Designing the Future of Childhood Learning

Children can do so naturally what many adults struggle with; intrinsically, they know how to play, experiment, work with their hands—their whole bodies—to express themselves and their ideas. As the LEGO Foundation states, “Children know play is their superpower… Because play is something every child, everywhere in the world can do. It fuels curiosity, sparks creativity, and inspires a lifelong love of learning.”

We’ve witnessed some of the possibilities AI has enabled in fueling and encouraging our creativity across disciplines. In education, the potential for AI to manifest new opportunities cannot be overstated. One area I’m particularly interested in is how AI will continue to push and redefine creative tooling for children. A look at the educational philosophies that have inspired some innovative tools and products for our youngest dreamers and doers can act as our guide in thinking about the next generation of educational tools for kids.

Drawing from three models—Constructionism, the Reggio Emilia Approach, and the Montessori Method—will help define some principles. This isn’t an exercise in nostalgia, or an attempt to rank the approaches, or even the products that came from the approaches, but rather, a provocation. Can we build a future for children that’s not only entertaining and instructive, but also empowering and empathetic? 

These pedagogies share a few foundational beliefs; to consider new areas to innovate, it might be helpful to talk about the critical similarities. Firstly, across all three philosophies, a child is not a passive recipient of knowledge but an active agent. This means that programs, tools, and products need to be developed to honor a child’s natural curiosity, autonomy, and inner motivation. In practice, this translates to needing our creative tooling to have multiple entry points instead of a singular, linear path (like tutorials, tools that presume a child’s area of interest, etc.). 

Secondly, in an educational context for children, technology should be treated as a material to be used (or at times, not), and not as an authority to be obeyed. As we will see, a puzzle is not a teacher, it’s an invitation, just as a project is not a lesson, it’s a canvas. We do not want to build tools for children that will do the work for them or that will limit their exploration in any way. A new generation of tools should be akin to collaborators, mirroring the child’s psyche. 

Thirdly, the act of creating is more valuable than what’s getting made, which I think most founders and creators can recognize as one of the core tenets of prototyping, or even the -1 to 0 phase at South Park Commons. We need to build systems that will reward iteration; practically, this means offering version histories, gentle nudges rather than scores, and features that will celebrate work completed or experiments taken, for example.

And finally, it’s extremely important to build hands-on, sensory-rich environments for young kids. Children learn with their bodies, which is reflected in Reggio Emilia’s shadow play, Montessori’s didactic materials, and Constructionism’s use of tools like LEGO Mindstorms and Scratch to turn abstract ideas into tangible projects. Prioritizing tangible interfaces, audio-visual feedback, and multi-sensory exploration wherever possible will build skills and keep children engaged. An over-reliance on small screens with abstract UI elements, disconnected from real-world, physical experiences, should be avoided. 

Now, to address these methodologies in more detail. Constructionism is a learning theory developed by Seymour Papert, which is built on Jean Piaget’s constructivism theory. Constructivism believes learners build knowledge internally through experience, and constructionism adds to this theory by saying learners do the job of learning best when they are actively engaged in making tangible things. “The role of the teacher is to create the conditions for invention rather than provide ready-made knowledge,” says Papert, sounding eerily similar to Ed Catmull, the former President of Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios (“My job as a manager is to create a fertile environment, keep it healthy, and watch for the things that undermine it.”). Therefore, learning is most productive and effective when it happens in the context of projects that are personally meaningful to the child (not the teacher). The founders at Kinzy had this in mind when they developed their AI-powered “edutainment” platform. Kinzy allows kids to turn their natural storytelling and play instinct into screen time that’s creative, constructive, and age-appropriate, rather than passively consuming content.  Kids can describe stories or game ideas using simple prompts or voice commands, and AI will instantly generate illustrations, characters, and interactive scenes that can be customizable. They can then play with their creations, tweaking visuals and exploring alternate or iterative plots. It operates like a digital playground, giving children agency and variation through storytelling. 

Something similar in the South Park Commons repertoire is Richa Gupta’s Fantoons, which empowers users to create comics in playful and intuitive ways. Gupta takes ideas from Constructionist core principles, allowing users to craft their own digital and visual comics and teaching narrative, visual composition, and sequencing through creation. Here, modularity is a key component—kids construct narratives panel by panel, a smart way to incorporate a format that kids already enjoy and are familiar with. Users arrange their stories through visual and textual blocks, which form sequences (mirroring the modular sequence thinking in Scratch and LEGO Mindstorms, used as a narrative medium within Fantoons). The tools are meant to encourage tinkering, iteration, and non-linear editing. In this way, Fantoons gives children “low floors, high ceilings, and wide walls,” the key dimensions to getting learners to start easily, expand their knowledge and skill over time, and explore multiple pathways, as Mitchel Resnick, the LEGO Papert Professor of Learning Research at the MIT Media Lab, intended. M

Lastly, the Reggio Emilia Approach emphasizes the importance of child-led, project-based learning, focusing closely on the type of environment best suited for discovery. The Reggio Emilia principles engage students as co-constructors of knowledge (the same process as in co-design and participatory design, but for children). An environment rich in beauty and possibilities for creation allows kids to express themselves in the multitude of ways they know how—drawing, storytelling, music, building, movement, and more, expressed in the hundred languages of children idea, conceptualized by Loris Malaguzzi, the founder of the Reggio Emilia Approach. Again, we see the importance of letting kids choose their topics of interest rather than following a strict, pre-planned syllabus. In this way, the environment is the “third teacher,” behind the child and the teacher. When South Park Commons Founder, Michael Lai, launched Tinycare, a network of micro-daycare centers in San Francisco, he was inspired by the Reggio Emilia and Montessori Methods. The daycares were intimate, sensory-rich environments in at-home settings (teachers received partially or fully subsidized housing). Tinycare was acquired in 2023 by Higher Ground Education, a leading provider of Montessori education; this move gave Tinycare toddlers and their families the ability to matriculate into Montessori pre-schools, elementary schools, and eventually middle schools, giving them further access to a comprehensive and enriching educational experience.

Of course, you can’t talk about kids’ tech without talking about prioritizing safety, privacy, and well-being. It’s a moral imperative and increasingly, a regulatory one. Practically, this means building in robust content filtering and moderation of any AI or online features, so nothing inappropriate pops up. It also means privacy by design: not collecting unnecessary data on children, avoiding tracking or profiling, and resisting monetizing children’s data. Digital well-being factors are also of extreme importance; healthy development and interest over engagement-at-all-costs is a must. Including “take a break” reminders or parental controls are great ideas. Any ethical tool will be transparent with parents and educators, providing them with controls and insights on what the child is doing. In short, safety and joy must trump growth hacking or intrusive monetization efforts, no matter what. 

The real beauty in taking inspiration from pedagogical approaches is the versatility and expandability. Similar to how the hundred languages of children emphasizes the myriad ways children can learn, explore, and express themselves, these methods are the nutrient-rich soil future founders can plant their ideas in for the next generation of creative tooling. Technology is just another language for kids; educators, or those interested in childhood education, should embrace digital technology as a valuable material for learning.