Apps  

While you used a pencil and paper for most of your education growing up, your children are probably highly skilled in using your smartphone or tablet. They seem to know instinctively how to slide it open, how to toggle from app to app and how to fix a problem with an app perhaps better than you can. 

Because your children most likely beg you most days of the week to play with your phone, consider loading one of the following five apps on it to give them an educational experience along with their fun time. They may think they are only playing a game, but you will secretly know that they are learning their numbers, letters, colors or some other foundational skill.

Smash Your Food

Smash Your Food is a fun app for elementary-age children who love the look of robotics mixed with a little science. This app has won numerous awards, including the Healthy Kids Competition by Michelle Obama and the Red Ribbon Award for being a Top 10 App. The premise for parents is that Smash Your Food teaches children the difference between healthy and unhealthy foods and helps them make smart food choices. What children see is that they get to choose some of their favorite foods, put them in the food crusher and see the foods explode. After smashing the foods, children will see the fat, sugar and salt contents in them and be rewarded with points based on how healthy of a meal they ate.

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BusyKid

BusyKid is designed to help you keep track of your child’s allowance and to help your child keep track of his or her chores. Because it is more than just a chore chart, it also teaches your children responsibility and the value of earning, saving and spending money. In fact, BusyKid will even let your child invest in stocks or donate to charity, helping them to learn what real-world finance is like. You get a sweet deal with this app too because you are able to send your child money through the app, which has built-in reminders for you to pay your child’s allowance.

AlphaTots

If you have two, three or four-year-olds in your house, you may feel the pressure to teach them the alphabet. Let Alpha Tots help you by using fun pictures and animations to teach your children action words that go to each letter of the alphabet. Examples include building robots for “B” and zapping aliens for “Z.” Also included are the alphabet song, upper and lowercase lessons and positive encouragement along the way.

Reading Rewards

Whether your child is just getting into reading or is struggling to read a book report book in tenth grade, Reading Rewards can help. On this app, kids and teens can record the books that they have read and how many pages they have read. They can also build a wish list for books they would like to read in the future. You can set up a reward system that allows your child to earn incentives, which could be anything from money to buy music to a trip to the dollar store.

Math Bingo

Math Bingo uses animated characters to teach basic math concepts. In order to get five in a row, however, your child will have to solve basic arithmetic problems from one of three levels. This app has been awarded the Best Education App and has been ranked in the top 50 of educational apps for three years.

With thousands of supposedly educational apps out there, it can be difficult for you as a parent to know which apps will truly help your children learn foundational truths and basic life skills. These five apps will keep you covered for everything from math and reading to chores and nutrition. While some cost a few dollars to purchase, they will be well worth the price because of the ease for you and the hours of enjoyment for your children.

By  Dixie Somers	Embed
Author Bio - Dixie is a freelance writer who loves to write about business, finance and self improvement. She lives in Arizona with her husband and three beautiful daughters.

Education  

Root is the latest educational robot to hit the scene. Invented by an experienced team from Harvard robotics area, Root can climb up whiteboards and draw on paper.  For kids, Root makes learning to code interactive, and lots of fun.

"It turns paper or whiteboards into an intuitive and interactive coding experience."

Invented by the bright minds at Scansorial (a startup emerging from Harvard University's Wyss Institute), Root is a fun, easy-to-use robot which teaches coding to anyone ages four to 99. The project recently launched on Kickstarter with the aim to secure enough funding for wider distribution to homes and schools.

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With over 50 sensors and actuators with which it can draw, erase, play music, explore its world, and even defy gravity by using magnetism to drive on wall mounted whiteboards, Root makes learning to code interactive, applicable to many different subjects, and tons of fun.

As coding skills improve, Root’s multi-level app translates programs written in one level to the next, helping growing programmers take each step.

"Root is more than just a robot that drives on walls. It turns paper or whiteboards into an intuitive and interactive coding experience," says Zee Dubrovsky, CEO of Scansorial.

The Scansorial team team has over 50 years of collective experience in launching and building consumer products (iRobot, Sonos, Apple) and software/education services (Microsoft, Disney, PLTW, Harvard, MIT). This includes launching four coding robots (Create, Kilobot, AERobot, Multiplo), launching two graphical coding environments (MIT App Inventor, Minibloq), and launching three consumer robots (Roomba, Scooba, Looj).

From now until November 30, Root will be available for pre-order exclusively through Kickstarter. It's only three days into the campaign and Root has already been picked as a "Project We Love" by Kickstarter staff and today it was honored with the title "Project of the Day".

