MANKATO, Minn. (KEYC) – Young children are naturally curious about the world around them, and what better way to feed their curiosity than to surround them with STEM or science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
“We do want children at a very young age to experience that. This helps with them learning how to ask important questions, and it helps them to develop those wondering skills. Why do things happen, how to things happen, what makes things work,” explained Kim Kleven, vice president of education and learning experiences at the Children’s Museum of Southern Minnesota.
That’s one of the main motivators for the Children’s Museum of Southern Minnesota and their Wild Robots exhibit.
“That is just, we have different programs in the museum that we are going to get out, explore with and learn how they can make the robots move,” Kleven stated.
“Can use the different controls to move the joints and make the robot hands pick things up, very fun to work with. Then we also have some cube lets that are modular robots so if you put the different cubes together in certain patterns they can do different things,” described Patrick McCarthy, museum experience supervisor at the Children’s Museum of Southern Minnesota.
To immerse children going there to a whole new possibility of things for the future.
“This is really important. This is a lot of the things and technology that they will be using when they grow up breaks down to. So it is really good to have them get that influence at a young age and learn how to work with these certain technologies so they can continue on with that in the future,” McCarthy said.
Especially when young children’s brains act like sponges to information and the things that happen around them.
Expanding the horizons for a better future, that’s what the Children’s Museum of Southern Minnesota and these Wild Robots are all about.
“We are also looking at that early education of career exploration, sounds crazy to think about that already. We want to introduce families and children to different experiences that they might not have had that opportunity to do. So like today we have robots out, that might intrigue someone in a different way that a parent or a child has not been able to experience before,” Kleven remarked.
Copyright 2021 KEYC. All rights reserved.
Credit: Source link
