they didn’t really understand how the regions connected to each other.  To be honest, it wasn’t until I used Google Earth to zoom into California from space that I could really see for myself how the mountains surround the valley, and the desert stretches off into Arizona to the southeast.  Those satellite images can help bring a map of lines and labels to life, connecting a printed page to the real world picture that shows trees and mountains instead of colored regions and state borders on a flat map.  

While as an adult I may be able to have that “aha!” moment when I see the satellite image of California and compare it to my mental map of the state, it isn’t quite so easy for children.  There are so many ways to help your child start to understand the connections between different kinds of maps and the real world that they live in.  Google Maps, for example, can show the same location in a map view, terrain, satellite, or street view.  

Here are a few ideas that are perfect for children ages 4 and up.  Have you looked up your own house together to see it on a street map, then compared it to the street or satellite view?  Or, you can take a walk through your neighborhood with a street map that shows only a few blocks surrounding your house.  Use a digital camera to take pictures of important landmarks (the fire station or elementary school) and then print them out and help your child to put the pictures on the street map.  Do you have family and friends living across the country or around the world?  Print out pictures of them and pin them on a world map.   Today’s technology offers so many wonderful ways to bring images and maps to life!

Summer Reading Adventures

by Tara Higgins PhD on 06-15-2009 04:14 PM

It’s that wonderful time of year… across America, schools are letting out for the summer and children (and parents!) are looking for other ways to fill the long hot summer days.  Camp? Swimming and sports? Picnics and barbecues?  When I was a child, summer meant hours spent at our neighborhood lake, evenings catching fireflies outside our house, and signing up for the summer reading programs at our local library.  It’s nice to see that those programs are still around – the local libraries here have summer reading games that offer prizes to encourage children to enjoy reading outside of school.  

I’ve never needed extra encouragement to read – you can find me at the library at least once a month, and I can get lost in a bookstore any time.  And while I’ll read almost any genre of books, fantasy and science fiction books have always been my favorites.  My dad read Dr. Seuss books to us at bedtime (we especially loved the secret world discovered in Horton Hears a Who!).  When I was older, Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising series was appealing because I was wistfully hoping that I’d wake up one day to discover that I had magical powers (sadly, that never worked out for me).  And yes, there were books about that long before Harry Potter!  There is something so exciting about escaping to an imaginary world or seeing our own world through a new perspective - that is one of the greatest things about reading. 

I could go on and on about my favorite books, which is part of what inspired me to become an elementary school teacher.  In my fourth grade classroom, I dedicated 20 minutes after lunch each day to reading aloud.  We started the year with Where the Red Fern Grows (so sad) by Wilson Rawls, moved on to clever re-interpretations of fairy tales in Patricia Wrede’s Dealing with Dragons, and read stories such as Cheaper by the Dozen that transported us to earlier times.  Inspiring children to find joy in a book and immerse themselves in a different world is one of the most wonderful parts of being a teacher. 

I hope you have plans to inspire everyone in your family to read this summer. Check out your local library or visit the Collaborative Summer Library Program online for more resources for adults and kids.  My own reading list is always growing!

There are an enormous number of video games designed for entertainment, education, or a combination of the two.  They’re not just for adults and teenagers any more, either – you can find preschoolers playing baseball on the Wii (as my 3-year-old cousin did the other day). Perhaps it’s easy to dismiss the entertainment category as “purely” for entertainment, but I believe there are learning opportunities inherent in them too.  

So what are kids learning when they play?  James Gee, a professor at Arizona State University, tells us that games “put you into worlds where you have to solve problems.”  In a way, games are a form of assessment - constantly evaluating whether the problem has been solved and giving immediate feedback.  Many games also provide opportunities for kids to collaborate or reach out to others who share their interests (watch James Gee’s interview about “Grading with Games” to hear more).  

I’ve also been reading an interesting paper called Moving Learning Games Forward from the Education Arcade.  It makes me think about the wide range of learning opportunities available in games, whether or not they were designed to be educational.  Some games have clear links to topics kids also learn about in school (music in Guitar Hero or history in Civilization).  In others, the learning may be less obvious, since we often overlook the important skills such as critical thinking, logical reasoning, and collaboration.  Sometimes players are learning through experimentation and scientific inquiry, as they attempt to build things or change variables to achieve different outcomes.  According to the paper, games can also offer children the freedom to play with new identities, experiment to find solutions, and experience failure in a safe space.

Of course, I don’t mean to say that we should abandon traditional schooling and all play video games all day (though perhaps the children might disagree!).  But I do believe that there are many opportunities to consider when it comes to video games and learning, both in and out of school.  At it sounds like fun!

