Category: children

anthropology · behavior · children · culture · education · family

Children’s past role and identity as worker

Beth Kelley
Children in Jerusalem.
The role of children has changed significantly over the past 100 years. Image via Wikipedia

This call for paper submissions from the The Society for the Study of Childhood in the Past got me thinking about how actively children used to participate in the daily household and economic life of families, from general maintenance like sweeping the kitchen to vital income by helping during harvest time.  Children used to have to help out on the farm, and later work in factories, in order to help their families make ends meet. While some of the work was dangerous and unhealthy, some of the work was beneficial to both the kid and the family. Kids felt like they contributed to their family, and learned skills from farming to general entrepreneurship. I wonder what kids are missing out on by not having as many daily chores to do, or summer jobs like mowing lawns and lemonade stands, and how children fit into our idea of work now.


In 2011, the themed session will be on children and work. The aim of the themed papers will be to bring together scholars from a wide range of academic disciplines who are studying any aspect of children and work in the past – children as economic contributors, children as slaves, elite children taking on adult roles, children as carers, children as consumers, the impact of working in childhood on children and society. The aim will be to advance cross-cultural knowledge and understanding of childhood and children in the past, and in particular to evaluate the varying nature and impact – social, economic, cultural, medical – of work performed by or for children in the past. Archaeology, history, literature and other sources will be explored.
In providing this opportunity for scholars of childhood to present their work to an international, interdisciplinary audience, the SSCIP International Conference aims to generate new perspectives on existing knowledge and to stimulate new avenues of research for the future.

I’d be interested to hear what jobs you had growing up, before the age of 18. Did your parents encourage you to work? Did you get an allowance or did you get paid by the job, or were you just expected to “earn your keep”? How is it different with your own kids, or nieces and nephews?

anthropology · behavior · children · community · education · environment · Nature

MoMA engaging youth in art criticism (some harsh)

Beth Kelley

Happy Earth Day! I feel like I should have a blog post dedicated to the benefits of nature and why we need the Earth, but to be perfectly frank none of those environmental changes we talk about are going to happen unless we get everybody on board and engaged!

So, instead, here is one example of getting people, and particularly kids, involved and engaged, thinking critically about what they did or did not like about their experience, and giving it credibility and recognition by posting it to a public forum, and not just the online kind:

Flights of fancy, lively drawings, dreams of piloting the Bell helicopter, disdain for a museum with no dinosaurs… many of our absolute favorite “MoMA stories” were left by kids, from toddlers to teenagers. So for our second post about the “I went to MoMA and…” project, it wasn’t hard to pick a theme.

Some people think modern and contemporary art is too “hard” or “weird” for kids to understand and get excited about. Not the way our younger visitors tell it, though! It made us incredibly happy to hear from so many kids who thoroughly enjoyed their day at MoMA: admiring colors and shapes, learning new things, trying out Material Lab, picking a favorite artist, getting inspired to draw, and spending time with friends, parents, and grandparents. Take a look at some of the responses below, and a big thank you to all the kids who participated!

check it out at MoMA | “I went to MoMA and…”: The Kids Are All Right.

Kids read each other's feedback on MoMA

autism · behavior · brain · children · emotion · learning · Mental · psychology · robotics · Social

AP News: Kaspar the friendly robot helps autistic kids

Beth Kelley

I have heard of this kind of therapy before, how autistic kids tend to respond better to robots teaching them emotions and proper social responses; the robot acts as a sort of bridge, or neutral third party for the kid:

STEVENAGE, England (AP) – Eden Sawczenko used to recoil when other little girls held her hand and turned stiff when they hugged her. This year, the 4-year-old autistic girl began playing with a robot that teaches about emotions and physical contact – and now she hugs everyone.

“She’s a lot more affectionate with her friends now and will even initiate the embrace,” said Claire Sawczenko, Eden’s mother.

