Can New Building Toys for Girls Improve Math and Science Skills?

By
• DIANA KAPP

Are girls' toys the secret to increasing the number of women in the fields of engineering and other careers that rely on top spacial skills? Diana Kapp joins Lunch Break. Photo: Lego.

Amid concern among parents and educators about girls' math and engineering skills, a growing number of companies say they have an answer: toys.
Construction toys for girls, once a well-intentioned but unsuccessful part of the toy market, are blossoming. Small toy makers littleBits, GoldieBlox Inc. and Maykah Inc. are marketing products they say can bolster spatial skills, which recent research has linked to degrees and careers in these disciplines.

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Roominate

A Maykah Inc.'s Roominate kit, which girls can use to build dollhouses and other products, includes circuits to power a light or fan.

Traditional construction brands like Lego A/S and Mega Bloks are also marketing toys for stacking and erecting aimed at girls. Most of the products target girls ages 4 to 10.
"The old chestnut that girls don't build is really gone. Now there is considerable interest in girls building," says Adrian Roche, a vice president at Mega Bloks, part of Mega Brands Inc. MB.T +0.39%
To woo girls, some of the latest construction toys marry building with storytelling. Roominate, the first product line from Mountain View, Calif.-based Maykah, is a wired dollhouse kit. Girls build a duplex or the ambitious "Chateau de Roominate," and integrate circuits to power a light or fan.

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Lego

The Lego Friends line launched last year with items like 'Olivia's Tree House.'

With GoldieBlox, girls help Goldie fix her busted music box by creating a belt drive from lavender pegs, spools and ribbon.
"Building electronics isn't the end goal. Moving parts help create a more exciting story," says Maykah co-founder Alice Brooks.
LittleBits, which first shipped its products in 2012, makes tiny purple, green, orange and pink snap-together electronic modules that can be transformed into talking puppets, buzzing piggy banks, sound-triggered lamps and more. The company says it strives for its toys to be unisex.
"I very much disagree with this idea that the products need to be gendered," says Ayah Bdeir, founder and CEO of littleBits, based in New York City. She says the company's toys appeal to girls with bold colors, a simple design aesthetic and a range of projects that girls and boys alike are prominently shown building in a video on the website.

Goldie Blox

For the founder of GoldieBlox, one aim is to get girls to love engineering.

Lego Friends, a girls' line launched last year, features mini-figurine "friends" Emma, Olivia and pals, along with the Lego bricks to create their groovy camper or cafe.
In 2011, 91% of Lego sets were purchased for boys, says Michael McNally, brand relations director at Lego Systems Inc. In 2012, Lego's top-selling Lego set was "Olivia's House," a Lego Friends product. And one year after Lego Friends launched, three times as many girls were building with Lego bricks.
Mega Bloks joined with Mattel Inc.'s Barbie, and in 2012 began selling the Barbie Build 'n Style line, which girls can use to build a mansion or ice-cream cart. Mr. Roche declines to break out sales but says they were strong, adding, "We've had tremendous pickup by all retailers."
Makers of stacking and building sets have been attempting to appeal to girls for decades. But they either just made blocks pink, or they went too far away from their core product into, for instance, making your own jewelry. "They finally figured out you can't just shrink it and pink it," says toy analyst Sean McGowan with Needham & Co. "Those products didn't sell because that's not how girls play."
Pastels have not gone away, judging from the colors of the new products, but many of the products also feature girl characters or dolls on the packaging, often with animals and fashion accessories. The building sets often turn into pet salons, beach lofts, cafes or bedrooms.
With Lego Friends, "the play pattern is much more traditional girls' social play, dollhouse, re-enactment of real life," says Mr. McGowan.

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littleBits

LittleBits aims for its snap-together electronic modules to appeal to both genders.

