Kids Technology — STEAM Education Insights

Handwriting and Keyboarding: Fine Motor Skills at Work

As teachers who specialize in hands-on, problem solving lessons and activities, Lauren and I find ourselves having discussions about fine and gross motor skills on an almost daily basis. As Kindergarten and first grade becomes more worksheet based and less task and process-oriented, students are losing out on opportunities to develop crucial fine motor skills through play and repetition. Busy Boards and sensory play are seen as preschool activities. Art Education has become less about the exploration of materials and open-ended inquiry and more about performing exact tasks in the style of certain artists or artistic movements. Again, we’re assuming our children can walk when we haven’t shown them how to crawl, which is why, over the last decade teaching K-6 children, I’ve increasingly seen second and third graders who can’t successfully tie their own shoes, pinch an alligator clip, or independently put a simple puzzle together.

Sensory Play: You'll Want to Play, Too!

Play is a child’s work. In a child’s playtime, there should be plenty of opportunities for her to actively use her senses as she explores. Sensory play helps in building nerve connections in the brain’s pathways, leading to developments in language, fine and gross motor skills, and problem solving. We often think of sensory play as something that involves and develops our five senses, but fail to recognize two other aspects of development that sensory play improves: proprioception, which is defined as self-movement and body position awareness, and balance.

Welcome to Design Hive!

Like all good things, Design Hive started over Mimosa Brunch. Founders Lauren Arshad and Jen Cefaly, both teachers who had long harbored the idea of creating a space for all things STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art, and math) met to plan their first event, a hands-on, dinosaur-themed sensory play party for a very special one year old boy - Lauren’s son! From there the idea for their Pico Blvd. storefront grew into what it is today, a totally unique community space that is part workshop, art studio and technology center, offering in-person and online workshops, camps, and events for makers and crafters of all ages.

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