Kids build ships and houses from open-ended materials without instructions. The instructors say this freedom sparks imagination while teaching collaboration, perseverance, and problem-solving. The children's visible excitement shows how hands-on making prepares them for future challenges.
We usually build ships. They love to do this, and that's the first thing they're drawn to when they come in the morning is they want to build and they want to design, and they have fun doing it. You could probably see the excitement in the room, the smiles on their faces, but we know it's so much more than that because we're preparing them for the future.
So we just grab a lollipop and then we stick it in one of the holes. Right, Eloise? Yes.
And I think by it being open-ended and not telling children this is what we're going to make or showing them a model, it enables that child to be able to have their imagination run wild.
We're building a house. So this is the upstairs. This is where they sleep.
It also helps, I think, that child to have that resilience of understanding that if something doesn't work the first time, I keep doing it. I keep persevering and trying again. And so they're the lifelong skills of enabling kids to know to work collaboratively, to keep persevering, to be able to design, to dream, to try out your inventions. And so it's helping our kids prepare for the future.
