You may recall, I shared a blog post towards end of last year about Lego – and how they were encouraging children to play with Lego and learn about robotics – introducing technology with Lego.
It’s always a hard one. Children these days, do spend a lot of time on tablets and consoles. Either playing games, on social media or just watching YouTube videos of someone jumping up and down.
It’s beginning to change… Nintendo have recently decided to introduce the Labo… and hoping to encourage children (and adults) to not just play on their Switch, but learn by making items out of cardboard and interacting with it.
The Labo is a do-it-yourself cardboard kit, that offer projects for children to make and learn from, with the Switch.
For example, you could make a piano out of cardboard, insert the Switch.. and then learn and play the piano! Rather than tapping on a screen… you actually pressing down on keys (admittedly made out of cardboard, but remember… learning should be fun!)
You can make a remote control car… a motorbike… and a few other items. There’ll also be a Robot kit. An interactive cardboard robot!
Couple of reasons why I think this is great –
- Really brings out the ‘engineer’ in the children…. get them physically making things… thinking how it works, how it goes together and how it will work. They could even make improvements… make a larger piano (if possible)… there’s so much that can be engineered out of cardboard. And it’s all in a safe learning environment.
- Moving away from the screen – Technology is great. But too much screen time, isn’t that good. This allows children to a) move away from the screen for a short duration and b) learn how technology with real life moving interactive items are connected and how they can be controlled to perform certain actions….
The Switch is a great console – and there’s data to back that up, by record sales figures… and this is a great add-on, which will only make the console more appealing and further increase those sales.
So, if you were thinking what to get… and what to make… here you go… make – play – discover.