Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Seeking ideas for preschool/school projects

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 90 posts

Re: Ask HN: Seeking ideas for preschool/school projects

#81

Post by lebuffon »

leobg wrote: post #45
lebuffon wrote: post #28

The 4 year olds may be too young,but I am a big fan of teaching how we got here. I gave a 6 session course to a homeschool coop on the History of Technology starting from stones and moving through bronze age, iron age, steam power, electricity, telegraph demo (big hit) radio and TV and early computers. (I think Engineering schools should have a course on tech history)

Sounds super interesting. Any notes or slides or anything you can share?

Not really I cobbled together some notes from Internet content. Of note since it was a church based group, I referenced ancient time to biblical figures and the estimated dates of their time because they new of these characters. (I had to puncture the 6,000 year old earth idea, but I didn't hear complaints from parents so I guess they are not in that camp)

Re: Ask HN: Seeking ideas for preschool/school projects

#82

Post by jkestner »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #73
jkestner wrote: post #62

I lead a makerspace at my kids' elementary school. We do no coding or modern making, or whatever it is adult nerds like to play with. Mostly because this age group can't manage it, especially in 40 minute session, and I'm competing with a Lego corner. Mostly we try to get new views on the natural world and get exposed to different tools. This week, we managed to bang out some bee houses of some scrap lumber I had. We…

light bulbs, batteries and switches, all mounted on wood tiles and connected with alligator clips I'd love to see a photo of this. Maybe I can replicate it.

I just discovered they are from this series: https://www.spiralbound.design/learning-store/

Re: Ask HN: Seeking ideas for preschool/school projects

#83

Post by ogou »

Playtronica synths. They are touch-based sound generators that can be triggered with capacitive connections. You can make keyboards out of fruit. You can have 3 kids hold hands to form a connection that makes a funny sound. I have seen them at maker and DIY festivals and they are always a hit. I just looked them up and apparently they have all kinds of web toys to control with the hardware. Neat.

Re: Ask HN: Seeking ideas for preschool/school projects

#86

Post by rramadass »

Arvind Gupta (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arvind_Gupta) is a well-known science educator/toy inventor who teaches Science/Technology using low-cost/trash items.

His very popular TED talk titled Turning trash into toys for learning : https://www.ted.com/talks/arvind_gupta_turning_trash_into_to...

Videos/Photos at website : https://www.arvindguptatoys.com/

Youtube : https://www.youtube.com/@arvindguptatoys

These are excellent for teaching/involving kids by doing. They are also very easy on the pocket and every kid can have his/her own complete set of items needed to build their toys.

Re: Ask HN: Seeking ideas for preschool/school projects

#87

Post by rramadass »

austin-cheney wrote: post #71

At that young age I would recommend working on just generalized cognitive skills. Here is my list of things (off the top of my head) most adults are horrible at. Some child are absolutely gifted in these items, but most are not: * Number acuity - This is the skill of visually knowing the number of things by looking at a collection of things without using a counting system, for knowing the number of dots on a card ins…

Good Advice!

To expand on the above, i think more generally kids should be taught Abstraction and how to map Concepts to Symbols which they can then manipulate based on defined rules. IIRC, Douglas Hofstadter's book GEB invents various "games" using symbols/rules to introduce Formal Systems.

Re: Ask HN: Seeking ideas for preschool/school projects

#89

Post by ElCapitanMarkla »

jkestner wrote: post #82
rahimnathwani wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

light bulbs, batteries and switches, all mounted on wood tiles and connected with alligator clips I'd love to see a photo of this. Maybe I can replicate it.

I just discovered they are from this series: https://www.spiralbound.design/learning-store/

Thanks for sharing this, this is really cool

Re: Ask HN: Seeking ideas for preschool/school projects

#90

Post by ddol »

smugma wrote: post #44
ddol wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. You can teach a 4-year-old the moves each chess piece can make, but expecting them to absorb strategy, or to visualise 2+ moves into the future is an unfair burden. The following are much better perfect information games for kids. I play each with my kids and have listed the age when they were able to strategise 2+ moves ahead: - Gobblet Gobblers (4) - Onitama (6) - Hive (8)

Gobblet is a great game, ages 4- seems right. My 9 and 11 year olds still play occasionally. Hive v Onitama, is Hive better for older kids or just more complex?

Hive is more complex and less constrained than Onitama (bigger decision space).

We tried Hive when my eldest was 6 and it was beyond them. We tried it again a few years later at 8 and it clicked, has been part of our regular rotation of games since.

Post reply on HN