Purposeful. Educational. Playful.
P.E.P.
Learning
P.E.P.
Purposeful- with intent
Educational- instructive, enlightening, or enriching
Playful- fun
Dr. Sheila McCown
Dr. McCown has thirty five years of teaching experience, thirty in public elementary schools and five in private practice. She has written and designed multiple educational products, including the Math Chase series, Math-fact-oh! series, Word-fact-oh! series, Oops Groups series, What am I? Where am I?, Geoboards: The Game, and others.
Why play?
"A wide variety of play-based activities must be part of children's educational experiences for their health, well-being, development, and over-all learning."
"Students who do not respond to traditional teaching are likely to be engaged by hands-on, activity oriented lessons... at-risk students responded well to these lessons and revealed significantly increased achievement, as well as higher levels of engagement and motivation."
A. Honigsfeld & R. Dunn
What Works Clearinghouse
"Play is an important vehicle for developing self-regulation as well as for promoting language, cognition, and social competence."
National Association for Educators of Young Children
"...socially-focused group games can be effectively used to break down barriers of uncertainity or unfamiliarity between new students and better unite the class."
Brian Mayer
School Library Journal
"A play and literacy relationship emerges when play assists young children to explore and comprehend the interactions between these two realms."
O.N. Saracho & B. Spodel
Early Child Development & Care
"We have found that using visual support and visual means of modeling stories is a crucial complement to developing oral narrative skills, which in turn helps to develop metacognitive and written skills."
M. Cortazzi & J. Lixian
Early Child Development & Care
Educational Products
Invented and designed by Dr. McCown
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The math-fact-oh! series includes 5 games targeting different skills: addition/subtraction, money, fractions, properties, and multiplication/division. Each game contains math-fact-oh! card sets designed to cover the specific skills at three different levels (A,B,C). Players solve problems and combine the triangular gamecards to compose shapes. Numerous suggestions for support and extension activities are included.
math-fact-oh! (Series)
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The word-fact-oh! series includes 3 games targeting different skills: basic vocabulary, analogies, and roots. Each game contains word-fact-oh! card sets designed to cover the specific skills at three different levels. Players make word connections and combine the triangular gamecards to compose shapes.The games offer extensive opportunities, beyond traditional gameplay, to support and extend academics.
word-fact-oh! (Series)
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Geoboards: the Game strategically brings geoboards into the classroom in a constructive game format. Students listen, build, question, and reason about shapes.
Geoboard Activity Cards: Primary
focuses on skills required for Kdg. - 2nd grade students, providing 110 leveled activity cards, corresponding recording sheets, and extras.
Geoboard Activity Cards: Intermediate focuses on skills required for 3rd-5th grade students, providing 110 leveled activity cards, corresponding recording sheets, and extras.
Geoboards
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Additional P.E.P. activities written by Dr. McCown:
Oops Groups (Series of 3)
What am I? Where am I?
My Five Senses
Our Four Seasons
Five & Ten Frame Activity Cards
Math Chase, formerly Math Pursuit
(1986-2016)
Additional tools
Literacy Sandtrays
Visualizing literature: Toys & trays as teaching tools
Teacher developed kits and student developed sandtrays come in all shapes and sizes, from small individual trays to large whole group trays. The sandtray kits can be used over and over to visually represent nonfiction & biographies, fiction, vocabulary and more. Templates have been designed for story retellings, character studies, exploring emotional components of stories, and in-depth vocabulary exploration.
(Click on any picture for additional details.)
Tray: Sandtray Center
Nonfiction tray: Sandtray Center
Tray: Sandtray Center
Tray: Sandtray Center