People at
But it's also a good framework for early childhood education. Kids often learn best when they're allowed to explore the environment around them, building models of the world by picking things up and moving them around.
Back in 2014, that insight was the inspiration for a
Learning Beautiful makes tactile materials to inspire hands-on learning for kids between the ages of 3 and 9. The materials, which are designed to explain simple concepts in computer science, promote child-driven, physical learning that aligns with the Montessori method of education.
'For young children, being able to build and then experience with their hands is so important,' Learning Beautiful founder Kim Smith Claudel SM '17 says. 'I don't think I need to do much convincing about the importance of limiting screen time for kids. I focus more on the positive things we can give to children, and I think giving them these sensorial, tactile materials is a developmentally enriching opportunity.'
The company's materials include things like binary cards and pixel boards made from sustainably sourced wood, cork, and canvas. To date, Learning Beautiful has sold over 2,000 materials to schools and libraries and trained about 500 teachers to guide learning activities.
'If we think about how we scaffold learning for subjects like reading and writing and math, we have all these things in place to build a strong foundation in early childhood to help progression in these subjects,'
From project to product
In 2013,
'His vision was to bring together a lot of different people,'
The diverse team soon began exploring alternative approaches to education, partially inspired by Kamvar's own struggles to find a good prekindergarten school for his child. Their ideas coalesced into the first of what the team called 'Wildflower Schools' described as open-source learning environments inspired by the century-old Montessori learning method that emphasizes self-directed learning activities based on children's natural interests.
The schools served as test beds for experiments in teaching and learning, with the project advertised as 'blurring the boundaries between home-schooling and institutional schooling, between scientists and teachers, between schools and the neighborhoods around them.'
'I worked in the school for a year doing art projects with the kids, and that was my crash course in Montessori education,'
The first school sparked interest in the Cambridge community, so the group opened more. Each one featured aspects of the research going on in Kamvar's lab, including small-scale agriculture projects and experiments with different learning materials - even some of the teachers were members of the lab.
'The idea was to test different things with the community and cultivate this research within the school,'
After hearing frustration from
'The children are very helpful because it either works or it doesn't work,'
'DesignX shifted the whole paradigm of how I thought about the research, and turned it into 'How can we take this solid foundation and spin it into a business''
As
The company's first series of materials includes pixel boards that demonstrate how computers represent images through 1s and 0s and a 'binary tree' that introduces the concept of data structures as the child connects the branches and builds the tree.
'With the binary tree, a 2- or 3-year-old might start playing using what we call sensorial exploration,'
Learning Beautiful also provides support and educational materials for teachers.
'We learned early on you can't just hand someone new materials and expect them to be comfortable with an unfamiliar subject area, so we created children's books, a full curriculum, lesson plans, and then training,'
When school shut down during the pandemic, the team developed instructions for at-home learning activities and offered them for free to parents and teachers. The slowdown also gave them time to plan their next series of materials, which will be released over the next year.
'A pause can be a healthy thing,'
Helping everyone learn beautiful
Lately the company has been focusing on scaling its teacher training efforts, including by building a virtual training program.
Last fall, after partnering with a school district in
'I think accessibility is really important on a few different levels,'
Learning Beautiful's next products will expand beyond computer science to encourage ecological thinking, helping children understand environmental systems around them and their schools.
As the company's sales grow, it's developed a program where proceeds from sales to one community can help fund donations to communities with fewer resources.
'Hands-on learning is effective for all of us,'
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