Academics' Choice Award™ Winner
MiaoKids Smart Kit
Ages: 3 - 8Price: $79.99
Type: Toy, App, Gear & Equipment
By MiaoKids / Beijing Xiaohai Learn & Play Co. Ltd.
Description
The MiaoKids Smart Kit (the physical component of the MiaoKids ecosystem) is designed to complement various MiaoKids applications, such as MiaoKids Wonder Math, that assist young learners in developing foundational academic skills through an open world of play-based learning.
Designed for use at home, in the classroom, or on the go, the Smart Kit and MiaoKids applications endeavor to incorporate Professor Howard Gardner's (Harvard Graduate School of Education) theory of multiple intelligences and allow students to particularly incorporate and draw on their bodily-kinesthetic intelligence more than many screen-based modalities can currently accommodate. The growing fold of MiaoKids applications is intended to utilize this model while forging many of the intelligences traditionally addressed in the classroom (e.g., verbal-linguistic and logical-mathematical intelligence). This versatile approach is valuable for a broad spectrum of learners and provides visual-physical stimulation that is important at early ages and can be of special value to students with learning disabilities.
In many settings, early childhood education is treated less than holistically and often fails to properly connect a young learner's many emerging intelligences. In other contexts, children are inundated with overstimulation via electronic means without a channel to harness the physical world around them. The MiaoKids ecosystem is designed to serve as a novel bridge between artificial intelligence and the many brands of human intelligence that AI's advancement can at times neglect.
The MiaoKids Smart Kit is manufactured in China using eco-friendly materials. A single Smart Kit consists of one (1) Wonder Pad, twenty-three (23) Wonder Cubes, eight (8) Wonder Shapes, one (1) storage box, one (1) USB data line, and one (1) instruction file.
The Wonder Pad, a sensor board that constitutes the primary Smart Kit hardware, is engineered to serve as the bridge between MiaoKids play-based learning applications capable of running on a smart device interface — such as the MiaoKids Wonder Math application — and physical components such as Wonder Cubes and Wonder Shapes. The Wonder Cubes and Wonder Shapes have built-in chips that enable interaction with MiaoKids applications when the Wonder Pad is connected by Bluetooth to such devices.
Aesthetically, the Wonder Pad has a subtle design that mimics the face of ChiChi, the signature MiaoKids cat character that permeates many of its games. The Wonder Cubes and Wonder Shapes come in vibrant colors that are designed to provide off-screen visual stimulation. Level-adjusted games also aid parents and educators in identifying age-appropriate challenges, and time controls can be managed in settings to assist in placing healthy parameters on child screen time.
The MiaoKids Smart Kit is designed to create a better learning world by enhancing the integration of multiple intelligences and facilitating physical interaction with electronic learning support. Unlike many products that are exclusively housed in an application or exclusively in the form of physical toys, the Smart Kit enables engagement between those two (electronic and physical) worlds. MiaoKids believes there are no precise parallels to the MiaoKids ecosystem in the EdTech marketplace and is eager to share its learning experience with young learners worldwide.
Review Highlights:
MiaoKids Smart Kit bridges the divide between digital learning and physical play. It brings manipulatives back into the forefront of the learning experience while capitalizing on the endless possibilties within the digital world to enhance instruction. The 30+ manipulatives including geometric shapes, numbers, and math symbols are the answers that kids use to solve the challenges on screen. The Bluetooth-connected Wonder Pad recognizes the objects (answers) when they are placed on the sensor board.
The MiaoKids Smart Kit is a brilliant merger of physical play and online education. It's an effective approach that our 4-year-old loved. The colorful activities are engaging, teach basic math and logic, and develop spatial, verbal, motor, visual, and analytical thinking skills. The lovable characters and animations captivated my child and motivated him to continue. And the fact that he was moving, turning, twisting and bending while figuring out what object to select and where to place it definitely made it feel more like play time then school work.
Intuitive, tactile, innovative, and effective - this platform of hands-on fun takes early learning to the next level - and tires toddlers out at the same time.
This Kit is fantastic! As a special needs educator I was so happy to review this product. The object + pad + screen combination takes hands-on manipulatives to a new level. It helped my screen-obsessed students make the cognitive leap from abstract to concrete. My students could physically investigate the math problem and in so doing they better understood and remembered the concepts and lessons. It's also very helpful that I could install it on my phone, smart TV or PC.
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