Tag Archives: creative play

This week marks the introduction of Sago Mini Boxes, a new service to promote play-based learning at home. It’s a major milestone for our team, and one that is rooted in many of the ideas of innovators such as Joan Ganz Cooney. So how did a team best known for preschool apps come to develop a physical box service? The Sago Mini apps are really the outcome of two big ideas which underlie all of our work. The first is…

What if we could reimagine the iPad as an augmented reality camera for kids to act out their own stories – a costume box for the 21st century? Introducing: TeleStory You’ve all heard the stats. One in three American kids are obese or overweight and will suffer from diabetes at some point in their lives[1]. After diet and exercise, two of the biggest culprits in this epidemic are TV and gaming—the average 8-18 year-old spends 7.5 hours every day on…

In recent years, augmented reality (AR) toys have gained increasing prominence at the International Toy Fair held in New York. Many of the industry’s biggest players have launched AR lines: Mattel’s Apptivity products build upon the strength of existing brands such as Batman and Hot Wheels; Hasbro’s Lazer Tag works with a compatible app to insert digital targets into the user’s environment; and the toys in Disney’s DreamPlay line, launching in the U.S. this fall, will enable kids to play…

Picture for a second the first thing you ever constructed, designed, prototyped, or invented. If you’re like most of us, there’s a pretty good chance that you built your idea using toys like LEGOs, Play-Doh, Lincoln Logs, or perhaps, to your parents’ dismay, a mix of all of the above (good luck getting Play-Doh out of those bricks). Over the years, magazines like MAKE have featured lots of DIY toy projects, but very few talk about designing for Creative Play…

We’re always happy to spread the word for our Cooney Center Prize finalists — especially when they have exciting new projects and updates to share. This week, Andy Russell and Thushan Amarasiriwardena of Launchpad Toys have partnered with Wired’s GeekDad to announce a fun new contest: Kids and their parents are invited to share ‘toons they create about their summer travel adventures for a chance to win a LEGO space shuttle or a $100 Amazon gift certificate. (Check out the…