Ideas for activities

We already have a large number of activities in GCompris (about 120) and we are always looking at adding more. An important aspect is to keep the project focused on its core value: educating young children.

Each activity requires a good thinking of the educational aspect including a progressive difficulty, it must be easy to understand what we expect from the children by providing instruction and in game guidance.

Currently our biggest weakness are in the area of music, reading/writing and language.

Maths

Object Classification

For young kids, we could create an activity where they must classify object from larger to smaller, and so on. The size classification could be based on the real-life sizes. For example, a car is larger than a light bulb, but the actual images could be equal size.

We could also have classification based on shape, e.g. round apples and wheels, and rectangular books and doors.

Could teach also "in front of" and "behind" concept.

Symmetrical drawing

A symmetrical drawing activity, with various forms of symmetries. See this example.

Double entry tables

We already have one in this area based on the puzzle activity engine. But is is not flexible enough and it would be better to have an activity dedicated to this concept.

In that activity, we could add :

- filling incomplete tables. The filled stop may be done by selecting images or by entering text or number. For example, it may also be used to try the children on multiplication table. - choosing the right heading for rows and columns of an already filled-in table

Interactive geometry

Like Dr.Geo or Carmetal does, we can provide an interactiv geometry activity.

Of course we have to make it much simpler and stick to point, line, segment, perpendicular, parallel and circle.

This can be used: - as a free geometrical drawing activity - as a directed one, the children is given a set of instructions like draw a 3 cm diameter circle at position (3,3).

There is a possibility to save and load a drawing.

A graph tool

Like the drawing, animation, wordprocessor, we could provide a graph tool to let kids create simple graph for their experiences. They could load/save them. We could see it as a simplified spreadsheet. Here is an online example.

Mathematical numeral systems

An activity to explain the different base. It present the concept, let the children play around with a virtual base counter and then ask questions to transform numbers from one base to another.

Music

GCompris has a module, gcomprismusic.py, that assists developers who wish to write music-related activities. The module contains the following objects:

• Piano Keyboard
• Notes (Eighth, Quarter, Half, Whole)
• Musical Staff (Treble and Bass)

Developers who wish to use these objects in their activity can simply import the module, instantiate these objects, and call the appropriate draw methods to write them to the page. See the module for more information or contact bethmhadley@gmail.com for help creating new music activities in GCompris.

Pitch Recognition

Help students develop an ear for pitch by helping them notice differences between pitches (high vs. low, etc.) This is a very difficult activity for kids (and adults!) to master, so this activity will have to be very forgiving.

Intro to Music Theory

A beginner guide to the basics of music theory. Topics might include music notation, scales, chords, circle of fifths, etc.

Board game

TicTacToe and variations

Here some ideas to steal. TicTacToe and others variants of same game (QuinzeVainc, Sentier, Mots and Lettres].

Dominoes

Having a dominoes activity. It would be very nice, and maybe not too difficult to write (I don't speak for myself...) Easy levels could be with colors only, then images, medium level, images and dots, high level, only dots.

Nine Men's Morris

Nine Men's Morris is an abstract strategy board game for two players that emerged from the Roman Empire.[1] The game is also known as Nine Man Morris, Mill, Mills, Merels, Merelles, and Merrills in English.

This game is still very popular in some place of the world. Having this type of game in GCompris brings the opportunity to expose children to games they won't find otherwise. It would complete our board activity besides chess, oware, connect4, ... This idea has been proposed by Phanindra Ramesh Challa.

There are two open source implementation of this game : gnmm and morris.

Checkers

Checkers is a board game in the spirit of the chess game. It would be nice to have one beside our chess game.

Reading / Writing

Image / Letter association

Its a classical in terms of learning letter, an image is presented to the children and he must click on the keyboard the starting letter of the image (like Apple = A). At this stage we don't check the case.

At the first stage of this activity, all our images with the voices are introduced to the children. He can see the associated image, word and letter and click on them to hear the letter and word spoken.

Case association

Add a new type of memory in our memory type activity in which the children is propose card with upper and lower case and he must associate them.

Dictation of letters

A set of letter is spoken, the children must write them in the correct order. As the level increase, there are more letters and the spoken delay between them decreases.

Dictation of words

A word is displayed and/or spoken the children must re-type it. Then the word is spelled letter by letter and the children must type it.

Letter in which word

A letter is written and/or spoken. Some words are displayed, the children must find the word or the words in which this letter appears.

Letter common to several words

Several words are displayed, the children must find the letter which is common to all of them.

Letter classification

The children is proposed a set of letter and an entry area. He must enter all the letters in the alphabetical order in the text area.

Text understanding

A text story is displayed, the children must read it. Once done, a number of questions about it are are asked. The texts may be simple and written by ourself or taken from public domain famous texts.

