Production Features As Scaffolds For Children'S Learning: Lessons: Fill & Download for Free

I think that it's important for children to use their imaginations as much as possible -- depending on their age, simple blocks, clays, paints, water, sand, and wheels are the best toys.However, it is also great for them to have support/structure/scaffolding when working on more challenging tasks. I'll share some of my favorites from 14 Best Educational Toys That Will Teach Your Children How to Think :1. The Girl Who Never Made Mistakes, $13.95. Probably the most important study ever done on education and developmental psychology is Carol Dweck's research on theories of intelligence. She discovered that children tend to hold one of two theories about how intelligence and abilities work:Fixed mindset, or the idea that intelligence and abilities are set, and there's not much you can do to improve it.Growth mindset, or the belief that intelligence and abilities can improve the more you use them.Children who have a fixed mindset are more likely to avoid taking chances and tackling challenges; they're more likely to give up in the face of hardship or failure; they're more likely to attribute failure to stable, internal, and unchangeable causes. (And, as I discussed in 10 Things You Should Remind Your Daughter to do EVERY Day That are More Important Than Brushing Her Hair, girls are more likely to adopt a fixed mindset than boys.)​That is why this book is important! Buy it. Read it every day. It will benefit your child at LEAST as much as another STEM toy.2. Kids First Automobile Engineer Kit With Storybook, $37.75. Engineering for preschoolers! Cleverly designed, gender-neutral, and helps kids develop color recognition and fine motor skills.2. Roominate, $14.99. An award-winning STEM toy, Roominate teaches hands-on problem solving and spatial skills, basic circuit-building and mechanical skills. It features connectable building pieces, so that different kits can be combined into a larger project. It's a little less open-ended than simple blocks, but was designed specifically with girls in mind -- you know, with pretty colors and a storyline and such.Your child could build their own amusement park:Chateau:Townhouse:3. Robotokits 14-in-1 Educational Solar Car, $35.49. Solar powered, versatile, great for beginning and advanced builders.4. Air Swimmers, $33.95. Because this toy is just as fun for adults as it is for kids. Because it provides early lessons in aerodynamics. And because it was designed by one of my favorite people in the whole world! If your child is into Angry Birds, you can buy the Angry Birds Air Swimmer for $11.95 -- that's 76% off!5. Pley - Unlimited Lego Rentals, $19/month. Because then your kid gets to experience the joy of Christmas... every month! Reduce clutter and expose your child to more possibilities.6. Little Passports, $11.95/month. Because STEM is important... but so is cultural awareness and exchange. Little Passports is a monthly package full of souvenirs that teach your child about another state or country. It's the first step towards making them global citizens. For more, check out It's "Safe" to be a Doctor or Engineer. But This Kind of Intelligence is Valuable, Too.7. Snap Circuits Jr. SC-100 Electronics Discovery Kit, $19.25. One of Amazon'g top-selling educational toys of all time -- for good reason! Each part can be used in about 100 different ways, to build working models of a photo sensor, a flashing light, and an adjustable-volume siren. Winner of the National Parenting Center-Seal of Approval, Dr. Toy 100 Best Children's Products, and Dr. Toy Best Educational Products.10. LEGO Female Scientists - Set of 11, $23.29. Because there's a serious shortage of female characters in movies, books and toys. Psychology has demonstrated repeatedly that female role models are important for young girls.Honorable mentions:GoldieBlox. It's got a storyline and characters, so it's not building for the sake of building, which, apparently, girls like. However, research shows that open-ended play allows for more engaging and imaginative learning -- and as far as I can tell, there's a "right" way and a "wrong" way to assemble these kits. Which means girls will gain some amount of problem solving and spatial awareness, but it's probably not the richest possible experience for them.At the same time, it's good to have role models who zipline and build things, rather than await their prince.Life-Size Lincoln Logs. I have yet to find a place where you can buy giant Lincoln Logs. However, I propose three alternatives:Clark's Original Slotwood -- an educational, creative, life-size indoor/outdoor playhouse building set for children.Pool Noodles. If Slotwood is out of your price range and you're a little handy, you can create your own life-size Lincoln Logs out of pool noodles. Just order 15-25 (or more, if you want to get crazy) noodles, cut them in half and add notches on each side. Don't forget about the short connector pieces.One advantage to building with noodles versus Slotwood is that they're made of foam, so the risk of injury to the child (should they build a tall structure that falls) is smaller.For an authentic "wooden" look, wrap them in wood-print contact paper.Another DIY Slotwood alternative, if you have some amount of woodwork experience, is Builder Boards: How to Build the Take-Apart Playhouse.