Coding with Root is a dynamic and creative experience according to the developers. Root reacts to things in the environment, kids react to Root and the interplay is orchestrated with code. 

Kids can program Root to move, turn, draw, erase, scan colors, play music, light up, sense touches, feel bumps, detect magnetic surfaces, perceive light, and respond to sensors in your phone or tablet.

Research has shown that early, positive experiences with computing raise students’ interest in technical subjects later on. "Root will reach students as early as kindergarten, and grow with them as a familiar and consistent platform as they advance, opening doors that otherwise would have been invisible," claim the developers. 

By  33rd Square

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 Intelligence & Health  

Children who are physically fit have faster and more robust neuro-electrical brain responses during reading than their less-fit peers, researchers report. These differences correspond with better language skills in the children who are more fit.

Children who are physically fit have faster and more robust neuro-electrical brain responses during reading than their less-fit peers, researchers report.

These differences correspond with better language skills in the children who are more fit, and occur whether they’re reading straightforward sentences or sentences that contain errors of grammar or syntax.

The new findings, reported in the journal Brain and Cognition, do not prove that higher fitness directly influences the changes seen in the electrical activity of the brain, the researchers say, but offer a potential mechanism to explain why fitness correlates so closely with better cognitive performance on a variety of tasks.

“All we know is there is something different about higher and lower fit kids,” said University of Illinois kinesiology and community health professor Charles Hillman who led the research with graduate student Mark Scudder and psychology professor Kara Federmeier. “Now whether that difference is caused by fitness or maybe some third variable that (affects) both fitness and language processing, we don’t know yet.”

"Our study shows that the brain function of higher fit kids is different, in the sense that they appear to be able to better allocate resources in the brain towards aspects of cognition that support reading comprehension."

The researchers used electroencephalography (EEG), placing an electrode cap on the scalp to capture some of the electrical impulses associated with brain activity. The squiggly readouts from the electrodes look like seismic readings captured during an earthquake, and characteristic wave patterns are associated with different tasks.

These patterns are called “event-related potentials” (ERPs), and vary according to the person being evaluated and the nature of the stimulus, Scudder said.

For example, if you hear or read a word in a sentence that makes sense (“You wear shoes on your feet”), the component of the brain waveform known as the N400 is less pronounced than if you read a sentence in which the word no longer makes sense (“At school we sing shoes and dance,” for example), Scudder said.

“We focused on the N400 because it is associated with the processing of the meaning of a word,” he said. “And then we also looked at another ERP, the P600, which is associated with the grammatical rules of a sentence.” Federmeier, a study co-author, is an expert in the neurobiological basis of language. Her work inspired the new analysis.

The researchers found that children who were more fit (as measured by oxygen uptake during exercise) had higher amplitude N400 and P600 waves than their less-fit peers when reading normal or nonsensical sentences. The N400 also had shorter latency in children who were more fit, suggesting that they processed the same information more quickly than their peers.

The researchers tracked brain activity in participants using electroencephalography, which captures signals from dozens of electrodes on the scalp. Image Source - Charles Hillman

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Most importantly, the researchers said, these differences in brain activity corresponded to better reading performance and language comprehension in the children who were more fit.

“Previous reports have shown that greater N400 amplitude is seen in higher-ability readers,” Scudder said.

“Our study shows that the brain function of higher fit kids is different, in the sense that they appear to be able to better allocate resources in the brain towards aspects of cognition that support reading comprehension,” Hillman said.

More work must be done to tease out the causes of improved cognition in kids who are more fit, Hillman said, but the new findings add to a growing body of research that finds strong links between fitness and healthy brain function.

Many studies conducted in the last decade, on children and older adults, ”have repeatedly demonstrated an effect of increases in either physical activity in one’s lifestyle or improvements in aerobic fitness, and the implications of those health behaviors for brain structure, brain function and cognitive performance,” Hillman said.


SOURCE  University of Illinois

By 33rd Square

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 Education  

American students are lagging behind in science it might be because our present educational culture stresses testing rather than engagement. Here are some ideas for science-based projects that will engage students at a young age about the world around them.

T
here is a debate smoldering in the halls of Academia over the issue of whether or not American school children are being prepared well enough in the sciences to complete globally for future high-tech jobs.

If academic mediocrity in the sciences is to be avoided in our schools then our educational environments need to adapt to present day realities.

