Roominate STEM toys and Other "Girly" Toys

The list of things my 6 year old daughter enjoys is pretty short:

Science experiments in a Minnie shirt - why not?

• Art
• Science and Math
• Dolls
• Legos
• Putting on shows for anyone who will watch

Step into the big box toy aisle, and you'll see many kinds of "gendered" toys on the shelves (although Target recently took steps to dial that back), and that makes some feminists angry (take this blogger, for example). So what are we to think? Do we benefit culture by creating only "gender-neutral" toys, or is there a loss we suffer?

I'm in the camp of appreciating "girly" toys. My daughter likes Lego. My daughter likes Disney Princesses. Why can't she have both? She may play differently with her Lego sets than my 4 yo old son, who prefers to just build-teardown-build, but having "girly" STEM-oriented toys allows her to play longer at one activity and broadens her interests. Rather than putting her in a "these are girls toys" box, it actually expands her playset (and worldview).

So that's play in our house. We bought the Studio set from STEM toy brand Roominate for Christmas, knowing that she would enjoy putting something together, playing with the characters, and putting together the small, battery powered motor included in each kit.

We had a good time playing with the kit, and I stayed as hands off as possible. She was able to put together most things that she wanted to, and even learned how to put in batteries! (I'd never bothered with that before because nothing had been "hers" to do that with.) She learned a bit about electricity with the motor, battery, and switch, and practiced a lot of problem solving skills as she worked on getting her fan blades to spin freely with the motor.

 The helicopter/submarine/airplane kit was much more difficult, however. It had specific instructions, which was good practice for following directions, but required lots of wiring stuffing that was hard enough for me, let alone a kid. She got really frustrated, I tried to encourage her that the box said a 6 year old should be able to do it, and then she reminded me "just turned 6!" (which was true. LOL). So this was one less hands on, for sure. Here's a Periscope of me assembling the "airplane" so you can get an idea.

Beyond the specifics of these Roominate kits, what was interesting to me is that Roominate is quite clear about advertising their products as "for girls!" and I think that's cool.

Big Macs are NOT Commutative

I went to a St. Louis Blues game with a friend recently and the team scored 4 or more goals, so everyone with a ticket stub got a free McDonald's Big Mac the next day!

When I got my Big Mac back to the math office for lunch, I opened the carton to discover that on top of my sandwich was two consecutive pieces of bread. It looked a lot like this:

source: smosh.com

Besides relevance in assembling nearly anything, many creative processes, and computer programming, order of operations is even important in our branded food products. Who wants that much bread? :)

I showed it to my friend who had stayed behind and his reply was inspiring.

"Big Macs are NOT commutative."

This image will be posted in my classroom as a playful reminder to always be considerate of those operation rules.

Bowling in the Living Room

The older my daughter gets, the more I continue to be amazed at what she's capable of doing (and inspired by what my wife comes up to do with her) during home-school time.

On a random week-day this past September, my 4 year old tracked and generated her own color-coded data chart. This is especially profound for me today because I just got back my semester evals in AP Stats and a couple kids said that the times I sent them out to collect (and then use) their own data were some of the very best, most relevant lessons.

So, my wife could have picked up some colored balls or marbles and counted them in some repeated fashion that my daughter then notated on the chart she was given, but instead, they went bowling in the living room.

A simple toy bowling set we bought a couple of years ago, set up in the living room.

That face... LOL

Which pins did you knock down?

Counting the number of pins after all the trials, then drawing an illustration in her science notebook

This post probably isn't actually for teachers in an early ed or primary classroom. From all of my interactions observing my son's classroom and others in the district I teach, no one has to tell early ed and primary teachers that physical activity and tangible, concrete objects and experiences are critical to students' engagement in and memory of the content they are responsible for learning.

If you are an early ed/primary classroom teacher, let me just continue to encourage you in all of your work encouraging and promoting numerical literacy. Creating and interpreting charts to track, present, and understand data becomes more important year after year as companies increasingly use computers to track data on customer's preferences and habits, waste or excess in financial statements, student achievement on state tests (and how/why they are rising/falling), just to name a few.

If you're a part of my usual audience of middle school and high school teachers, my hope is that you'll take the same lesson I often take myself when I observe my daughter's learning - kids always start out eager to learn. They start out eager to take experiences from play and translate them into a different medium to make sense of what they just did. When everything is new, few things are "boring."

Here's my lesson from today, courtesy of Hey, Beth Baker:

1. Involve your students in creating as often as possible.
2. Take some time out of class to do something. 
3. Keep pushing and seeking exactly what your students are capable of. If its something their passionate about, they'll probably surprise you.
4. Use the normal or mundane things around you in a new way to surprise your students and bring them in.