Recent literature emphasises the role of exploration, designerly play, creative thinking, and handling of materials in the beginning years of learning. This paper reports findings from a study involving 24 children (aged 4 to 10 years), where the researchers engaged with four-story contexts (tasks) that had embedded problem scenarios. In response…

Making autoethnography outlines a method for combining the practices of making (sewing and crochet) and interpretive writing to capture the relationality of the self and materials. I discuss how I have developed my fascination with making as a conduit for working through the challenges of writing autoethnography and the personal vulnerabilities…

In this article, we draw on assemblage theory to investigate how children aged 5 engage with different material surfaces to explore ordinal and relational aspects of number. The children participate in an activity in which they first interact with a strip on the floor, then with a multi-touch iPad application, to work with numbers in expressive…

Montessori education was developed over 100 years ago, and persists as a marginal 'niche reform' of the standard model. Here I discuss two unresolved dichotomies in early childhood education -- the tension between work and play, and between structure and freedom. I explain how Montessori collapses and thereby resolves the dichotomies, and does so…

This case study focused on the robotics learning process of Mark (a pseudonym), a Latino-American second grader diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. Drawing on Polanyi's (Personal knowledge: towards a post-critical philosophy [Kindle version], 1958/2015) notion of "tacit knowing" and "dwelling in tools," we attempted to…

This research examined the role of touch in creative media production in the context of educational and community makerspaces. Touch, while only recently explored in digital media production, is a crucial perceptive sense through which to experience the world, particularly in two- and three-dimensional making, and to explore texture, temperature,…

The Periodic Table of Elements is a valuable resource for chemists and all kinds of STEM professionals. However, it can be initially overwhelming and intimidating to some students. This hands-on lesson introduces abstract concepts in the periodic table through a tangible experience with simple toys and household objects. Students collaborate and…

This pilot project explored the extent to which a pre-literate child can identify and record basic statistical concepts of shape, spread, and center represented by blocks in the form of a frequency distribution. A simple apparatus consisting of a ruler, pencil, and set of blocks was designed to engage a child in playful exercises under the…

This study aimed to improve the education process by enabling children to associate natural environmental experience with art and to include it into aesthetic experience in place-based visual arts applications. Accordingly, answers for subquestions such as how it can be possible for children to create nature-art relation through place-based…

In this article, we present a systematic review of literature on augmented reality (AR) supported for early language learning. We analyzed a total of 53 papers from 2010 to 2019 using qualitative analysis with complementary descriptive quantitative analysis. Our findings revealed three main AR learning activities: word spelling games, word…

This 5E cycle of lessons takes students through a fun and thorough study of Silly Putty's properties, progressing from an initial observation of a "melting snowman" toy in the Engage phase to making and "marketing" their own homemade putty in the Evaluate phase. Along the way, students use evidence to construct their own…