Whether you want to nurture your child’s innate science talent or help tap on your future scientist’s potential at an early age, Mand Labs kit will keep your child engaged and curious and also enhance his or her hands-on learning skills.
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Did you know that people with STEM degrees or certifications are not only occupying prime positions in the economy today, but are also out-earning professionals with PhDs in other fields?
If the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce’s report is anything to go by, then STEM major professionals earn approximately $500,000 more in their lifetime than professionals with non-STEM majors.
But if we are to raise our children as STEM leaders and professionals of tomorrow, we need to examine how are we nurturing and preparing them for these roles in future.
Are we raising creative and critical thinkers; or as educator John W. Gardner puts it:
“Are we giving young people cut flowers when we should be teaching them to grow their own plants?”
One of the most inspiring playgrounds for children today has been created by the Maker Movement, where children get to explore and rely heavily on their innovation and creativity. This movement has also seen the burgeoning of social innovation, where creativity and STEM work in tandem, and has been instrumental in changing billions of lives.
And it is undoubtedly you — a parent extraordinaire — who can support your budding robotics engineer or future coder or scientist by involving them with hands-on, do-it-yourself (DIY) activities and nurture their science talent. This is also the perfect way to bond with your child and learn together.
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Does your nine-year-old constantly ask you innumerable questions about gadgets, how things work in real life and so on? Does he keep tinkering with his electronic toys and often rips them apart? Well, you need to remember what Albert Einstein had said:
Play is the highest form of research. So, encourage your little one to tinker more and tap on his science talent. Make him/her understand how to work with tools and components; how to use math and logic to build things; how to give shape to an idea.
In case this is something that you haven’t dabbled before and you are wondering how to go about it, don’t worry, KIT-1 can take care of all your needs. You and your child can get the taste of your first project by glowing an LED or beeping a buzzer.
The kit, which comes with an array of 50+ projects along with step-by-step building instructions, lets you play with real-world electronic components; understand how each part works through a mix of hands-on experiments and projects; and yes, lets you experience the joy of technology, design and innovation.
The kit is a great way for you and your child to start your DIY experiments and kickstart your budding engineer’s hands-on learning. As author Dr Seuss puts it:
“Children want… to be challenged, to be entertained, and delighted.”
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Who doesn’t aspire to see his/her child have a rewarding STEM career? Yes, parents all across are waking up to the fact that STEM is everywhere today and STEM fields across domains are fueling innovation and creating new businesses, products, and services.
In fact, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics has projected that by 2022 over 3 million STEM jobs will be filled across all levels starting from R&D to teaching, design to practitioner, management functions to technologist.
This serves as one of the pointers as to why it is the right time to introduce STEM to your child. But as Anatole France, a French poet, journalist and novelist had said:
“Nine tenths of education is encouragement.”
So, to support your child in STEM, you have to tap your future scientist’s potential at an early age and nurture and identify his/her core strengths and interests. To begin with, find new and interactive ways to engage your kid and make learning fun and interesting, possibly with DIY projects.
Think DIY and think Mand Labs! Let your child be a maker and experiment with circuits for science and technology projects or for his/her academic assessments, science fairs, exhibitions and robotics hobby.
If your child is a robotics or DIY enthusiast, he/she will be able to build a strong foundation in electronics with KIT-1. The kit will also help your child assemble circuits on the breadboard involving multiple active and passive electronic components; work on important circuits like H-Bridge (motor-driving circuit) and PWM (pulse width modulation) and even let him invent his own first project with his imagination and creativity, as writer Mark VanDoren puts it:
“The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery.”
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A Nielsen study reveals that over 70 percent of kids under 12 years use tablets today. They spend around five to six hours in a day staring at screens, either playing games or watching YouTube videos, movies or on social media.
Another survey by the Common Sense Media found that nearly 40 percent of children between two and four years were often seen with a tablet or a mobile in their hands. This is more so because parents use tablets or mobiles as a way of pacifying their kids and keeping them engaged. Research shows that one in three toddlers use gadgets even before they can speak.
Excessive screen-time is no doubt hitting parents hard as their children’s activity has given way to aggression, depression, obesity, poor social skills and academic under-achievement. How true were experts when they warned that 80 percent of the children would lead a sedentary lifestyle due to the iPads, in fact, even before they were launched in 2010!