This is an excerpt from the American Academy of Pediatrics policy statement on screen time and young children.Evidence continues to show limited educational benefits of media for children younger than 2 years. Earlier American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommendations to discourage media exposure for children younger than 2 years were based on research on TV and videos, which showed that in-person interactions with parents are much more effective than video for learning of new verbal or nonverbal problem-solving skills.17 This research showed that infants and toddlers experience what was referred to as the “video deficit:” difficulty learning from 2-dimensional video representations at younger than 30 months of age. The video deficit is thought to be attributable to infants’ and young toddlers’ lack of symbolic thinking, immature attentional controls, and the memory flexibility required to effectively transfer knowledge from a 2-dimensional platform to a 3-dimensional world.18 Before 2 years of age, children are still developing cognitive, language, sensorimotor, and social-emotional skills, which require hands-on exploration and social interaction with trusted caregivers for successful maturation.Therefore, adult interaction remains crucial for toddlers to learn effectively from digital media. For example, from 12 to 24 months of age, toddlers can begin to learn novel words from commercially available “word learning” videos, but only if their parents watch with them and reteach the words, essentially using the videos as a learning scaffold to build the language skills.19,20 In one longitudinal study of low-income families, 14-month-olds whose mothers had talked with them during educational TV programming since infancy showed more advanced language development than infants whose mothers did not talk with them during media use (although this finding also may have reflected how much mothers spoke to children in general).21 The few experimental studies showing independent learning of words from videos at this age have been limited by their low ecologic validity22 or have shown that toddlers lose the knowledge learned over time without repetition.23More recent research has shown that, under particular conditions, children between 15 and 24 months of age can learn from repeated viewing of video demonstrations without adult help. Dayanim and Namy showed that 15-month-olds could learn the meaning of sign language symbols after 3 weeks of watching a commercially available video 4 times per week.24 However, children in a comparison study group whose parents used a book of sign language symbols to teach the content retained more knowledge about the symbols’ meanings for a longer period of time.Building parasocial relationships with TV or video characters (ie, the perceived relationship that audience members develop with characters who speak to them, such as Elmo or Dora) also has been shown to improve toddlers’ learning. Calvert et al25 showed that, after 3 months of playing with a personalized interactive toy, 21-month-olds could learn how to stack cups from a video demonstration by the same character, suggesting that building an emotional bond with an on-screen character improves learning potential. However, a primary limitation of such experimental studies is that they do not examine how repeated media use displaces other activities, and they do not examine longer-term outcomes. For example, in the study by Calvert and colleagues,25 children randomly assigned to the group that did not receive the interactive toy for 3 months actually scored better in terms of language development at 21 months of age.Are Touchscreens More Educational?Pedagogic theory has long emphasized that interaction improves learning. This understanding has been the motivation for recommending coviewing of media, along with evidence that parent interaction increases young children’s engagement with media and understanding of content.26 The interactivity of new media via touchscreens allows apps to “know” whether a child is responding accurately and tailor responses, reinforcement, and next steps to the child’s input. Theoretically, this may increase educational potential by providing scaffolding to build skills at the child’s edge of competence.Empirical evidence regarding interactive media use in infants and toddlers is sparse. At 24 months of age, a child can learn words from live video-chatting with a responsive adult27or from carefully designed, interactive screen interfaces that prompt the child to tap on relevant learning items.28 Starting at 15 months of age, toddlers can learn novel words from touchscreens in laboratory-based studies (with specially designed, not commercial, apps) but have trouble transferring this knowledge to the 3-dimensional world,29particularly if they regularly use touchscreen