The girl attends a pre-school for autistic children in Stevenage, north of London, where researchers bring in a human-looking, child-sized robot once a week for a supervised session. The children, whose autism ranges from mild to severe, play with the robot for up to 10 minutes alongside a scientist who controls the robot with a remote control.

The robot, named Kaspar, is programmed to do things like smile, frown, laugh, blink and wave his arms. He has shaggy black hair, a baseball cap, a few wires protruding from his neck, and striped red socks. He was built by scientists at the University of Hertfordshire at a cost of about 1,300 pounds (US$2,118).

http://m.apnews.com/ap/db_6418/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=X0CCVnY5

It’s also nice to hear a story about robots helping people, rather than the usual scenarios we hear and see like from Matrix and Terminator.

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architecture · behavior · children · community · creativity · design · education · environment

Green learning and sustainable knowledge

Beth Kelley

Kids learn the best by what they see and experience, not just what they are told. What better way to teach about environmental and sustainable practices then by demonstrating that at school?! Two projects in the Pacific Northwest are combining creative alternative designs and technologies to create an ideal environment for learning and minimizing impact on the environment.

I always wanted to live in a tree house or a hobbit hole. But going to school in a “living building” would be a pretty close second. From KUOW:

LEED–certified buildings are meant to be environmentally friendly and highly energy efficient. But now, there is a new standard that goes well beyond that. It’s called the “living building” and there are only three of them in the world. In Seattle, one elementary school is building what could be the first living building in the state.

The kids got to offer ideas for the school, and with its grand opening last friday, will hopefully make a splash (it does have it’s own little stream, after all).

In a related project, a school in Poulsbo is putting in Washington State’s fifth largest solar array:

“Next month, Lander, 56, will flip the switch on his first full-size community solar project atop Poulsbo Middle School, the largest of its kind in Washington and the fifth-largest solar system in the state.”

I also love the fact that both of these projects are community-based, in that the kids got to provide input on the school, and the solar panels are also community-driven.

children · creativity · play

Merry Christmas

Beth Kelley

Or better yet, I will let Mila say it for me:

Hyvää joulua, Merry Christmas, God Jul, Boas Festas e Feliz Ano Novo, Joyeux Noel, Froehliche Weihnachten, Mo’adim Lesimkha. Chena tova, Buone Feste Natalizie, Shinnen omedeto. Merii Kurisumasu, Kung His Hsin Nien bing Chu Shen Tan, Sarbatori vesele, Feliz Navidad, Wesolych Swiat Bozego Narodzenia or Boze Narodzenie, Pozdrevlyayu s prazdnikom Rozhdestva is Novim Godom, Buorrit Juovllat, Noeliniz Ve Yeni Yiliniz Kutlu Olsun!

For the past year Mila’s mom Adele has taken photos of her daydreams.  She has called it her maternity leave hobby:

“While my baby is taking her nap, I create scene around her and take quick snap photos. I use only few minutes per picture, including creating idea, implementation and editing, ’cause I don’t want to disturb her sleeping.”

She has used just regular towels and toys to create some amazing photos.

So while visions of sugar plums may dance in your head, you can see what Mila’s been dreaming about all year. Mila’s mom is now branching out to other topics, but Mila still pops in now and again. Stay tuned…

behavior · brain · children · community · creativity · education · environment · health · learning · mental health · technology

Let’s hear it for being a kid

Beth Kelley

I’ve been reading some very depressing stuff today – about one school that doesn’t allow anyone over the age of 6 to have recess, kids not feeling protected from their tormentors, and so on – so I needed a pep talk.

Adora Svitak’s TED talk did just the trick.

 

children · cognition · education · family · learning · technology

Using the Internet as a Learning (and play) Tool

Beth Kelley

Great article from Cory Doctorow and BoingBoing:

http://www.boingboing.net/2010/11/02/how-i-use-the-intern.html

…my 2.5-year-old daughter and I use my computer as part of our imaginative play and storytelling, using YouTube searches, Flickr image searches, paper story books, toys, and trips around town to play and explore.

