Patent Grant
4838793
This invention relates to activity display articles. More particularly, the invention relates to activity display articles that contain multi-educational features of young children. Several books for the purpose of teaching young children to read have been published. They have taken on various formats. Most books reflect the consensus of educators that repetition of words is a very important aspect of the learning process. To be effective, the repetition should not be a monotonous drill, but should be presented in such a way as to maintain the child's interest at a high level and encourage accuracy of perception. Books generously illustrated with pictures of boldly colored distinct objects are more likely to retain a child's interest than unillustrated books. Books replete with series of repetitious words and full of illustrations would seem to be optimum; in fact, most books used for teaching reading skills to children are so formatted. Another aspect to the teaching process for improving reading skills utilizes word/object associations. For example, a word is printed on or directly next to a visual representation of that word. Such an association may be repeated several times throughout a book. U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,496,653 contains a disclosure of this type of book. A common drawback with known books is that they are very limited in their use. For instance, a book may contain a series of stories where a small number of words are repeated several times. Such a book does provide a useful function, but has diminished usefulness once it has been read. Other available books based on the concept of word/object association suffer from the same limited usefulness. Known learning aids such as posters, board games, etc. have the same inherent limitations as books. They are generally limited in their use because of their basic construction. There is a need for a learning aid which provides a varied method of teaching reading skills based on generally accepted methods. Such an article would not be monotonous to the child. Additionally, the article would be capable of being used in a variety of learning exercises. Such a variety would make the article interesting and challenging to the child while giving the teacher/partent a choice of options tailored to fit a particular child's learning needs and degree of advancement. Any article of course, must be capable of mass production at a reasonable cost. In accord with the invention herein, an article has been developed which fulfills the objectives of teaching basic skills in a variety of ways. An activity display article with multi educational-features comprises at least one printed activity sheet having a set of distinct visual objects printed on at least one side thereof. The activity sheet is characterized in having a magnetic strip permanently positioned on a backside for the purpose of holding said sheet to a ferrous base surface. It is further characterized in having a clear washable covering on at least the front side for easy marking removal. Small removable manipulatives with magnetic means are also provided. The manipulatives are shaped to match like and unlike visual objects on the activity sheet or are block-shaped with printed words which match the visual object or the same printed word on the printed activity sheet. Magnetic means associated with the manipulatives permit a variety of learning processes using the manipulatives and the activity sheet when held to a ferrous base surface.
| Number | Name | Date | Kind |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1033576 | Garman | Jul 1912 | |
| 2946137 | Worth et al. | Jul 1960 | |
| 3156056 | Pribil | Nov 1964 | |
| 3316669 | Nachbar | May 1967 | |
| 3496653 | Wolfner et al. | Feb 1970 | |
| 3726026 | Borcherding | Apr 1973 | |
| 4045897 | Gates | Sep 1977 | |
| 4702700 | Taylor | Oct 1987 |
