Junior Printing Resource: Original Design

Challenge: To produce a design to assist juniors (five year olds) with their counting.

Background: This process has been detailed on this blog in a series of post, but was finished today and hence the update.

Originally we were looking at using pre-existing prints to create this animal or object.   The criteria was that it needed to be a flexi-animal so it could be manipulated and have the numbers sequenced so that a student could use it as a number line counting tool.   In doing so having used various existing prints caused a challenge - having exactly the right combination of numbers and segments meant we dismissed a number of options.    It was eventually decided to custom make the entire design with a simple theme or idea.   This would allow us to create a number line of any desired length, in addition to using our own design we could target skip counting - that is we could include number sequences that we wanted the students to learn that might not be available on another counting design.   We also wanted it to be robust enough to be constantly handled and moved and manipulated by the students who are extremely young and enthusiastic.

Level of Difficulty: Medium-High, this is another print that involves a level of linking of the print.   This concept while it can be learnt and designed from video is a somewhat challenge for some students (although it has been mastered as noted on this blog by an eleven year old).   

Size: We are currently looking at a design at that is 230mm long is 30mm high and is 5mm in width.   This is looking like it will be the basis for a ten group of numbers.    Further attempts will be made to print to twenty and using doubles to include larger numbers and digits.   This is very much a work in progress which will be subject to the students using and testing the design until it is considered right.

Timeframe: Two and a half hours at present.   This maybe modified to increase the space/size depending on the digits being used but will be used as a base.   

What we would do differently/next steps for the students: Its over to students in our junior school to work out where to next with this design and to ensure that it works.   We will be 'road testing' it in our junior school, getting feedback from the students and teachers and modifying it as a result.