Now that she’s more active, she usually requests something – often something from YouTube (we also download her favourite YouTube clips to our laptops, using deturl.com), or she’ll start feeding me keywords to search on, like “doggy and bunny” and we’ll have a look at what comes up. It’s nice sharing a screen with her. She points at things in her video she likes and asks me about them (pausable video is great for this!), or I notice stuff I want to point out to her.

But the fun comes when we incorporate all this into our storytelling play…

This is great that Doctorow is using YouTube as scaffolding to teach his daughter, rather than just plopping her in front of the TV. The interaction is the most important part here, and it’s great that he’s incorporating digital media into the lesson plan, encouraging her to think critically even at a little itty-bitty age. 🙂

behavior · children · design · learning · play · Social · technology

Download an Exercise Apps for Healthy Kids

Beth Kelley

The winners are in, and now you can reap the benefits!

The Apps for Healthy Kids competition is a part of First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! campaign to end childhood obesity within a generation. Apps for Healthy Kids challenges software developers, game designers, students, and other innovators to develop fun and engaging software tools and games that drive children, especially “tweens” (ages 9-12) – directly or through their parents – to eat better and be more physically active.

via Apps for Healthy Kids.

children · education · learning

Developing minds

Beth Kelley1 Comment

Lots of cool news came out recently about human development, from chimps to little humans:

Wild chimps have been shown to understand fire and how it moves, and don’t freak out like other animals do. This is exciting because humans so far had been the only animals documented as keeping their cool around fire…for the most part.

Since we’re in the jungle, it’s once again been show that it’s good for kids to go roll around in the dirt; for one thing it correlates with lower heart disease when they’re older.

But back to brain wiring, kids who get intensive language training when they’re young, like reading, actually have their brains re-wired, in a good way.

New education research is also showing that kids may understand Math at a much earlier age than previously though, and there are ways that they can learn the concepts just as early as we try to teach them language.

One of the skills kids can develop is compartmentalization, which it turns out cavemen could also do much earlier than previously thought; for example, they made different, compartmentalized work stations in their camps, rather than spread everything around and sleep right next to the meat-processing spot.

Speaking of stone-age types, a study has come out that counters the idea that hunter-gatherers didn’t eat any grains at all.

All this data almost makes me want to grab some popcorn and pop it over a fire while playing math games. But not before I go work in my garden patch.

children · gender · play

Effects of prenatal exposure of phthalates in boys

Beth Kelley2 Comments

First came across this in Discover Magazine:

A new study in the International Journal of Andrology has raised a storm of concern that prenatal exposure to these chemicals could make boys less masculine in their play preferences.

Phthalates, which block the activity of male hormones such as androgens, could be altering masculine brain development, according to Shanna H. Swan, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Rochester Medical Center and lead author of the new report [Los Angeles Times]. To test whether that link extended into behavior, Swan’s team tested women for phthalate levels midway through their pregnancy and then checked back in on the children four to seven years later.

The researchers asked parents to report their children’s patterns of play, but they knew they also had to separate any potential phthalate effect from the “nuture ” side of question. To determine how parental views might sway behavior, parents completed a survey that included questions such as, “What would you do if you had a boy who preferred toys that girls usually play with?” They were asked to respond with whether they would support or discourage such behavior, and how strongly [TIME].

The study of about 150 kids found that while girls were mostly unaffected, boys who had been exposed to the highest phthalate levels showed a lower likelihood than other boys to participate in what we consider typical rough-and-tumble male recreation—play fighting, pretending to play with guns, and so on. But the research might not imply the national masculinity crisis that some headlines suggest. Play in the most highly phthalate-exposed boys wasn’t “feminized,” Swan explains, since these kids didn’t preferentially play with dolls or don dresses. Rather, she says, “we’d describe their play as less masculine” [Science News]. Rather than play-fighting, she says, those boys tended toward “gender neutral” play like putting puzzles together or competing in sports.

Read full article here.