A workshop to introduce children from the Jardin des Particules to prototyping and teamwork
For three mornings, around forty children from the Jardin des Particules came to IdeaSquare, the innovation space at CERN, for an extraordinary workshop!
Aged 5 to 7, the children of members of the CERN community were introduced to the basics of prototyping. Their mission: to create a model representing the Jura mountain range and its biodiversity.
The project, co-developed with the Jardin des Particules, aims to educate children about their immediate environment in a creative and manual way. The Jura was chosen because it is a great source of biodiversity in addition to being omnipresent in the CERN landscape.
The IdeaSquare team first prepared the base of the model, with materials available in the space for low-fidelity prototypes: cardboard, paint, and other recovered and recycled materials. These same materials are sometimes used in educational programmes with older students to teach them rapid prototyping.
The children then thought about what they would like to add to complete this landscape. What animals inhabit the Jura? What plants? What other elements? The goal of this exercise is not only to make them aware of their environment but also to stimulate their creativity and invite them to share their creations in a large collective project.
With playdough and coloured thread, the children thus completed the landscape collaboratively: each one added and carefully placed at least one element completing the model.
The children surprised us all with their creativity and many ideas came to them: a lynx, a Saint Bernard, butterflies, flowers, plants, a river, snowmen, a skier, but also a magic stone hidden in the farm, reflections of the sun, ponds of different colours depending on the time of day, dinosaur footprints...
Creating is a fundamental aspect of childhood that does not stop when growing up! Showing them how to use materials to design a collective work related to their environment is a fun way to make them collaborate to better understand nature, just like their parents do. So, when the children have their next outing in the Jura, they may remember this model and the real or imaginary elements that populate the mountain.
