My son Ben is finishing up kindergarten in a few short weeks and I am so impressed with how much he has grown and learned in just a year. One of his favorite new things that came out of this year has been a love of building and Legos. When I got the opportunity from our partner Zaniac of Westport to have Ben take a class building simple machines with Legos, it was a no brainer. He was so excited to check it out.
The mission of Zaniac is to, “get kids around the world excited about STEM and help them acquire skills for 21st century jobs.” Zaniac has a bright, open learning space on the Post Road in Westport. This allows for their K-8th grade programs to function in small groups with a 5:1 student-teacher ratio. When my son went for his lesson it was one-on-one! The instructors are knowledgeable in their subject areas (math, engineering, design, programming, typing, and game play strategy to name a few) and they’re also experienced in working with children. Zaniac has a “fantastic progression of computer programming courses that teaches not only coding but also design.”
Westport campus co-owners Flavia Naslausky and Camilla Gazal are both working moms who realized the importance of math and STEM in the lives of their own children. So they left the financial world in order to promote these activities through Zaniac. They used their own kids as guinea pigs for the Zaniac programs, and when they saw how much they loved it, they felt comfortable promoting it to other kids. Flavia and Camilla use three words to describe their business: innovative, fun and educational. After our day building simple machines, I couldn’t agree more. My son was so excited to come home and tell the rest of the family about the Lego robot that he made, how fast it was, how it worked, the changes he made and, of course, his awesome instructor. He keeps asking when his next class is!
Upon our arrival we were greeted by the manager and his teacher for the day, who led Ben to his classroom – a bright room off the main space with big windows and bright lights. The table was covered in bins of Legos that would allow them to create a moving Lego robot. Flavia noted that the design aspect of their program is just as important as the programming portion because, “if you can’t imagine something, you will not be able to produce it.”
The 90-minute lesson consisted of Ben and his teacher building the robots together. The teacher would ask him questions like, “What do you think we should add on?” and “How can we make this go faster?” or “What do you think we need to do next?” Ben was the one who was making choices, but together they were testing out hypotheses and learning from mistakes each time they test drove the robot. They also took time to play checkers and took a look at a Rubik’s cube. Overall it was a fantastic experience that I would recommend to anyone with kids who show interest in math, problem solving, building, game play and movement. We’ll definitely be heading to Zaniac again!
This post was sponsored by Zaniac of Westport, but the opinions are my own. Please support our sponsors.