For years now, we’ve been hearing about music programs being cut from schools. The fine arts programs are some of the first to go when budgets are tight, and these programs have never been considered as important as the core subjects such as reading and math. The loss of these music programs has caused parents and teachers to search for other resources. It’s an emotional issue – as you know if you’ve seen movies such as Mad Hot Ballroom, inspired by the Dancing Classrooms program, or Music of the Heart, inspired by Opus 118 Harlem School of Music.

 

What are our children really losing when these music programs are cut from our schools? Is it about the musical education that they’re missing, or is learning about music also linked to achievement in other core subjects? As someone who took many music classes in elementary and secondary school, I wish there was an easy (and positive!) answer to this question.

 

The National Association for Music Education explains that schools with music programs have higher graduation rates, and that some research from Harvard’s Project Zero has identified a correlation between learning musical notation and achievement in math and reading. Other studies suggest that children who participate in music instruction may also score higher on tasks involving hand-eye coordination and visual-spatial abilities. In language development, exposure to music (perhaps through programs such as Music Together) may help young children distinguish between sounds such as /ga/ and /da/, which is important for later phonics skills.

 

What does that tell us? It seems that researchers don’t have the answers about exactly how music instruction is linked to achievement in other domains, but the findings so far are hopeful. And there are still plenty of ways you can support your child’s musical education at home. Find opportunities for exploring and composing (check out Creating Music or Finale Notepad software). Listen to music while you’re in the car and play a game to identify the individual instruments. Do you have other suggestions? And doesn’t this make you wonder if playing Guitar Hero might improve your child’s math skills in some way?

Exploring Sounds and Music

by Tara Higgins PhD on 03-03-2009 08:57 AM - last edited on 08-12-2009 07:54 PM

Children are often fascinated by music, whether they are beating pots and pans or dancing along with the characters on television. Music, like art, also offers a wonderful opportunity for kids to express themselves creatively. So, along with many others here at LeapFrog, I’ve been thinking about incorporating music learning into our products in fun and innovative ways.

 

I think about music and learning in two ways:
1. Music as the curriculum – melody, pitch, rhythm, etc.
2. Music supporting learning in other domains - literacy, math, etc.

 

At the moment, I’m thinking about the first goal. Infants can recognize differences in pitch and inflection, and toddlers will sing along to music at their own pitch. As their gross motor skills improve, toddlers also begin to move to music at a consistent tempo. Don’t worry if your child is singing off key or dancing to a different beat than the music – this is a natural part of the learning process!

 

Listen to Hazel singing her ABCs in the video below and you’ll see what I mean. To an adult, this song is about learning the alphabet in order, with a catchy melody to help your memory along. To Hazel, the ABC song is an opportunity to explore music. She may not have the alphabet in order from A to Z yet, or understand that she’s singing about individual letters. Notice that she’s particularly fond of “W X” - she is clearly using the music to group the letters by their familiar musical phrases.

 

As preschoolers and beyond, children improve their ability to sing independently and match the rhythm and key of a musical piece. They can listen to and appreciate different styles of music and match it to different moods and activities, such as cleaning up toys or a character’s happiness in a story.

 

I’d love to hear what’s happening at your house. How do you support your child’s love of music? Do you have some great ideas to share?

 

Happy learning!

 

My fourth grade teacher was amazing.  In addition to learning the traditional school subjects, we also raised guinea pigs and ducklings on one side of the classroom and learned computer programming on the other!  I didn't know it at the time, but my teacher was definitely an "early adopter" when it came to computers in the classroom.  I remember programming a robot to find its way down our hallway, turn the corners, and pick up packages in the school office.

I trace my own fascination with technology for learning back to those experiences.  I eventually became a fourth grade teacher myself and then a school technology director.  For three years, I taught students in kindergarten through sixth grade in the computer lab.  My students wrote and directed their own movies, captured the world through digital cameras, built robots and composed music.  I loved every minute of it – kids' excitement about technology is contagious!  Eventually, I realized how much more I wanted to learn about kids, teachers, and technology and headed off to UC Berkeley in search of more answers.  Five years of graduate school and a PhD in Education might not have helped me to find all the answers I was looking for, but it did lead me here to LeapFrog!  

Now I'm the Curriculum Designer on our Learning Team.  It might seem a long way from the average school classroom, but every day I use what I know about technology and kids to support the curriculum behind our product development.  Most of my time is spent managing the content in the LeapFrog Learning Path, a free online resource that gives personalized insights into what (and how) your child is learning while playing with our toys and games.  I hope you've had a chance to connect your LeapFrog products to our unique Learning Path – we have a lot of great information about the skills your child is exploring while they play and your feedback is crucial to helping us find better ways to explain the magic of learning.  I also work with designers and producers here to develop new products that we're looking forward to sharing with you and your child very soon.  I'll let our Learning Designers, Carolyn Jaynes and Linda Platas, tell you more about that in the next installments of our blog.  
 
Happy learning!
-Tara