5.1 The Alphabot
Over three-hundred years ago, English philosopher John Locke in 1693 made one of the first references to alphabet nursery blocks “dice and playthings, with letters on them to teach children the alphabet by playing” (emphasis added) [13]. In the early 1700s, Friedrich Wilhelm August Froebel, the pioneer of the kindergarten movement introduced alphabet blocks and in 2003 the alphabet block was inducted into the National Toy Hall of Fame [2][15]. Alphabet blocks were one of the first educational toys for children. They are a mainstay of early learning and nearly every child has spent at least some time playing with alphabet blocks building critical social, creative, cognitive, motor and literacy skills. Traditionally, the tactile, tangible letter cut into the side of a block is a shape that can be traced by the finger of the child to form cross-sensory, multi-modal memories of the symbol. Alphabot, an instance of a blended reality character, fashioned after a familiar wooden letter block was designed to be fun, safe and have a modular front face that could accept any symbol reacting to user input both on and off-screen.