In our fifth summer week, the little ones stepped into the world of technology, computers and robots.
We learned about robots: from their beginnings to how they have evolved, and then explored the basic concepts of programming and wrote our first instructions. The most useful thing a child learns here is not a language but a habit: breaking an ordinary action down into small steps, in the right order. "Pick up the pencil" is, for a robot, a whole series of commands — and that discovery stays with them.
We then uncovered the secrets of telling the time, in a week where time was the background theme anyway. Reading an analogue clock is one of those skills that fades without practice, and at their age it is worth the effort: a dial shows at a glance how much has passed and how much is left, which a digital display never says.
We also entered the world of the light bulb and found out how its invention changed the way we live and work. From bulb to circuit was a short step: the children had an interactive demonstration of how an electric circuit works and saw for themselves that the light only comes on when the path of the current is complete. Pull out one wire and everything goes dark — the clearest definition of a circuit there is.
The creative side was not missing either. The children painted robots in an exhibition of robotic art and became robots themselves in programming games, where one child gives the commands and another carries them out exactly. It is the game that best explains why a program does not do what you meant, but what you wrote.
Our team of young enthusiasts also staged shows with the robots built in that year's robotics courses, and throughout the week our Cambridge CELTA-certified teacher carried on with the English lessons.
More about the PlusKids Summer School: https://pluskids.ro/en/summer-school