It was a great honor to be invited by Imagin8ors and Science Centre Singapore to the Tinkerfest event held at Singapore Science Centre’s Tinkering Studio over the weekend. Smarties were looking forward to it, especially gor gor as he loves all things about science!
They were so excited that the moment they reached, they do not know which station to go first but not to worry as the friendly crew from Imagin8ors were are all very well prepared to bring “lost” child/children to the stations. In fact, they were so good with them that the children warmed up to the crew rather quickly.
Land It Safely
The first station that smarties headed for is the station where you design your very own version of helicopter our of a piece of paper and see if it can fly and land safely. One of the crew members demonstrated how it worked…
and very quickly, smarties got down to work!
Once they were done, they could let it fly! Guess what, mei mei almost wanted to placed herself on top of it to test how strong the wind is. Just kidding!
Draw a Shadow
Next, smarties headed to the station where they have to draw a shadow of anything. They tried placing an object over a piece of paper and trace the shadow out but as the lighting wasn’t that strong therefore the shadow wasn’t very obvious, they traced their hand instead.
There weren’t enough chairs but not to worry as gor gor has an innovative way to “sit”…
and here’s our final products. Yes, I took part too! Each of us has our own unique design as long as you let your creativity flow!
Marble Machine
This looked like a tough but challenging station but that didn’t deter smarties from approaching it. In fact, they had a great time here trying to figure out and fix the trail for the marbles to roll onto it without falling out.
All the tools and materials are nicely sorted out and placed in the container for the children to use.
While the children were enjoying, the adults were in a room next to it. There was a parent dialogue session on “Raising Joyful Learners!” where it discussed how parents make the learning journey joyful and fun for the children and what kind of challenges we faced. More details of the session can be found in Imagin8ors’ blog: Joy of Learning.
The session moderator for the dialogue is Balaji Ramanujan (President and Co-Founder Imagin8ors) and the panelists involved in are either full time working parents or with years of experience working with children.
The panelists are:
– Joanna Catalano (Head of Agency Relations for Asia Pacific, Google and Board Member of Female Founders)
– Anna Salaman (Executive Director, Playeum)
– Charlie Ang (Venture Investor, Business Futurist, Start Up Promoter)
– Ei-Leen Tan (Deputy Director, Physical Sciences Department, Education Programmes Division, Science Centre Singapore)
– Daniel Tan (Senior Director of Projects & Exhibition Division in the Science Centre Singapore)
It was an extremely insightful session where everyone gets to share their experiences and discussed on how learning needs have changed according to the rapidly changing tech-enabled world. The session ended with some light refreshment for everyone while the children were still enjoying tinkering in the studio. Smarties couldn’t bear to leave when it was time to go.
The event was very well organised with:
– parent-child bonding times
– parenting self-improvement session (I would regard the dialogue session as parenting session as I really gained a lot from there)
– children get to interact and have fun while learning with other children and crew members
The TinkerFest event is still going on during this week long holiday. Do check it out!
Date: 3 – 11 September 2016
Time: 10 am – 6 pm
Venue: The Tinkering Studio (Hall E), Science Centre
Tinker Fest connects children (Age 3-12), parents, educators and makers in a week-long celebration of the Joy of learning through play, exploration and experimentation. The theme of the festival “Nurturing 21st Century Learners!” seeks to highlight the foundational capabilities that we need to build in children from an early age, to equip them to succeed in a fast changing, technology driven world.
Disclaimer: This article was written based on honest review and own experiences.