Gracie & Friends Breakfast Time is now available in the App Store!
Children make fair shares of waffles, pancakes, watermelon and berries for Gracie and her friends as they learn to equipartion – or equally share – collections of objects and whole objects. Who knew math could be so yummy?
Grab a friend and try out the latest collaborative game from First 8 Studios!
Gracie & Friends Photo Friends is now available in the Apple App Store!
With the launch of four apps focused on subitizing (instantly recognizing how many there are of something), Gracie and Friends is proud to announce the first of four apps that help preschoolers develop their skills in equipartitioning! Equipartitioning is equal sharing a collection of objects or a whole object by dividing it into equal groups or portions.
Lemonade Stand, now released and available for download through the Apple App Store, invites children to create equivalent cups of lemonade for customers in 20 increasingly tricky levels of gameplay. They slide ice cubes around a table and into cups by tipping and tilting the iPad! Every cup needs the same number of ice cubes, but not any lady bugs! Can you make similar servings at your Lemonade Stand? Try it out and see!
Did you see the latest subitizing app from Gracie & Friends? We hope you enjoy the playful robots of Jungle Gym, which is available to download for the iPad from the Apple App Store!
We had a bubble-bursting good time sharing the Gracie & Friends Treasure Bubbles iPad app, now available in the Apple App Store, with our young friends and teachers. What was our approach to integrating this collaborative game into the preschool classroom? Modeling how we can work together to learn math — which is “awesome” and totally clap-worthy!
This modeling — and it’s absolutely participatory modeling with the teachers and children! — is all part of our Professional Development for effective integration of research-based, developmentally appropriate games into the preschool classroom. Teachers model the apps for the children, inviting their thoughts, their voices, and their touch.
As for the children? We saw a lot of joy and exuberance while learning together! And that’s the true treasure.
We’re thrilled to announce the third installment of our Gracie & Friends apps, Treasure Bubbles, has been released and is now available to download for the iPad from the Apple App Store!
We’re so happy to share the Gracie & Friends City Skate app with you all — now available for download to the iPad in the Apple App Store!
After four years of National Science Foundation-funded research and development, our team launched the first of the eight game apps last week! Our iPad app Gracie & Friends Birthday Café is now available in the Apple App Store!
The app is part of Early Math with Gracie & Friends™— our new, mobile app series and math curriculum supplement developed by the First 8 Studios at WGBH team under the Next Generation Preschool Math project. A randomized control trial demonstrated significant learning gains among the children who used the apps.
The hands-on activities are currently available at the First 8 Studios at WGBH Web site! The remaining apps will be released in the Apple App Store over the upcoming months, and the digital Teacher’s Guide will be released in early 2015.
Our own Christine Zanchi, Executive Producer, says, “The Gracie & Friends apps are laying the research foundation for how to use technology with young children. Our research and preschool partners, the teachers and children, are integral to this process. As this and other projects demonstrate, public media has an incredible role to play in setting the bar for mobile learning.”
We’re so excited to share our work with the world!
Looking for reasons to attend the upcoming SXSWedu – March 9-12, 2015? NGPM will be represented for the second year running! Since last year, this work has led to the Early Math with Gracie and FriendsTM suite of pre-k apps, one of two cornerstone projects of the brand new First 8 Studios.
WGBH’s Christine Zanchi, SRI’s Phil Vahey, and EDC’s Shelley Pasnik will present a panel: Building the Research Base for STEM Apps in PreK. We’re so excited to once again share our work and meet other presenters and attendees!
As we work hard to put the final touches on the subitizing app suite, we wanted to take a moment and reflect on why we do what we do, and why all of the hard work is worth it.
blog.first8studios.org 