Teaching game design to students of the early childhood through Forest Maths

As technology infiltrates every aspect of students' daily lives, game design acquires a bigger and more influential impact on shaping students' personalities and development of learning competencies. Considering the continuously increasing research on the use of educational games in classrooms, the researcher identifies another great interest in the constructivistic perspective of game design for young children. Designing games requires a multidisciplinary approach, where various competencies are applied. The aim of this paper is to investigate the impact of organizing, implementing and facilitating learning environments that aim at increasing young students' game design competencies. In order to achieve this, the researchers proposed a teaching approach based on re-designing existing game concepts. Through a pilot of study where a particular game concept was introduced, the researchers observed, recorded and analyzed students' reactions, work process and strategies in order to provide empirical evidence that will help the academic community to have a better understanding of this area.