Learning Beautiful brings MIT’s “mind and hand” ethos to early childhood education
Learning Beautiful brings MIT’s “mind and hand” ethos to early childhood education
Learning Beautiful brings MIT’s “mind and hand” ethos to early childhood education
By Zach Winn
January 20, 2023
Summary
Learning Beautiful makes tactile materials to inspire hands-on learning for kids between the ages of 3 and 9.
"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.
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," Smith Claudel says.
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.
"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," Smith Claudel says.
"We all learn differently, so to provide a variety of different kinds of learning opportunities is crucial. We use sound and touch in our materials, and we've had early conversations about working with blind children, because the materials are not solely dependent on sight."
Reference
Winn, Z. (2023, January 20). Learning Beautiful brings MIT’s “mind and hand” ethos to early childhood education. MIT News. Retrieved from February 3, 2023, https://news.mit.edu/2023/learning-beautiful-early-education-0120