platforms to view entertainment media.Is Skyping Appropriate for Infants and Toddlers?Many parents now use video-chat (eg, Skype, Facetime) as an interactive media form that facilitates social connection with distant relatives. New evidence shows that infants and toddlers regularly engage in video-chatting,30 but the same principles regarding need for parental support would apply in order for infants and toddlers to understand what they are seeing. Because video-chat episodes usually are brief,30 promote social connection, and involve support from adults, this practice should not be discouraged in infants and toddlers.What Is the Best Approach to Selecting Quality Content for Young Children?High-quality TV programs (eg, Public Broadcasting Service [PBS] programs, such as Sesame Street and Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood) can demonstrably improve cognitive, linguistic, and social outcomes for children 3 to 5 years of age. Although there have been few large community-based, randomized trials, many observational studies and some small experimental ones have demonstrated that preschoolers can learn literacy, numeracy, and prosocial skills from high-quality TV programs.31,32 In addition, Sesame Workshop and other child content creators have been responding to current child health and developmental needs (eg, obesity, resilience) by crafting programming aimed at teaching parents and children relevant knowledge and skills.Choosing PBS content has been found to be protective of poor executive function outcomes observed in children who start consuming media in early infancy.33Preschoolers randomly assigned to change from inappropriate or violent content to high-quality prosocial programming were found to have significant improvements in their externalizing and internalizing behavior,32 which also speaks to the importance of content. For families who find it difficult to modify the overall amount of media use in their homes, changing to high-quality content may be a more actionable alternative; to make these changes, pediatric providers can direct them toward curation services, such as Common Sense Media, for reviews of videos, apps, TV shows, and movies.Are “Educational” Apps and e-Books Really Educational?As content from PBS high-quality programs is translated into apps and game formats (eg, Martha Speaks, Big Bird’s Words, and Cookie Monster’s Challenge apps), educational benefits have been shown in preschoolers.34 Unfortunately, very few of the commercially available apps found in the educational section of app stores have evidence-based design input with demonstrated learning effectiveness. In fact, recent reviews of hundreds of toddler/preschooler apps labeled as educational have demonstrated that most apps show low educational potential, target only rote academic skills (eg, ABCs, colors), are not based on established curricula, and include almost no input from developmental specialists or educators.35,36 An additional concern is that the formal features (ie, bells and whistles) that are designed to engage the child in an interactive experience may actually decrease the child’s comprehension or distract from social interaction between caregivers and children during use, as has been shown for e-books,37 which is important, because active parent involvement in both digital play and book reading improves children’s learning from the experience.38,39One reason that children may be less socially engaged during digital play is that gaming design involves behavioral reinforcement meant to achieve a maximum duration of engagement, which may explain why interrupting children’s digital play leads to tantrums, particularly when games or videos are set on autoadvance.40 To address these concerns, academic and industry leaders have recently recommended creating digital products for children that are appropriately engaging, but not distracting; that are designed to be used by a dual audience (ie, both parent and child) to facilitate family participation in media use and modeling of more effective social and learning interactions35,41; and that have automatic “stops” as the default design to encourage children and caregivers to pause the game use and turn to the 3-dimensional world.40One recent app, for example, demonstrates such an adult–child dyad-centered design. Bedtime Math creates a platform and a structure for parents and children to read stories and answer math problems together on a nightly basis. It is one of the few apps that has been tested in a randomized controlled community-based trial and shown benefits.42Embedding, indeed requiring, social interactivity for functionality may hold great promise for even younger children as well. However, recent population-based surveys suggest that joint media engagement43 (and designs to facilitate it)35 is not as common as individual use.