Last week, the children from the international classes (Pre-Nursery through to K2) at New-ton Bayside campus went on a field trip to the Suzhou Robot Museum, learning the basic science and electronics behind making the robots and what the future has in store for our metallic friends.
At Newton Kindergarten, we recognize the importance of taking learning outside the class-room as much as possible. Be it in the playground, the local community or further afield to places of interest these field trips are vitally important to the Newton curriculum.
They offer a shared social experience allowing students to encounter and explore new things in a different setting. The children are able to experience and learn things of a new subject, in this case robots, with the hope of increasing the interest and engagement of the child further in this area.
The children began their trip by watching a short, informative presentation about a young boy and his little robot friend. The little robot can follow the boy about, respond to sounds and actions, play with the boy, help with school learning and even sleep at night time. The children were enthralled watching this little boy, just like themselves, with a robotic friend as a constant companion. Many were left asking – where can I get a robot?
Following this was a tour of the museum and all the exhibits. We were asked to form a circle around our first robot which was standing motionless, not making a sound. Our tour guide asked us to begin singing, the children had no idea what would happen next…the robot burst to life! Some of the children were shocked, others were giggling and some stood in utter amazement at the life before them.
The next group of robots we met were an all singing, all dancing ensemble. They enter-tained the children with a rendition of Disney’s ‘Frozen Let It Go!’. The children stood trans-fixed as the robots perfectly sang a song they know very well along and danced with a per-fectly timed routine that had some children joining in.
Robots are not only humanoid, but robotic animals are also being developed as we discov-ered when gazing deep into the waters of the robot fish tank. Large silver fish swam effor-tlessly through the waters, gliding deep down into the tank and diving at the surface. The ‘fish’ looked exactly like their real, living counterparts and the children were mightily im-pressed.
We boarded the bus to head back to Bayside, the children excitedly reliving the day with their friends, taking not only keyrings but life long memories home to their parents.
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