• December 11, 2020

Most of the students of the 90s and the early years of the 21st century, faced this question at some point or other- are the science subjects superior to humanities? The left brain stimulates logic, reasoning, serial processing, informational learning, etc. So the popular belief is, the left brain fosters elements necessary to pursue science subjects. Whereas the right brain promotes imagination, creativity, parallel processing, transformational learning etc. So it’s sharper among the artists, writers, musicians and so on.

How far is this separation logical? Einstein was also a wonderful violin player and Leonardo da Vinci also designed a flying machine and a humanoid robot. History is full of such versatile geniuses.

On 28th November 2020, KiddyPi had organized an online workshop, combining both Creative Writing and exciting Science Experiments.

We received overwhelming responses from participants. This proved that children and teens never think unidirectionally. So pedagogy should be multidimensional. Let’s take a short tour of our workshop.

Science Meets Writing!

That was the name of the workshop, Science Meets Writing! It was 2 hours of fun and learning, held between 11:00 am to 1:00 pm. The Writing Workshop was held from 11:15 am to 12:00 pm and the Science Workshop from 12:00 pm to 12:45 pm.

A Prelude

The workshop began with a short and sweet quiz round that served as a warm up session. It was held for the first 15 minutes.

Writing Came Alive

Creative Writing offers an emotional outlet to its pursuers. It also develops imaginative thoughts, the mother of all literary masterpieces over the centuries. Not only this, it broadens the thought process of students and boosts their problem-solving ability. Modern psychologists have come up with a multipronged definition of Creative Writing.

In our Creative Writing workshop, we threw some literary challenges in front of the participants who belonged to the 6 to 16 years of age group. There were 3 tasks in total.

Task 1: Guess the Empty Dialogue/ Text Boxes

Wisdom stories of Panchatantra are timeless. First we showed them an engrossing story of The Lion Makers and led them to a presentation with empty dialogue or text boxes. Participants had to see the slides and choose the right option that explained the story moment, in the best way possible.

All the slides were hand-drawn by one of our talented mentors who holds an engineering degree and teaches coding to our students! See, there are no compartments in true education.

Task 2: Weave a Story from a Set of Images

Task number 2 was about spinning words around images. We gave a story title to participants and a collection of images. Students were told to use the images for building up story plots and characters, with the story title, remaining the same.

This task proved to be a showstopper as all the participants went beyond our expectations. They completed the task within the allotted time and shared their stories with us. It was wonderful to see how even the 6 to 8 years old proved to be treasure troves of talent.

Task 3: Watch A Story and Participate in A Quiz

The third and the last task was a quiz round. We told the participants, The Story behind the Festival of Raksha Bandhan! The quiz round was framed around this story. With the leaderboards flashing the scores, the healthy competition became quite exciting.

The workshop smoothly glided towards the fun-filled hour of Science Experiments at 12 pm. We handpicked two cool science experiments to do at home.

Science is Everywhere

True learning inspires curiosity. It is not confined in the classrooms and books. The mission and vision of KiddyPi is to bring learning closer to our day-to-day life. Hands-on science experiments don’t need elaborate or expensive props. Some easily available stuff in our home is all we need to do some quick science projects.

We had built science experiments for 2 different age groups of participants. Fishing the Ice experiment for 6 to 10 years old and Raising the Water Level experiment for 11 to 16 years old.

Fishing the Ice

We took kids to a Winter Ice Fishing Expedition where they learnt about freezing point of water and melting point of ice with exciting activities! Hold on!! Was it not an online workshop?? Yes it was but we cannot cage in our imagination. So we set the backdrop of (ice) fishing expedition with 8 to 10 ice cubes, a thread (a yarn string), bowl, plate and table salt.

All we needed was a bowl filled with water, put ice cubes in it, place the yarn string on ice cubes and sprinkle table salt on the cubes where the string was touching the ice. Kids were told to hold the other end of the string and carefully lift it after about 10 seconds. And there they caught a fish (ice)! 😀

Raising the Water Level Experiment

So how to Raise the Level of Waters without adding more water or some other stuff? With some sorcery or magic? The physical world around us is the biggest magic. For the experiment, we used a glass tumbler, a plate, a small candle, a matchbox, a pinch of turmeric powder and water.

A pinch of turmeric powder was used to add colour to the water so that its movement could be visible easily. Then we stuck the candle on the plate. The coloured water was poured into the plate to reach about half an inch or 1 cm of height (that’s the minimum). The candle was lit and then we covered it with the glass tumbler.

As the candle burned, the level of the water rose with a surge after the candle went off. The entire experiment was done in the presence of guardians to maintain all precautions against fire.

Making Learning Fun

Kids learnt about the lowering of the freezing point of water, in the Fishing the Ice Experiment. In the Raising the Water Level Experiment, they learnt about lower and higher pressure areas that is the main science behind the formation of cyclones (typhoons and hurricanes too).

Last 15 mins were allotted for doubt clarification.

Parting Thoughts

Learning should be experienced. It’s not locked up in some distant lands or times. It’s everywhere around us. When the whole universe is a school, we learn every moment. The online courses of KiddyPi have been framed on this line.

We keep on holding both free and paid workshops, webinars or online educational events. If you want to make learning an everyday part of your life, give us a call at +91-98453-49742 or email us at kiddypi@subhanu.com.

We are launching our new courses on Creative Writing and Science Experiments/ Projects. Don’t miss the amazing early bird offers!

To know more,

Call/WhatsApp:

+91-98453-49742

+91-98457-22549

Or Email Us:

kiddypi@subhanu.com

Have a great life!