Day three started off with an absolutely bombz breakfast in hostel. It looked so simple and unassuming that when we first saw the picture of it sent into the group chat, we contemplated skipping breakfast. Super glad we didn’t. The porridge was so flavourful, and complimented wonderfully with free-flow youtiao and soyabean milk.
After breakfast, we made our way over to the Border Patrol School. Today we finally got to see the kids as it was a school day. We split into 2 groups, one to help maintain old solar panels (removing rust) and took apart a 300W light bulb for some hands-on learning. The other group went to help set up and prepare for Stick Em’s workshop.
We played some small games to break the ice and get the kids warmed up, such as musical chairs (where I fell). Then the kids were split into 6 smaller groups (2 Thai students, 3 Primary school students and 2 SUTD facilitators).
They were tasked to build simple geometry shapes to get familiar with the building parts available to them. After, each group was challenged to build the tallest free-standing structure. It was honestly quite fun to see what each group was able to come up with, and how very simple building blocks (connectors + chopsticks) could be used in very different, creative ways.
Then we moved on to the main event, a relay race, with 3 teams on each side. They were introduced to the idea of robotics and built a simple, base robot that could be controlled using a laptop. Modifications were then up to the children’s creativity — to improve the robot and implement a way to “steer” an object past different obstacles and get to the finish line.
It was a whole lot of fun and very exciting.