For many girls, this is the point. "Girls want that story line—there has to be an emotional component, that emotional thing that girls do," says Roberta Bonoff, CEO and president of Creative Kidstuff, a six-store chain in the Minneapolis area.
For the founders of many emerging building-toy brands—women engineers in their 20s and 30s—creating an opportunity for girls to work on their spatial skills is critical. Several of them cite as motivation the fact that there are far fewer women in science and technology professions than men.
GoldieBlox, which is based in Oakland, Calif., places a video starring Debbie Sterling, its founder, front and center on its website in which she talks about how spatial skills are important for technology fields. Her goal, she says, is to get little girls to love engineering as much as she does.
At Maykah, co-founder Bettina Chen pictures girls using the toy to learn computer coding skills. "At some point we want the girls programming."
Scientists say that, on average, girls' spatial skills, meaning the ability to translate 2-D sketches into 3-D forms, or rotate an object mentally, are weaker than boys' skills.
"It is one of the largest cognitive sex differences," says David Lubinski, a professor of psychology at Vanderbilt University. Spatial ability has a direct connection with the likelihood of earning an advanced degree in science, technology, engineering or math, his research has found.
The spatial-skills gap between boys and girls is a function of biology but also how children play. "Parents reinforce gender-specific play. Very tiny brain differences get amplified by culture," says Lise Eliot, associate professor or neuroscience at the Chicago Medical School of Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine & Science.
Of course, toy stores stocked with girly building toys won't automatically translate to a new crop of engineers and inventors. "It's not just having the toy—it's doing the building or electronics with the toy," cautions Susan Levine, psychology department chair at University of Chicago.
But spatial skills can be improved with practice and use, scientists say. The argument is that the activities involved in these toys—orienting the motor for a spinning cupcake table or constructing a little elevator—exercise spatial skills.
Research has shown that the brain's circuitry is quite malleable, particularly in early life, Ms. Eliot says. "We know that the more you play, the better you get," she says.
Preschoolers who could arrange blocks into the most sophisticated towers scored best on standardized math tests as teenagers, according to a 2001 Florida State University study tracking 37 kids that was published in the journal of Research in Childhood Education.
A 2010 study with 116 Israeli first-graders conducted by professors at Bar-Ilan University found gender differences in spatial skills disappeared after eight training sessions on mental rotation tasks. The kids practiced reproducing images from memory, and then were guided in perceiving them from different angles.
When a spatial visualization course was given to Michigan middle school kids in a 2005 pilot study conducted by Sheryl Sorby, a professor at Michigan Technological University, participating girls subsequently took more upper-level math and science courses in high school.
Julia Keller, an education specialist from Monterey, Calif., found Roominate online while searching for "architectural toys." Her daughters, ages 9 and 11, like to design and build, she says.
"It blew my mind that both my girls probably put in a good 12 to 15 hours the first weekend. My younger one was very interested in all the electronics—the switches and the motors. She used her set to make a smoothie store—a Jamba Juice kind of thing," Ms. Keller says.

Learning to Read, With the Help of a Tablet

Learn With Homer, a free iPad app.

By KIT EATON

Published: August 21, 2013

I learned long ago that the iPad’s game and video apps cast a magical spell over my children, but this summer I’ve also been pleased by how much they have learned while using their tablets. This is important, as my 4-year-old is going to “real” school for the first time. His reading skills, in particular, have been helped by some great apps. These have helped him move from knowing shapes and sounds of letters to actually reading words.

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Booksy, a free app for iOS and Android.

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Montessori Crosswords, $3 on iOS.

One of the most comprehensive apps for teaching reading is a free iPad app called Learn With Homer (not the Greek one or Mr. Simpson, you’ll be pleased to hear). It’s a set of lessons and games presented with bright cartoon graphics and amusing sounds.

Using animations and spoken guidance, the app leads children to sound letters that appear on the screen and shows how letters make words, using examples like “alligator” and “ant.” The app’s learning sections are interspersed with game sections, and there is a listening section where children read and hear stories. Completing a lesson or story is rewarded with the chance to draw something on the screen or to record an answer to a question about the story. The app’s best feature is that it keeps these pictures and recordings, because it is fun to look back on them.

The app’s interface feels child-friendly and is easy to use thanks to on-screen cues and spoken instructions. Children could most likely use it on their own — though an adult may need to lend a hand with some controls, like the drawing interface. The app also has great attention to detail. For example, in the section that reinforces learning letter sounds there is a convincing animation of a child mouthing the sounds on the screen.

My main problems with Learn With Homer are that it moves too slowly in places and that younger children may lose interest. Buying extra lessons via in-app purchases could also be expensive, since they each cost $2 or more.

For a simpler reading app, the free Kids Reading (Preschool) app on Android is a great option. The app’s first section helps children learn to blend letter sounds into full words, through a cute game with a tortoise. The game animates the tortoise walking along slowly, sounding out each letter in a short word as he moves. The child can click on sneakers to make him move faster, which then sounds the word faster, or click on a skateboard to sound the word in real time.

A “try reading” section lets children practice reading and saying short words with a simple matching game. And the “make words” option has the child spotting the right-sounding letter to complete a word puzzle. This app has clear sounds, and many children will love its simplicity. But for more words you do need to pay $3 for the full Kids Learn To Read version.