There have been innumerable instances when parents had to look for ways to detox their iPad addict children. Take the case of Guy Adams, a journalist, when he realized that his toddler was addicted to the iPad he wrote:
“The sense of shame and sadness which came over me when I realized that my infant son was an addict will stay with me forever.”
Similar evidence of iPad addiction is mounting by the day as frazzled parents look for ways to unplug their iPad-addicted children.
Catherine Steiner-Adair, a clinical psychologist, advises parents not to turn to tech to pacify children. “Children learn from play, especially pre and primary schoolchildren. Be sure your kids spend more time playing and learning hands-on engagement in the real world,” she adds.
This is where the Mand Labs’ kit comes in handy, as your child will get to explore something new and interesting. The experiments will keep your child engaged and curious and also enhance his/her hands-on learning skills.
A meta-analysis research of 15 years on the advantages of hands-on learning, including 57 studies of 13,000 students in 1,000 classrooms, reveals that students in activity-based programs performed up to 20 percent higher than groups using traditional or textbook approaches.
The research also found that hands-on learning corresponds to a child’s natural curiosity and problem-solving skills. Mand Labs kit lead your child forward in hands-on, DIY learning, as your child gets his/her hands dirty with experiments like controlling lights or the temperature sensor or the LED flasher. The projects will teach your child how to apply simple laws of physics and understand how they work.
According to Robert A. Bjork’s 20 year old concept, ‘desirable difficulty’:
“Obstacles that frustrate us help us learn”.
So, don’t let your child give up even if in the first instance he/she is not able to snap the circuits right.
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Nothing can beat the quality time that you spend with your children. But if you are a working parent juggling between deadlines and household chores, your little one might feel neglected. So, how do you manage to make way for a great bonding time? They say, families that play together, stay together.
Creating those magic moments is more important than anything else. Reading together with your child can be a great activity to keep your child engaged. But building things together can keep the spark alive.
“If a child can’t learn the way we teach, maybe we should teach the way they learn,” says Ignacio Estrada, director, grants administration at Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.”
Mand Labs’ kit can give you the best experience to set the ball rolling. Imagine the glimmer of joy on your child’s face when you build your first automatic night lamp together. Also, imagine how thrilled you will be when your child surprises you with his own version of the burglar alarm. The things you and your child can build and bond together with the Mand Labs’ kit are endless. For an experience, have a look at the teaser below:
Teaching your child the basics of electronics can never be easy. But if you do it the right way, you will discover how fast your child picks up and enjoys every bit of it.
“Let your boys test their wings. They may not be eagles, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t soar free” – Author C.J Milbrandt.
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You must be showering your little one with gifts every now and then. But when was the last time you had gifted your kid a gift of inspiration? A gift that will make an impact and benefit your child lifelong; a gift that will let him/her explore curricular concepts with imagination, creativity and confidence?
As Albert Einstein had said:
“To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science.”
To be able to inspire your child in science that will gradually transition into an exciting and fulfilling STEM career, you need to inculcate the importance and merits of STEM at an early age. When you enable your kid to explore and experiment without the fear of failing, you boost his/her confidence.
Gifting your kid with Mand Labs KIT-1 will definitely amp up his/her confidence level. When hands-on learning electronics gets fun and interactive, your child will enjoy the experience and ask for more. This kit lets you learn in the most simplest and comprehensive way possible.
Several studies and research have proved that the long-term benefits of hands-on learning are immense. For instance, a four-year study on the benefits of hands-on learning conducted in an elementary school in California, found that the longer students participated in hands-on learning, the higher were their scores in science, writing, reading, and mathematics.
So, take a step forward today and gift your child the greatest gift of inspiration this Thanksgiving or Christmas. Partner with your child to decorate the Christmas tree with glittering, multi-colored LEDs and home-made circuits and make this festive season fun-filled with lots of lights, learning and inspiration.
Let your little scientist tap his/her inner STEM creativeness and embark on a journey to be a genius. Who knows your future genius might soon surprise you with an innovation of his own, as Albert Einstein had said:
“Education is not the learning of facts, it’s rather the training of the mind to think.”
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