About Us
What is Bear Buildz?
Bear Buildz is a research program funded by the National Science Foundation. Its goal is to design and evaluate guided play experiences for parents of preschool children that:
- Engage parents and children in creative and joyful play
- Help parents play with children in ways that optimize child STEM skill learning
- Represent approaches that can be used in different informal learning contexts
How does Bear Buildz assist parents?
Parents boost STEM learning when they foster child curiosity and discovery during creative STEM play. Bear Buildz materials make it easy for parents to guide creative play to optimize STEM learning. Embedded tips help parents encourage focused attention, problem analysis, goal-setting, planning, and problem-solving during collaborative building challenges. Bear Buildz experiences power the creative inventors of the future.
How did Bear Buildz design the play guides?
Human centered design methods included three phases of activity.
Observe
We observed how parents and children played with simple building kits and looked for what made the play fun and what helped parents guide STEM thinking by asking questions, making observations, discussing plans, and trying out ideas.
Refine
We used an interactive process to refine the building kits. We designed prototype building kits, let parents try them out, and used their feedback to shape new prototypes.
Evaluate
We settled on a final design for the play materials and play guides and evaluated the impact. We compared the play interactions and learning of 50 parent-child pairs who used the Bear Buildz building kits with play guides and 25 parent-child pairs who build the same structures without play guides. We also partnered with Discovery Space of Central Pennsylvania [add link: https://discoveryspace.org/] to see how they worked in a children’s museum setting.