CRAMES are practical, easy-to-use creative games that get children thinking creatively. The stimulating trigger questions develop problem solving and creative thinking skills in activities that take as little as five minutes a day. No preparation is needed, just the willingness to think creatively. Trigger questions range from 'What if the sea turned everything it touched red?' and 'How many things can you think of that squeak?' to 'How is a museum like a story?' and 'Would you rather be a picture or a fish tank? Why?' Creative thinking is a necessary tool for survival and success in today's world. Playing CRAMES will add variety to your day and help you and your pupils break out of your usual mind-set and lead you down the path of looking at the world through creative-coloured glasses!
Help children of all learning styles and strengths improve their critical thinking skills with these creative, cross-curricular activities. Each engaging activity focuses on skills such as recognizing and recalling, evaluating, and analyzing.
This book features 50 brief situations that present interesting opportunities and open-ended challenges to engage students in Creative Problem Solving. These brief, practical, everyday situations provide motivating starting points for practicing CPS with groups of many sizes and ages. Grades 3-8
How can we make sure that our children are learning to be creative thinkers in a world of global competition - and what does that mean for the future of education in the digital age? David Williamson Shaffer offers a fresh and powerful perspective on computer games and learning. How Computer Games Help Children Learn shows how video and computer games can help teach children to build successful futures - but only if we think in new ways about education itself. Shaffer shows how computer and video games can help students learn to think like engineers, urban planners, journalists, lawyers, and other innovative professionals, giving them the tools they need to survive in a changing world. Based on more than a decade of research in technology, game science, and education, How Computer Games Help Children Learn revolutionizes the ongoing debate about the pros and cons of digital learning.
Principles for designing educational games that integrate content and play and create learning experiences connecting to many areas of learners' lives. Too often educational videogames are narrowly focused on specific learning outcomes dictated by school curricula and fail to engage young learners. This book suggests another approach, offering a guide to designing games that integrates content and play and creates learning experiences that connect to many areas of learners' lives. These games are not gamified workbooks but are embedded in a long-form experience of exploration, discovery, and collaboration that takes into consideration the learning environment. Resonant Games describes twenty essential principles for designing games that offer this kind of deeper learning experience, presenting them in connection with five games or collections of games developed at MIT's educational game research lab, the Education Arcade. Each of the games—which range from Vanished, an alternate reality game for middle schoolers promoting STEM careers, to Ubiquitous Bio, a series of casual mobile games for high school biology students—has a different story, but all spring from these fundamental assumptions: honor the whole learner, as a full human being, not an empty vessel awaiting a fill-up; honor the sociality of learning and play; honor a deep connection between the content and the game; and honor the learning context—most often the public school classroom, but also beyond the classroom.
Open-ended activities to develop students' creative and critical thinking skills. Gifted children are not the only ones who will benefit from this book! All children will thoroughly enjoy these activities. Some of the activities can be last for days, others such as the brainteaser section can be used for a quick warm-up to spark interest and excite the brain. Activities linked to Bloom's taxonomy.
In the theme of recess, this book holds a deep and imaginative collection of fun mathematical ideas, puzzles, and problems. Written for anyone interested in or actively engaged in schools-parents, teachers, administrators, school board members-this book shows math as a playful, fun, and wonderfully human activity that everyone can enjoy.
The second edition of the best-selling Python for Kids—which brings you (and your parents) into the world of programming—has been completely updated to use the latest version of Python, along with tons of new projects! Python is a powerful programming language that’s easy to learn and fun to use! But books about programming in Python can be dull and that’s no fun for anyone. Python for Kids brings kids (and their parents) into the wonderful world of programming. Jason R. Briggs guides you through the basics, experimenting with unique (and hilarious) example programs featuring ravenous monsters, secret agents, thieving ravens, and more. New terms are defined; code is colored and explained; puzzles stretch the brain and strengthen understanding; and full-color illustrations keep you engaged throughout. By the end of the book, you’ll have programmed two games: a clone of the famous Pong, and “Mr. Stick Man Races for the Exit”—a platform game with jumps and animation. This second edition is revised and updated to reflect Python 3 programming practices. There are new puzzles to inspire you and two new appendices to guide you through Python’s built-in modules and troubleshooting your code. As you strike out on your programming adventure, you’ll learn how to: Use fundamental data structures like lists, tuples, and dictionaries Organize and reuse your code with functions and modules Use control structures like loops and conditional statements Draw shapes and patterns with Python’s turtle module Create games, animations, and other graphical wonders with tkinter Why should serious adults have all the fun? Python for Kids is your ticket into the amazing world of computer programming. Covers Python 3.x which runs on Windows, macOS, Linux, even Raspberry Pi
Creativity, Technology, and Learning provides a comprehensive introduction to theories and research on creativity in education and, in particular, to the role of digital-learning technologies in enabling creativity across classroom learning environments. Topical coverage includes play, constructionism, multimodal learning and project-/problem-based learning. Creativity is uniquely positioned throughout the book as an integral component of the educational process and also as a foundational aspect of self-actualization, thriving communities, and humane societies. Through in-depth, empirically based discussions of the philosophical, curricular and pedagogical elements of creativity, Sullivan demonstrates how creativity can be fostered across the curriculum through the use of digital-learning technologies in design, personal expression and problem-solving activities.
Children are already learning at birth, and they develop and learn at a rapid pace in their early years. This provides a critical foundation for lifelong progress, and the adults who provide for the care and the education of young children bear a great responsibility for their health, development, and learning. Despite the fact that they share the same objective - to nurture young children and secure their future success - the various practitioners who contribute to the care and the education of children from birth through age 8 are not acknowledged as a workforce unified by the common knowledge and competencies needed to do their jobs well. Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8 explores the science of child development, particularly looking at implications for the professionals who work with children. This report examines the current capacities and practices of the workforce, the settings in which they work, the policies and infrastructure that set qualifications and provide professional learning, and the government agencies and other funders who support and oversee these systems. This book then makes recommendations to improve the quality of professional practice and the practice environment for care and education professionals. These detailed recommendations create a blueprint for action that builds on a unifying foundation of child development and early learning, shared knowledge and competencies for care and education professionals, and principles for effective professional learning. Young children thrive and learn best when they have secure, positive relationships with adults who are knowledgeable about how to support their development and learning and are responsive to their individual progress. Transforming the Workforce for Children Birth Through Age 8 offers guidance on system changes to improve the quality of professional practice, specific actions to improve professional learning systems and workforce development, and research to continue to build the knowledge base in ways that will directly advance and inform future actions. The recommendations of this book provide an opportunity to improve the quality of the care and the education that children receive, and ultimately improve outcomes for children.
