For a child, the wonderful world of science is more often than not reduced to being just another scary,vast, tough subject , where one needs to memorize formulae and equations, solve some math problems and somehow try to get good grades, so that she can fulfill her parents wishes of becoming a good engineer or a good doctor some day or a Nobel prize winning nuclear physicist some day. All this is thanks to societal expectations that overlooks or under-emphasizes the importance of building and maintaining the natural curiosity of a child towards his world, relating concepts to her world or even building intellectual skills needed to make further study of science possible. Without going too much into what ails the current education or evaluations system, we feel we need to provide a platform for kids to experientially build their knowledge base in science, help them relate what they learn in schools to things in every day life, to actively engage them in each step of problem solving- right from articulating the problem itself, to hypothesis and design, to execution and evaluation. We provide this through workshops designed for various age groups, that on the face of it require children to solve a problem that involves science and engineering. By attempting to solve the problems and build solutions, children will learn, develop and internalize a scientific thinking process, that will encourage their creativity and curiosity, build intellectual skills like
Observing the world
Classifying it into various categories that may be known or not
Measuring objects
Predicting behaviors and properties
Experimenting to evaluate these predictions
and personal and social skills like
Team Work
Ability to critique their own and others' work
Ability to accept critiques of their own work
Confidence in their own abilities
The workshops are designed to be age appropriate, based on philosophies of cognitive experts like Gardner, Piaget, Vygotsky and Dewey. They are designed to be challenging enough, and yet achievable. Kids are encouraged to learn from each other and from their own mistakes, at their own pace and most importantly, encouraged to have fun and take pride in their own abilities.
