Tag: elementary school

Leveling Up: Bring Gamification to the Classroom with 3D Pens

Posted on by Vicki Grisanti

We’re unlocking a new dimension in the classroom – literally! Today, we’re diving into the exciting world of gamification with points, badges, leaderboards, challenges, and more.

It’s time to move on from worksheets and passive listening. Envision a learning environment where creativity explodes, and students are intrinsically motivated to conquer learning prompts and challenges like never before. That’s the power of gamification, and 3D pens are the ultimate tools to bring it to life!

A Winning Combination: Gamification & 3D Pens

At its core, gamification is about taking the elements and principles of games and applying them to real-world activities – in this case, the classroom.

Re-imagining games for new environments taps into our desire for:

  • Autonomy: Offer students choices and some control of their learning.

  • Mastery: Providing opportunities to develop skills and see progress.

  • Purpose: Connecting learning to meaningful outcomes and goals.


Student creating an object with a 3Doodler 3D pen

Now, let’s add a 3D pen into the mix! These incredible tools allow students to transform their ideas into tangible, three-dimensional creations. This hands-on element amplifies the benefits of gamification in several ways.






Benefits of Using 3D Pens with Gamification

  • Increased Engagement: The novelty and creative freedom of 3D pens instantly grab attention and foster deeper involvement.

  • Tangible Rewards: Encourage students to create physical items representing their achievements in a particular lesson.

  • Problem-Solving in 3D: Challenges become more engaging when students need to design and build solutions in three dimensions.

  • Multi-Sensory Learning: Engaging with 3D creations involves visual, tactile, and kinesthetic learning styles, catering to a broader range of students.

Unlocking New Lessons

Interested in taking the leap and bringing this dynamic duo to your classroom? We’ve got you covered. Here are some gamified activity ideas using 3D pens:

Objective-Based Challenges:

Frame learning objectives as quests! For example, in a geometry lesson, the “quest” could be to design a specific geometric shape with accurate dimensions to earn “geometric gems” (points or small rewards).

Badge Systems (Tangible Badges!):

Students can create badges to represent mastery of a concept or skill instead of using digital badges. Imagine a “History Hero” badge for completing a timeline project or a “Science Superstar” badge for a successful experiment model.

Collaborative Builds for XP:

Divide students into teams and assign them a 3D design challenge related to the lesson. The team with the most accurate, creative, or functional build earns points or privileges. Think of designing a model of the water cycle or a historical landmark.

Escape the Classroom:

Create a series of clues or puzzles students need to solve related to the curriculum. The final clue could require them to 3D draw a specific object that “unlocks” the next stage or a small reward.

Boss Battles (Knowledge Checks):

At the end of a unit, present a complex challenge or problem related to the material. Students can use their 3D pens to represent their solution visually. Successfully presenting and explaining their creation “defeats the boss” and helps them earn rewards.

Personalized Tokens:

Offer students different learning pathways with reading challenges, for example. As they complete their reading and comprehension tasks, they can draw a small 3D token representing their progress.

The Future is 3D Gamification!

Integrating 3D pens with gamification offers a powerful and engaging way to bring learning to life in your classroom. It fosters creativity, problem-solving, and collaboration and presents learning in a format we know students enjoy. So, get your 3Doodler 3D pens, unleash your inner game designer, and watch your students level up their education in exciting new ways!

Have you tried gamification? Share your experience with us @3Doodler or #3Doodler #WhatWillYouCreate!

Quick Tips to Support Social-Emotional Learning

Posted on by Vicki Grisanti

A little time goes a long way to make social-emotional learning strategies stick!

Students benefit when they learn to manage their emotions, set and achieve goals, feel and show empathy for others, and create strong relationships.

As adults, we use these skills daily, so it makes sense to give students a chance to test their social-emotional strategies during the school day. And best of all, it’s often more manageable than it seems to incorporate a few social-emotional learning opportunities into a traditional lesson. Best of all, students walk away with more than just a good grade but tips they can use for life.

National SEL Week — March 6-10

The Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) offers comprehensive educational resources and research to support students, teachers, and parents.

CASEL recommends three daily practices that help support students in their SEL growth. The signature practices are very straightforward and include the following:

Three Daily SEL Practices:

  • Welcome Inclusion Activity – Builds community to tackle the word ahead. Examples include whole group meetings, morning circles, and peer-to-peer work.

  • Engaging Strategies – Offering interactive and reflective moments. Examples include partner discussions, private think time, or brain breaks.

  • Optimistic Closure – Highlights a sense of accomplishment and supports forward thinking. Examples include a one-minute accolade or a shared takeaway.


Test out these social and emotional learning tips in recognition of National SEL Week from March 6-10, 2023. The week will culminate with SEL Day on Friday, March 10, to showcase these tools’ powerful impact in uplifting hearts and connecting minds — the theme for this year’s week of activities.

