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Spatial skills are essential for everyday tasks, and technology blends seamlessly into children's everyday environment. Since spatiality as a term is ubiquitous in experience this paper bridges literature in two fields: theories on early spatial learning in cognitive development and potential benefits of tangible user interfaces (TUIs) for supporting very young children's spatial skills. Studies suggest that the period between 2 and 4 years of age is critical for training spatial skills (e.g., mental rotation), which relate to further success in STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, and math) disciplines. We first present a review of the empirical findings on spatial skills, early interventions, and tools (i.e., narrative and gesture input) recommended for training preschool children's spatial skills. By situating the work within the use and benefits of manipulatives (e.g., building blocks, puzzles, shapes) combined with digital affordances in interaction design, we address the relevance of TUIs as complementary tools for spatial learning. We concentrate on the supporting properties of TUIs that enable playful learning, make storytelling more concrete, and provide embodiment effects through physicality. Through various products found in the market and literature that address the physical-digital convergence, we invite designers and researchers to consider design practices and applicable technology that build on present efforts and paradigms in this area. To contribute to this area, we conclude with a discussion of the gaps in design methods to develop technologies for children younger than 4 years old, and propose directions for future work to leverage new tools that serve very young children's spatial learning and possible inquiries for dual payoff.

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Including children in the design of technologies that will have an impact on their daily lives is one of the pillars of user-centered design. Educational robots are an example of such a technology where children's involvement is important. However, the form in which this involvement should take place is still unclear. Children do not have a lot of experience with educational robots yet, while they do have some ideas of what robot could be like from popular media, such as BayMax from the Big Hero 6 movie. In this paper we describe two pilot studies to inform the development of an elicitation method focusing on form factors; a first study in which we have asked children between 8 and 15 years old to design their own classroom robot using a toolkit, the Robo2Box, and a second study where we have compared the use of the Robo2Box toolkit and clay as elicitation methods. We present the results of the two studies, and discuss the implications of the outcomes to inform further development of the Robo2Box for prototyping classroom robots by children.

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