GOH SI YUN

Background information of the project and tasks involved

KidsSTOP Holistic Programme is a sustainable holistic programme that aims to promote parent-child interaction, where visitors will learn science concepts through meaningful play in a self-directed manner. I was tasked to develop content for the Holistic Adventure Trail booklet as well as a Resource Pack and a Take-Home Kit to encourage parent-child interaction at exhibits on-site as well as activities back at home. The Holistic Adventure Trail booklet consists of instructions for visitors to follow on the trail as well as the link to the online Take-Home Kit, and will be contained in the Resource Pack which comes in the form of a portable small cardboard box which has been made for children to bring it around KidsSTOP throughout the trail. In the resource kit, there are on-site activities as well as take-home activities for parents and children to complete, reinforcing some concepts they have learnt at KidsSTOP earlier.

Our mentors have the first edition of this kit ready with the theme of occupations, and the kit will be officially unveiled and published for public use by March, and can be purchased at the KidsSTOP ticketing counter for $10. I was then involved in the planning and conceptualising of the next edition or theme for the next rotation of the kit.

To better understand the overall workings of KidsSTOP, I was also involved in front-of-house duties such as ground duty during visitor hours to better understand how the whole place works, so I have to engage visitors and offer any help when they require them. When not on ground duty, I would then be involved in office work and will work in office which is located on the second floor of KidsSTOP. Besides crafting the programme, I also helped out with other smaller errands in the office such as preparing materials for their school outreach or birthday parties, which allowed me to understand and see a fuller picture of the different events happening in KidsSTOP that goes beyond just the permanent exhibits.

KidsSTOP

Exhibits in KidsSTOP

Office of KidsSTOP

First Adventure Trail booklet

Record of activities

We started off the project with a tour of KidsSTOP and a trial of our mentors' first kit as Science Centre and KidsSTOP was closed on that day. We got to familiarise ourselves with the place and had a basic understanding of how the project works and what we will have to produce at the end of this month.

Once KidsSTOP was opened to public, I started to participate in ground duty where I am assigned to a certain exhibit for one shift and I have to engage visitors or answer any questions and render aid if needed. This allowed me to understand KidsSTOP better and know how visitors interact with the on-site exhibits which can help when deciding which exhibits to include in our adventure trail such that every exhibit, including the less-used or interacted with ones can all be involved and included and the space at KidsSTOP is maximised.

I then started the brainstorming with my groupmate where we think of suitable themes to follow up our mentors' first kit after participating in ground duty. Some of the initial themes we came up with included Animals, Nature, Global Warming, and a follow up to the first occupations theme. Besides coming up with themes, we also had to think of suitable activities and exhibits to utilise during and after the trail. With this, we crafted up a proposal to be presented to our mentors at our meeting for them to look through and advice us on which activities are suitable for children and what we can do to select a suitable theme to educate children on. After further discussions, we were settled on the theme of global warming as we feel that it is a very pressing issue that young children should be educated on, and we do have exhibits and activities that would be appropriate for use to educate them on this issue in KidsSTOP.

Then we went on to trying out the different on-site and take home activities for the children to ensure that it is of a difficulty level not too difficult for them and the content learnt will be suitable for young children to absorb and understand. This resulted in us changing our activities a few times as we tend to choose activities that were too difficult for children or had no direct link to the educational topic of global warming in this case. The on-site activities also had to be changed such that they were not too similar to what our mentors have already put out for their first kit.

Some of our prototypes

Children to create their own piggy bank from recycled materials

Cardboard elephant that can be assembled in the form of a puzzle

Different versions of globes we wanted children to make

After finalising the various activities, we then sat down to create the Google forms for the children to use during the trail. To increase parent-child interactions, we used our mentors' format of using technology which required parents to complete the trail with the children to ensure that parents actually do interact with their children along the trail as it has been observed that the parents tend to leave their children to play while they rest at one side. Besides creating the Google forms, we also used Wizer, which is an interactive online worksheet platform, to create the take-home learning kit for the visitors. As this will then be used as a reinforcement of knowledge, using an online platform will allow parent and child to work together to complete the worksheet and at the same time, revisit what they have learnt together.

While our mentors were able to request for professional graphics help, we did not have enough time and this was a project for us to complete, so we decided to design simple graphics as much as we can to avoid using any images that would be copyrighted.

Other than creating the online forms and worksheets, we also made use of the 5 KidsSTOP mascots to create a trail booklet for children to follow along the trail and understand the context of the trail. This meant that we had to design the booklet from scratch as well, so we used our mentors' product as a sample and made our own booklet.

The holistic adventure kit also had to contain the materials for the take-home activities which we had to pack and prepare. We then proceeded to the break room, where there were lots of materials and collected our required materials and packed them into small bags labelled as medicine, according to the concept of our trail which is for the children to collect medicines to save the world.

One of our Google forms

A vector icon that we have created ourselves

A page from our booklet

An unpacked bag in our kit that will contain the take home activities

After creating all of the physical products and our online forms and worksheets, we realised we have to include instructions for the children to follow, but to put it on our Wizer worksheet would make it too wordy and complicated, so we decided to create a separate Google site, where we can upload a step by step explanation of how each take home activity should be completed, along with some important messages the children should learn and understand through the activities.