Montessori Crosswords, $3 on iOS, is more sophisticated. This app’s main feature is a game in which children drag letters from an alphabet list onto a very simple crossword grid. Each word on the grid is accompanied by a picture hint. Tapping on this makes the app say the word aloud. Depending on the settings, words can be made of fewer or, if you choose, more sounds, which makes the puzzles more challenging. To keep children interested, getting words right delivers an interactive graphic, like one of shooting stars, that reacts to screen touches.

Compared with its peers, this app has a narrow range of activities, which may limit how long it remains useful. It also probably works best under adult supervision — particularly since the app’s main menu is a little confusing.

For children who have learned to recognize words by themselves, and yet would benefit from guided reading experiences, there’s Booksy. This free app, for iOS and Android, is best thought of as a traditional high-quality children’s reading book with added digital powers. For example, as well as displaying a page of text and well-drawn images, it reads the text aloud. Tapping on any word — even in the labels, for example in a drawing of a whale — will make the app say the word clearly. The app can also record a child reading aloud automatically, then e-mail the audio files directly to you so you can keep track of progress. This feature may seem a little creepy, but you can turn it off.

Booksy comes with two free books, and more are available through in-app purchases. There are about 30 titles for around $1 each. Each book has a different reading difficulty level, and many of them are also available in Spanish. You can lock the bookstore on iOS to prevent children from getting in, but smarter children may spot the parental controls and unlock it again. On Android there is a better “adult question” lock, but on this platform some of the app’s screen space is, unfortunately, taken up with navigation buttons.

Remember, your enthusiasm for reading can be an important example for your children — so why not play with these apps alongside them?

Quick Call

Dots is a simple game that has already had a lot of success on the iPhone — to play it is as easy as connecting the dots, yet it’s fiendishly addictive. Now it’s on Android, and free.

To Ensure Bone Health, Start Early

By JANE E. BRODY

 

Yvetta Fedorova

Personal Health

Jane Brody on health and aging.

Most people don’t start thinking about the health of their bones until midlife or later, by which time it can be too late to do very much to protect against serious bone loss and resulting fractures.
Researchers who study bone health say concern about the strength of one’s bones should start in childhood and continue through adolescence, when the body builds most of the bone that must sustain it for the remaining years of life.
Once peak bone mass has been reached, further gains are minimal, so childhood through adolescence is the best time to pay attention to bone development. By age 20, girls have gained between 90 and 96 percent of their peak bone mass. For boys, the peak occurs a few years later.
About 26 percent of total adult bone is accrued in two years around the time that bone mass increases the most — at age 12.5 in girls and 14.1 in boys. The amount of bone added during those two years is about the same as what is typically lost in the 30 years between ages 50 and 80.
Lifelong studies have not been done in people, but the best available evidence strongly indicates that increasing peak bone mass in childhood by just 10 percent could delay osteoporosis, especially in postmenopausal women, by about 13 years.
Although nothing can be done about the three factors with the greatest influence on bone mass — age, gender and genetics — two others under personal control can make the difference between suffering crippling fractures in midlife and escaping the effects of osteoporosis until after age 90. Those are physical activity and the bone-building nutrients, calcium and vitamin D.
While the focus here will be on the effects of exercise, it should be noted that calcium consumption by adolescent girls is often seriously inadequate, compromising their ability to build strong bones that will last a lifetime.
Exercise affects bone strength in two ways: in response to the pressure of gravitational forces like those experienced when walking, running or jumping, and in reaction to the stress exerted by muscle contraction.
You might think that any kind of exercise is good for bones, and the more active a child is, the better. That is largely, but not always, true. On average, as with adults, active children have higher bone mineral density and reduced risk of fractures compared with their inactive counterparts, Dr. Kirk L. Scofield noted last year in Current Sports Medicine Reports. But some types of activities are better than others. Studies have found that the bone mineral density of young endurance runners is consistently lower than that of sprinters, gymnasts or ball sports athletes. In fact, those engaged in endurance and non-weight-bearing activities sometimes have weaker bones and a greater risk of fractures, both while actively competing and later in life, than their inactive peers.
“Repetitive stress can tear down bone and is not the best for increasing bone strength,” Dr. Scofield said in an interview. “It’s not that running, walking, cycling or swimming are bad. They’re just not as good for bone strength as other types of athletic activities.”
Bones, he said, seem to respond best to a combination of stress, rest and variety, which suggests that youngsters engaged in endurance activities should also do cross-training to maximize bone strength.
Dr. Scofield, a sports medicine specialist at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, said that the most effective form of stress on bones is that which works against gravity and starts and stops, as happens when playing soccer, basketball, or tennis; doing gymnastics or dancing; using resistance equipment; or lifting weights.
In a study of 99 college women who participated in NCAA Division 1 sports, runners had the lowest bone density values at every site measured except their legs. Swimmers and divers also showed bone deficits when compared with those who played soccer or field hockey, for example.
An earlier study of young female aerobic dancers, squash players and speed skaters found that sports training that involves “high strain rates in versatile movements and high peak forces is more effective in bone formation than training with a large number of low-force repetitions.”
A major bone-robbing issue for some young athletes, especially women, is what sports specialists call “energy availability” — the amount of energy they consume during exercise minus the amount they expend, divided by their lean body mass (muscle and bone). It represents the energy left to support all the body’s functions, including formation of new bone.
Low energy availability can result from insufficient calorie intake, excessive calorie expenditure during exercise, or a combination of the two, even if the athlete does not appear to be underweight and is not undernourished, Dr. Scofield said.
Runners, for example, may burn so many calories there’s not enough energy left to maintain normal bone health. He recommends a nutrition consultation for young athletes who suffer stress fractures, an indication of bone weakness that can be from low energy availability.
A related concern that can result from excessive training is a syndrome called “female athlete triad” — an interrelationship between energy availability, menstrual function and bone density. Girls who overexercise and don’t consume enough calories to support all bodily functions can suffer menstrual irregularity or lose their periods entirely, which can lead to muscle and bone injuries.
In a study of 249 females athletes at three high schools published in The Journal of Athletic Training last year, researchers in Provo, Utah, found that nearly 20 percent experienced menstrual irregularities and 63 percent developed musculoskeletal injuries, with the highest percentage of injuries among those with irregular or missing periods.
I asked Dr. Scofield what advice he would give to the parents of young children and adolescents. His response: “Get kids away from electronics and encourage them to play actively and do a lot of different activities. Equally important is to avoid pressuring them to be too thin.”
He also urged adequate consumption of calcium-rich foods, like dairy products and canned salmon and sardines with the bones. An assessment of calcium intake can be determined from a Web-based calcium calculator.
Children ages 4 through 8 should consume 800 milligrams of calcium daily and those 9 through 18, 1,300 milligrams. If children are not getting enough calcium from their diet, Dr. Scofield recommends that they take a calcium supplement with vitamin D.
Vitamin D is needed for the body to absorb and utilize dietary calcium, and children ages 1 through 18 need 800 International Units daily. Most vitamin D is obtained when skin is exposed to sunlight, but the widespread use of potent sunscreens has greatly reduced this source, so a supplement may be essential.

