Purpose: Much remains unknown about how young children orient to computational objects and how we as learning scientists can orient to young children as computational thinkers. While some research exists on how children learn programming, very little has been written about how they learn the technical skills needed to operate technologies or to…

Pretend play is important for children's development. However, recent research indicates that, as preschool children age and get more proficient at pretend play, they prefer real objects. We examined whether toddlers prefer real objects when they are younger as well as when they are older and more proficient in pretend play situations. Forty-three…

Object play yields enormous benefits for infant development. However, little is known about natural play at home where most object interactions occur. We conducted frame-by-frame video analyses of spontaneous activity in two 2-h home visits with 13-month-old crawling infants and 13-, 18-, and 23-month-old walking infants (N = 40; 21 boys; 75%…

Methods for teaching higher education students how to learn teamwork skills are constantly evolving. Over the last few years, serious games have become popular in business schools for stimulating teamwork among students by making them focus on the game while pursuing a team objective. Among these games, LEGO® Serious Play has shown enormous…

Children with intellectual disabilities face obstacles in their numeracy skills development. Stick intelligence is a learning media that is aimed to help these children enhance their numeracy skills. Therefore, this study aims to identify: (1) the numeracy skills of students with intellectual disabilities before using the mathematical intelligence…

Doll play provides opportunities for children to practice social skills by creating imaginary worlds, taking others' perspectives, and talking about others' internal states. Previous research using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) found a region over the posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) was more active during solo doll play…

The paper outlines the design of a LEGO Serious Play (LSP)-based undergraduate management module delivered to a diverse group of students, and consequently evaluates the LSP workshops. It argues for the importance of participatory and co-creational approaches to management education, and demonstrates that LSP is a method that has the potential to…

Historically, Finnish early childhood education has been largely based on Friedrich Froebel's pedagogy. However, Froebelian pedagogy is no longer as well known in Finland as it once was. We at the Kindergarten Museum in Helsinki wanted to increase awareness of the Froebelian tradition. Together with artist Alexander Reichstein, we came up with the…

Spatial ability is a form of intelligence where a person demonstrates the capacity to mentally generate, transform, and rotate a visual image and thus understand and recall spatial relationships between real and imagined objects. The aim of this paper is three-fold: (1) to review related empirical studies on spatial abilities for young children…

Decades of research have illustrated the linguistic, social, and cognitive growth that occurs in the context of play (e.g., Baron-Cohen, 1987; Lifter, Foster-Sanda, Arzamarski, Briesch, & McClure, 2011; Lillard et al., 2013; Ungerer & Sigman, 1984). Play also provides opportunities to practice and gain important social skills. During play…

Finding context, examples, and ample hands-on experimentation is fundamental for understanding complex ideas in subjects such as science and math. Recent popularity of competitive robotics has become a catalyst in the development of DIY and hobby kits. Manufacturers have made available easy to work, re-configurable, and functional, structural…

In preschool, numbers and shapes typically appear as separate topics. This study explores how a game, designed as a guided play activity with figurate numbers, functions in a preschool context. The guided play involved parking Lego cars in a rectangular shape, and to find out for which number of Lego cars this is possible. Thirteen preschool…

The international "FIRST® LEGO® League (FLL): Challenge" is a popular educational robotics and STEM competition designed to promote primary and early high school students' STEM interests and careers, and twenty-first century skill development. The "FLL Challenge" currently involves over 318,000 students (aged 9-16 years) in…

Contemporary homes are filled with digital technologies, and children are exposed to them almost since birth, initiating their first digital experiences at very early ages (Chaudron et al., [Chaudron, S., 2015], "Young children (0-8)"). This trend is expected to become stronger, as our future has been envisioned around the concept of the…

The last 15 years have witnessed a quiet revolution in the understanding of spatial skills, and the authors are finding that these all-important science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) competencies are rooted in spatial knowledge. Spatial skills are the tools use to visualize and navigate the world. Spatial skills allows people to…