There are several levels depending on the text difficulty. Also at first the text and the questions are visible, then when the children has completed the reading the text disappears and the questions are asked.

Text with holes

A text story is displayed, the children must read it. Once done, another text, related to the first contains holes and must be filled by the children.

Language learning

A set of activities in the area of language learning. These activities should help a children learn or discover a foreign language. To achieve this, we can base this work on the shtooka project which provides a large set of recorded words.

We already have an in progress version of an activity dedicated to language learning. It is named _lang-activity_ and is organized in lessons having each a bunch of related sentences with their voices counterpart. When they are all presented to the children some exercises are proposed to help the children remember the sentences.

Target language

Extend GCompris core to include the concept of a target language for that this can be done from a single place. We currently have the ability to set a target language in some relevant activities, this must be changed to use the new target language facility.

Dictionary with word definition

In order to create reading, writing or language learning activities we need to have a well formatted list of words for each language. Some work has been done as seen in this page: Wiktionary_to_XML.

Reading time

We already have an activity to learn how to read on an analog clock. This could be enhanced to learn how to tell the time in a given language (like 10 past 4).

Vocabulary trainer

At some point while learning a new language it is mandatory to learn a set of words in a given area. In this activity we propose a set a different topics and for each the children must learn a set of words.

For example in the transportation topic, the children is proposed the word car and must click on the corresponding image.

The activity proposes different modes depending on a high level mode and the difficulty level: - A word is spoken or written in the source language, the children must find it through an image, or written in the target language. - A work is spoken or written in the target language, the children must find it through an image, or written in the source language.

Science

Environment protection section

We can make a new section aimed to introduce children to environment care. Some ideas of activities are:

• Garbage classification (Level 1: Organic and inorganic; high level: Organic, glass, metal, wood, danger garbage, etc)
• Simple oxygen cycle
• Saving power. To mark which activities save energy and which ones do not.
• Global warming. To mark which activities are good and which ones are not.

Primary light colors

The child will control the intensity of three colored beams that are to be projected to a wall. The controls should only have fixed posible levels, which its number according to the activity level. The user should generated a shown colour by manipulating the three controls.

Light decomposition

One simple activity for show the seven color components of the white light. One idea is to make a cloud rained by click and the sun rise in the same way. So, and rainbow will appear. Maybe a zoom to one individual drop can be done in order to show the incoming white light and the seven outgoing colored beams.

Plant growing simulator

The idea here if to let children take care of a virtual garden. The children have a garden and some plants in it. They must take care of it with actions like :

• seeding a specific plant with given caracteristics
• putting water on the plants when they need some
• get the fruits when ready
• ...

A camera simulator

Help the children understand the different concept used in photography, focal, focus, iso, ... We could let the children take a picture and simulate the rendering given the children's virtual camera settings.

Morse code

The morse code maybe a funny way to discover a lot of concepts. And it would be really fun to be able to discuss with Tux this way. It can be done in 2 side, Tux talks in morse and the children have the alphabet and must report the text. On the other side, the children write a message to Tux (it is a little bit more complex to implement).

Electricity

We already have an electricity activity, it works fine but it could be improved in a number of ways:

• Ability to rotate components to ease the layout.
• Add a 7 segments display in electricity. Could be used to introduce binary to children.
• A LED component.
• A BCD to 7 segments converter
• Allow more componenets/wires to be placed on the board => use smaller nodes/components?

Having a goal would be interesting and not necessarily too complex. For example we could ask the children to:

• bring a lamp to light
• bring a lamp to light through a switch
• make a lamp burn (the children must put 2 batteries in serial)
• use the variable resistance to vary the light

Other

Web Export for the animation

We have a nice animation activity. Children or teacher may be interested in publishing the creation of the children in the animation activity. A Web export is a nice feature to have.

Recording support for the animation

Let the children record her voice and to associate it to a given animation frame. i.e. a car moves along a picture of a road and create a voice over of "the car drove down the road".

Owale

We have a nice owale activity. But it is hard to understand because we don't see the computer moves. An animation would help so that children see and understand what's going on.

Shape type activities

• Placing planets in our galaxy.
• Placing the wonders of the worlds on a world map.
• Children or adults wearing traditional clothes, they must be placed on a map.
• Typical food.
• Wearing a children

Photohunter

Our photohunter activity has not enough level.

Computer parts

We already have a lot of activities to discover how to use the computer. We also need to expose the computer internals to the children. Perhaps an activity to virtually cable all the main component of the computer would do it. Starting with mouse / keyboard / PC / screen at first level to the processor and memory at the higher level. For each component, a description must be given to explain what it is.

GCompris core

Some ideas on how to improve the heart of GCompris:

• Mouse less GCompris: Except for mouse training activities, it should be possible to play GCompris without a mouse. For example, the main menu should be usable with the arrow keys on a regular PC.