On June 1st which wass the Children's Day, the Lifelong Learning Lab of Tsinghua University organized a special intergalactic adventure for the children of Tsinghua University's Future Lab to play with them and create the future!
Children love to explore and are curious about new things, and play itself is the best way to develop inner drive, independent problem solving, creativity and the ability to actively connect with the world.
The event is designed around the LEGO Foundation's 5 characteristics of learning through play: active participation, social interaction, iteration, fun, and meaningfulness. The event promoted the idea of giving children the space to explore and create at their own pace. Let's take a look back at the highlights of the event!
Sign in and let the fun begin!
In this special event, children will be guided by Star Guides to complete a challenge, either alone or in teams, in order to reap the ultimate holiday surprise.
Level 1: Stargate
Skills: Teamwork
Characteristics: Active participation, social interaction
The children will need to pass through the intergalactic gate to begin their adventure! The children divide themselves into three teams and start to put the pieces together. Later, they need merge the product of the 3 groups and complete the Star Gate.
Level 2: Back to Back
Skills: Communication, Iteration, Spatial Imagination
Characteristics: Iterative, fun
The children have just entered a new planet through an intergalactic gate, and here comes a new challenge.
The aliens have come up with a problem for the children who have just landed. They decide to test the unity of the children to see if they can work together and live peacefully on the planet in the future.
The magical blocks in their hands build could build wonderful worlds. The children realised the difficulties of describing the structures in their hands with words alone, as they were standing back to back with their dad. Where do I start to describe the object in my hands? What does it mean to spell vertically? What does it mean to spell it horizontally?
Sometimes, we need to make mistakes to know how to progress, and it is always in the communication that problems are solved? Don't be afraid to make mistakes, keep trying and trying.
Level 3: Parent-child spelling of Tang poems
Skill Card: abstract understanding, imagination, expressive skills
Characteristics: Active participation, social interaction, fun
The aliens appreciated the children's hard work and welcomed them happily.
To show their appreciation and to deepen their friendship with the aliens, the children decided to introduce the aliens to our own Tang poetry culture.
Under the direction of the intergalactic guide, everyone tried to put together a few poems using Lego. Let's guess what the poems are!
Level 4: Ultimate Creation
Skills: problem solving, manual skills, imagination, creativity
Characteristics: Fun, meaningful
The children have worked together to solve many challenges and now they have decided to work together to imagine the future of the planet.
The future is in our hands, but we need to be original and think outside the box to build what it will look like in the future.
What kind of architecture do you imagine on a planet? What would the tools for travelling/flying between planets look like? Would there be life on the planet? If so, what would the creature look like?
The children came into the room and scribbled on long scrolls, using everyday objects and takeaway bags to turn them into treasures, working together to imagine the future of urban living and travel.
We can certainly learn and play alone, but when we share our ideas with others, we often discover new things.
As the children play, they step out into their own little worlds, making new friends and inviting them to play with them. In the process, they learn to communicate and interact, and they also put collaborative efforts to produce more ambitious work. When they are brainstorming for an abstract problem, they are fully concentrated on the bricks and tools in front of them, as they really care about the task, new connections are made and learning begins to become natural and meaningful.
At the end of the event, the children who had completed the challenge and clocked in received their gifts and went home happy! This special June 1 event was a great success! Happy Children's Day to all children and adults, and we hope you will always be full of joy!
In the design of this activity, Tsinghua University Lifelong Learning Lab adhered to the concept of learning through play, aiming to improve children's physical, social, emotional, cognitive and creative abilities through play. In addition, the team is also observing the way children of all ages communicate and cooperate, exploring intergenerational and even intergenerational co-creation models, and expecting more people to explore learning through play together, keeping children's minds alive, lifelong learning, and playing to create the future!