Doodling Activities to Support SEL

It’s easy to see how working in 3D could be leveraged to support CASEL’s three daily practices in unique and creative ways. For example, a class could work together on a large 3D printing project as a welcome activity, or students could create individual items to share with a larger group in a morning circle activity. Doodling also provides a fun outlet for students to enjoy while using interactive and reflective moments or even acting as a brain break. Lastly, it’s fantastic to wrap up a lesson, like the ones featured below, with a key takeaway or accomplishment.

This week, explore the following lessons and recognize the value of social and emotional learning!

Grade K-2: Stone Soup

3D pen art: Small chocolate fish on K2 DoodleStoneSoup main.

Stone Soup is a classic children’s story in which a hungry stranger convinces people in a small village to contribute food to make a meal everyone enjoys and serves a moral regarding the value of sharing.

The class will hear the original tale and learn about the value of working together. Then, students will be able to create their own doodled stones using the chosen nouns. Working with a partner, they will create four different story stones. Finally, students will use their story stones as writing prompts, incorporating them into a simple story with a beginning, middle, and end.

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Grade 3-5: Puppets and Props Story Retelling

Hand holding cat puppet, 3D pen art

In small groups, students will enact a scene from a book with the class. But, with a unique twist, they will create and use doodled finger puppets to share their story with the class. Retelling a story is a fantastic way to build language, speaking, and listening skills. Plus, working together and having an opportunity to design with a 3D pen offers a creative outlet that students will enjoy. The final puppet shows will reflect an understanding of story structure, sequence, and reading comprehension.

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Grade 6-8: 3Doodler Stop Motion

Close-up of yarn 3D pen toy figure.

Stop-motion animation is a fantastic way to teach students about story structure, think creatively, and work together on communication and teamwork skills. Students will work in pairs or small groups to identify fictional themes in this activity. Next, they will choose a scene representing the theme and doodle their characters and props in 3D. Once ready, they will enact the scene and create a stop-motion animation. The experience will help students build confidence and share their ideas as they work with their peers.

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National SEL Week is an opportunity to recognize the value of social-emotional learning and find ways to incorporate it into your day. Tell us how your classroom incorporates SEL and tag us @3Doodler #3Doodler #WhatWillYouCreate.

It’s Engineers Week!

Posted on by Vicki Grisanti

This week is all about engineering as we explore the many contributions this field and the people in it have made to improving our world.

Science, math, and technological literacy help us engage in engineering and solve problems to help those around us. So let’s learn more about these fields and see how we can contribute with 3Doodler tools as an early introduction to 3D printing, creative problem-solving, and breaking down how things work.

Change Makers

Engineer’s Week began in 1951 by the National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE) to highlight engineers’ critical role in society. The week coincides with President George Washington’s birthday, as he is often described as America’s first engineer. But engineers go much further back in history, and their contributions are vast.

Look around you and imagine for a moment all the things in your life that engineers have played a part in creating. The list is endless. Engineers have contributed many ways to improve lives, from electricity to the telephone, cars, airplanes, and computers.

Meeting an engineer is one way to help demystify the field and learn more about what engineers do. DiscoverE, the organization that sponsors Engineers Week, hosts monthly Chats with Change Makers to speak with a real-life engineer and learn about a new field. Explore past episodes or join the next one live to learn more about technology fields.

Creating the Future

In addition to meeting engineers, young people can explore the various engineering disciplines at school or home with easy-to-follow lessons. This week we’re sharing a few challenging and fun engineering lessons to build and test designs in 3D.

The engineering design process offers a way of thinking that you can apply to solve a problem. Each step provides new information about the situation and encourages you to think critically about how you might solve it. Engineers often repeat the process to come up with the best possible solution. Working as a team, you can share ideas and find new perspectives by involving others.

The Engineer Girl offers a simple way to think about the engineering design process. It’s also a great place to start exploring careers in engineering and learning more about the field.

Design Like an Engineer

Working with friends has never been better as students explore STEM-focused design challenges that span sports, architecture, and design. These 3Doodler lesson plans will inspire critical thinking and opportunities to apply the engineering design process.

Grade K-2: STEM Doodle Hockey

STEMDoodleHockey with 3D pen art: Plastic construction on table.

Time to hit the ice! Students will design a template and doodle the best hockey stick in this exciting lesson about design and function. When they’re ready, it will be time to test their hockey sticks out on the ice to see which stick can shoot a puck the farthest and with the most accuracy through a goal. Game on!

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Grade 3-5: STEM Doodle Engineering Challenge

Toy ladder & gun on floor, 3D pen art

With just a few materials, students will be challenged to build the tallest tower. Students will work together and use critical thinking skills to make predictions, record observations, and analyze their structures. It’s a lesson in design thinking they be talking about for weeks to come!

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Grade 6-8: STEAM Design Challenge

Orange chair with purple trims created using 3D pen art

Using their 3Doodler 3D pens, students will attempt to create a functional chair under intense time constraints and with just a few materials. Will they be up to the challenge? Time will tell!

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Engineers Week is an invitation to celebrate problem-solving and find ways to make the world a better place. Share how engineering inspires you #3Doodler #WhatWillYouCreate.