7 Foreign Films Kids will Love

7 Foreign Films Kids Will Love 

 

Don't let the subtitles scare you -- there's lots of fun to be had watching movies in other languages.

	Senior Editor, Books | Mom of two

I showed my son, Kyle, his first foreign film when he was 7: the Academy Award-winning 1957 French classic The Red Balloon. I had seen it when I was his age, and I still recall being fascinated by how different the French kids dressed and how different the Paris streets looked. The fable-like, nearly wordless story was universal, yet so utterly French. Kyle loved it, especially seeing kids at play in another era.
Fast-forward to his tween years, when I took him to his first foreign film at a movie theater, the dreamlike Chinese martial arts film Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. He thought it was amazing, and it wasn't just the action sequences that wowed him. It was also the period detail, the artful cinematography, the heartbreaking romance -- everything that was nothing like anything he'd ever seen before. And he was able to follow the subtitles without a problem: "I barely noticed them after a while," he said," I was so caught up in the story."
Despite globalization and global pop culture, there are distinct perspectives, cultural differences, and approaches to filmmaking on display in films made in other countries. I suggest seeing them in their native tongue -- not dubbed -- so kids can hear the sound and rhythm of the language as it's spoken.
Exposing your kids to other cultures is also a great way to challenge prejudices and cultural stereotypes. Here are some of our favorite foreign films for kids:

• The Red Balloon (age 7+)  --  A boy and a balloon make friends on the streets of '50s Paris and run away from a gang of kids who want to hurt the balloon. The movie is wordless except for some background voices.
• Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (age 12+) -- This is a martial-arts fairy tale about two sets of star-crossed lovers and a magical sword. The fight scenes are balletic masterpieces.
• Au Revoir Les Enfants (age 12+) -- Amusing scenes of classmates at a Catholic boys' school in 1944 France mix with the threat of Nazi occupiers. The movie helps kids see war and bigotry through the eyes of children.
• Life Is Beautiful (age 13+) -- This Italian Oscar winner is full of humor and romance, but it also poignantly conveys the Holocaust's tragic toll on families.
• Cinema Paradiso (age 13+) -- A fatherless boy in a small Italian town finds solace at the movie theater -- and a mentor and friend in its older projectionist. It won an Oscar for Best Foreign Film. 
• Amélie (age 16+) -- This offbeat, whimsical romance set in contemporary Paris has odd and memorable characters, chief among them Audrey Tautou's strange and isolated Amélie. My daughter was so taken with the title character that she started sporting the same coiffure.
• A Very Long Engagement (age 16+) -- This is a sweet, romantic World War I-era story of a woman (also played by Tautou) searching for her missing fiance. It offers searing views of life and fear in the trenches and bloody battles yet is fueled by the power of undying love.