If American grade school students are lagging behind in science it might be because our present educational culture stresses testing rather than engagement. If academic mediocrity in the sciences is to be avoided in our schools then our educational environments need to adapt to present day realities.  Educators will need to strive to stimulate the kind of engagement that triggers within students a sense of wonder about science that will across time blossom into a passion. Science projects, when done right will actively engage students at a young age about the world around them.

1. Drama Activates Engagement

To be effective, science educators need to understand the difference between entertainment and engagement. From the viewpoint of students, the most entertaining science experiments are always those whose outcomes are the most dramatic and unexpected. Although they never fail to generate squeals of delight, science experiments, especially those related to physics and chemistry should be regarded as missed opportunities if they succeed at entertaining but fail to get students thinking about the science behind them.

With respect to such experimentation, the object or big idea behind them should include the use of drama as a means to drive student engagement. This is accomplished by conducting the experiment after students have had their chance to offer their opinions, guesses and hypotheses as to what is going to happen next. In this way, the students are more engaged in the process and have a vested interest in the outcome. This approach is also more likely to propel them to start thinking about the science behind any experiment.

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2. The Integrated Method

Educational research has shown that a teaching approach that creates an opportunity for a shared learning experience between teacher and student helps students develop their own methods of finding meaning in classroom experiments. When active engagement is integrated into the process of carrying out science experiments, students gain an opportunity to voice their own ideas and demonstrate evidence of their appreciation and understanding of the scientific method. A method and practice of teaching which stimulates a student to reflexively evaluate a range of possible outcomes and the reasons for them prior to discovering the demonstrated outcome is a far superior alternative to science experiments students passively observe.

Further activities that are likely to foster greater excitement in learning about science would integrate opportunities to attend a field trip to the community recycling center where materials are obtained to conduct these dramatic science experiments.

Science projects should be fun, informative and a gateway for more scientific questions and discoveries from students. Have students create their own projects in the classroom. When you let them ask the questions, the experimentation process will emerge on its own. Teachers should provide supplies, and also a safe way to dispose of waste in a a King Recycling and Waste Disposal Inc. Toronto dumpster rental so students get a chance to create (and destroy) with experiments as they see fit. When you get kid's mind engaged, science can become a subject that interests them all their life.

By Brooke Chaplan

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 Science for Kids  

Do you have a budding Nikola Tesla or Marie Curie in your family? Guest writer Madyson Grant offers five fun and educational science projects that you can do in your own kitchen or backyard to encourage your child's interest in science.

Developing a passion for science in the minds' of children requires more than colorful pictures and textbooks. Allow them to explore the applications of science by engaging them with hand-on projects in the home. You can show children that science can be fun and invigorate their passion for learning in the classroom. The following five projects will bring the excitement of science alive.

1. Monster Toothpaste

This project only requires a plastic bottle, hydrogen peroxide, yeast and warm water. Fill a separate container with two tablespoons of warm water and one teaspoon of yeast. Mix these together and allow them to sit for a few minutes. Then, combine these ingredients with half a cup of six percent hydrogen peroxide in your plastic bottle. The yeast provides a catalyst to the reaction and voila: growing, foamy toothpaste.

2. Crazy Balloons

Making static electricity apparent can be fun as well. Begin by blowing up a large balloon and cutting up small pieces of paper with prizes on them. Rub the balloon vigorously on carpet in order to excite the molecules. Then, use the balloon that is beaming with static electricity to pick up the paper and claim prizes.

3. Crayon Creation

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Explaining different states of matter in addition to how colors can be mixed to create new hues has never been more artistic. Glue crayons to the top of a white piece of foam board and sort them according to pigment. Using a high-powered hair dryer, melt the wax and watch your creation unfold as the wax melts down the face of the board.

4. Rainbow Carnations

You can also use color to explain how plants and flowers use water to grow and live. By placing white carnations in water that has been mixed with food coloring, you can observe the pedals take on the colors of the water over time as the blooms continue to unfold. With the right selection of microscopes, you can also place the leaves and pedals under magnification in order to observe the changes at the cellular level.

5. Lava Lamp

Explaining how oil and water repel each other has never been more funky. Create your own mesmerizing lamp by filling a bottle half with oil and half with water. Leave an inch at the top and then, add various food coloring. Drop in one antacid tablet along with one quarter. Place the bottle over a mild heat lamp and watch the magic unfold.


Science comes to life with the simplest of household items. Spark a child's imagination by giving them gifts that will payoff over a lifetime. Science is cool, and the experiments prove it.

By Madyson Grant

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Author Bio - Madyson Grant is a small business owner who loves to blog about helpful tips to others.