To prepare for our presentation to our schoolmates, teachers, and the science centre staff, we also created a PowerPoint presentation and a video detailing how our trail would work.

The end of the presentation marked the end of our attachment programme, and we chose to transfer our product and any data over to our mentors to help them with the production of the next rotation of this kit.

Record of results

At the end of this attachment, we produced an adventure kit, which included an adventure booklet, 3 bags of take-home activities and materials, 3 Google forms for the 3 sections of our trail, a Wizer worksheet as a take-home reinforcement kit, a Google site containing the information to our take-home activities, and a PowerPoint presentation detailing our process and how to use our product (which includes a video).

Adventure Kit

In picture: Box used to contain all the physical elements of the trail, the 3 bags of materials for the take-home activities, and the adventure trail booklet

We used the box provided by our mentors to pack our materials in, and created our own sticker to be stuck onto the box, to label the box with our theme.

The 3 bags of activities have been labelled with numbers indicating the order of which they will be opened/unlocked, with QR codes pasted on the box to direct users to the site containing all the different instructions to the different activities.

The rationale behind each activity or medicine is related to its sub-theme that the children will be exploring in the trail. The first sub-theme of the trail is endangered animals, and we have used frogs as an example as there is a White's Tree Frog exhibit in the Critters room in KidsSTOP. The children will then make their own frog puppet/pencil holder using the material provided, teaching them about both recycling, and taking care of wild animals as final takeaways from this trail.

The second sub-theme they will explore is about the greenhouse gas emissions, and we will be discussing transportation and vehicles' emission of greenhouse gases, so we will teach children a simple way to reduce greenhouse gases in the surroundings, by planting beans, which will convert carbon dioxide into oxygen through photosynthesis and purify the air. This is a simple and meaningful experiment and can instill responsibility in children before they attend school as good practice.

The third sub-theme would be the topic of climate change and by introducing the children to seasons and the effect climate change has on weather and climate, children will complete a globe cutout to form a miniature globe to tell them the important message that the world is in their hands and they have the power to protect the world.

Google forms

The form on transportations

Wizer

Online take-home worksheet

Google site

Contains all the instructions to the take home activities

The Google forms and Wizer serves as learning platforms for the children to learn more about the different scientific concepts we will teach them over the course of the trail. For the Google forms, we have used the quiz format which allows for answers to be marked for accuracy and can be used as an indicator for both parents and us to know if the knowledge has been correctly imparted and if questions are too difficult for the children to answer.

The Wizer worksheet contains all the recap questions we want the children to learn and remember as well as the links to the instructions of the different take-home activities for the children to do. This will serve as reinforcement of concepts and bringing learning beyond KidsSTOP and back home, which will facilitate parent-child interaction and bonding.

The Google site contains all the information to the different take-home activities, which include step-by-step instructions to doing all the craft activities as well as our rationale behind selecting the activities/medicine.

3 content knowledge

1. Planning programmes for children

As our target audience for this attachment is young children aged between 4 and 8, I learnt to simplify what I want to teach children about in the trail as they would not understand a lot of the information we think they should learn. Through meetings and discussions with our mentors, I learnt to think in the perspective of children and structure an educational trail for them to learn content suited for their age. I also learnt that planning programmes is not easy and there are many aspects to think about such as production costs, feasibility, and other factors to be taken into consideration before a good product can be made.

2. How to make use of technology in real life scenarios like this

Since almost the entire project consists of online products, I have learnt to use different online platforms and transforming them such that they become suited for our aim. This includes making Google forms into a site for quizzes, and using Google sites to disseminate the instructions for the activities. I have also picked up the skill of graphic design using programs like Inkscape and Paint, and other online alternatives to create simple graphics in our project.

3. How to engage and interact with children

After spending a significant amount of time doing ground duty and interacting with children and visitors, I learnt how I can interact and introduce the children to our exhibit and explaining to them such that they can understand and retain the information.

2 interesting aspects

1. I did not know that KidsSTOP had so many different exhibits encompassing so many different aspect, and that the staff there are always on the ground, helping any visitor by introducing to them or explaining to them how different exhibits work. I used to think that KidsSTOP is just a children version of the main Science Centre, but it gives children so much more than just simple science knowledge. Through simple acts like putting the different materials back after use, and sharing, children get to learn more and pick up good habits here with proper guidance and instructions.

2. The staff here are very cheerful and very well-bonded, and interacts differently from other offices. They are like friends to each other and would joke around during work and are rather happy with their jobs, which adds the magical touch and makes the place really friendly and welcoming. Although we only were attached for a very short period of time, the staff were all very helpful and would render help anytime we needed it and are very encouraging towards us which makes us very thankful towards the help and support given. And even though we were young, we blended in well and had a very nice time working together with the staff.

1 takeaway for life

Working in the society definitely is not easy and there is more to it than just churning our reports and documents to be submitted to the higher ups. It also requires teamwork and understanding between colleagues.

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