For more suggestions, check out our Foreign Films for Kids list.

Nature and Nurture

Nature and Nurture

‘Wait! Wait!’ and ‘A Year Around the Great Oak’

From "Wait! Wait!"

By SARAH HARRISON SMITH

Published: July 24, 2013

One of summer’s great gifts is the chance to adapt ourselves to nature; to slow down in the heat, to swim when the tide comes in, and to find our place, at least briefly, in the wild. In “Wait! Wait!” and “A Year Around the Great Oak,” two beautifully illustrated but very different books, children engage with animals and the outdoors in ways that are unpredictable, stimulating and ultimately confidence-inducing.

WAIT! WAIT!

By Hatsue Nakawaki

Illustrated by Komako Sakai

24 pp. Enchanted Lion Books. $14.95. (Picture book; infant to age 3)

A YEAR AROUND THE GREAT OAK

Written and illustrated by Gerda Muller

32 pp. Floris Books. $17.95. (Picture book; ages 4 to 12)

Related

• Times Topic: Children's Books Reviews

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From "A Year Around the Great Oak"

Previously published in Japan, “Wait! Wait!” tells its story through acrylic and oil pencil illustrations. Hatsue Nakawaki’s very spare text, intended for lap reading, describes in the simplest terms a toddler’s encounters with the creatures he sees outside. “Wait! Wait!,” the child says, or perhaps thinks, as a butterfly swoops past. A page later, the butterfly has flown high up out of reach. Next a salamander pauses to exchange a quizzical look and then wiggles out of sight between rocks. Cats, found sunning themselves, run off as the child approaches with open arms.

None of the animals obey the child’s repeated wish that they “wait.” But the pictures, which have a very appealing 1970s look, and are mostly colored in black, grays and gold on a white ground, show a calm child whose wonder at each creature’s actions (leaping, wiggling, fluttering) outweighs frustration. In the end, it is the delighted child who is caught and hoisted onto the father’s shoulders for a better view. This is a lovely book for very young children: Komako Sakai’s illustrations convey tacit sympathy with the child’s perspective, and Nakawaki leaves so much unstated that there is plenty left to discuss.

Altogether more substantial and fact-filled, “A Year Around the Great Oak” was first published in Germany over two decades ago, and retains a slightly foreign feeling in this English translation. Benjamin and his younger sister, who appear to be about 9 and 7, visit relatives each season over the course of a year. Their uncle works as a forester, managing the land adjacent to the family’s home. On the children’s first, autumnal trip they explore the woods with their young cousin, who shows them his favorite tree, a huge old oak. “ ‘Three hundred years is a long time,’ he said, ‘People don’t ever live much longer than one hundred years. This tree has been growing for three times as long as that!’ ”

The oak becomes the locus for gathering mushrooms, cross-country skiing, measuring trunk growth and building a covert. There the cousins spy badgers, squirrels, hawks, foxes, deer and rabbits. Gerda Muller, whose work may be familiar from her other nature-imbued children’s books (“Goldilocks and the Three Bears,” “Where Do They Go When It Rains?”), draws each activity and animal with great detail and attention. Leaf shapes are accurate, and the picture of the children making their hideout from sticks and leaves is as good as a scouting manual; for readers with access to woods this could prove to be a useful as well as a handsome book.

One evening, the children’s uncle takes them to watch the animals drinking from a pond, and Benjamin enjoys the experience so much he ventures out by himself the next night. “He knew it wasn’t safe to go into the forest on his own, but he really wanted to sit in the tree and think one more time.” A loud noise crashing through the forest confirms his fears, but the oak protects him until unexpected help arrives. The boy faces no punishment for his adventure, just a talk “about going out on his own,” and an invitation from his uncle to return again at the end of the summer. “ ‘The forest will still be here.’”

Benjamin’s nighttime adventure brings realistic drama to this otherwise quiet book, and deepens it into something like a growing-up story. Benjamin may not be as tall or as old as the oak, but under its boughs he has learned something about self-sufficiency and it limits. When the children celebrate the oak with a birthday party, it’s clearly a rite of passage for more than just the tree.