ABSTRACT

This chapter outlines a cross-cultural project in which children in a primary school in England exchanged information and shared their maker work with children in an Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) center in Helsinki. The work was focused on the Moomins, characters in a set of books written by the Swedish-speaking Finnish writer Tove Jansson. The English children participated in a range of maker activities in which they used a range of both non-digital and digital resources and tools to engage with the Moomin stories. The chapter outlines the skills and knowledge developed in these activities, mapped to the three-dimensional (3-D) model of literacy developed by Green (1988) and informed by Colvert's (2015) work on mixed-reality design. These maker literacies, it is argued, should be valued alongside the traditional literacy practices in which the children also engaged. The chapter outlines the value of makerspaces for schools, and also emphasizes the value of international projects that provide opportunities for cross-cultural exchange.