The Prince Albert Science Centre had a successful launch on Oct. 29, and they’re following it up with a STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art, math) event on Saturday at their Gateway Mall location.
Science centre vice-chair Sandra Williams said they’ve had an event like this in mind for a long time. She’s hoping it will spark an interest in all the topics covered.
“STEAM Lab is primarily our belief that through play participants can think three dimensionally, create physically and work collaboratively,” Williams said. “Hopefully they can embrace process over outcome.”
Williams said people often think of technology as just computers, but from the science centre’s perspective, it is so much more.
“It’s also the practical application of knowledge,” she explained. “Part of our Science Centre viewpoint is that people will start to think about hard skills and soft skill. Hard skills are your knowledge and your basic know how–skills of how to do things—but your soft skills are your creativity and your teamwork and collaboration and adding that extra dimension of creativity and creation onto different things.”
The STEAM Lab will allow children and teenagers chances for hands-on activities with different resources like Kinex, life-sized Ever Blocks, and Quibits toys.
“Instead of going, ‘ta da, I built a castle,’ more emphasis (will be placed) on how I built the castle, the actual physicality of building the castle,” Williams explained.
The event runs from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday in both the Science Centre and the space next door. The price is $5 per participant, children under 16 must be accompanied by an adult and children under the age of two are free.
“We have the majority of our things in our physical space—the Prince Albert Science Centre—and then we have access to next door again where we are featuring Makedo and it’s a product where kids (receive) a whole bunch of cardboard and they can build whatever they want out of cardboard,” Williams said.
Williams added that the Science Centre wanted to acknowledge the support of the Gateway Mall and the Northern Lights Community Development Corporation for the STEAM Lab and the support of the Northern Lights Casino for their opening event the Brick Lab.
michael.oleksyn@paherald.sk.ca
