Beschrijving
This Summer we plan to run a series events of Toy Teardowns and Hebocons in public libraries in Leeds and Barnsley. These are events where families take apart old broken toys and put them back together in weird and wonderful ways, a la Sid from Toy Story! We then provide motors, chassis, and kits such as Raspberry Pi Pico to code and control the robot, or Codebugs and microbits to code as decorations - faces, images, text etc. By seeing how toys are put together children will be learning about engineering, robotics, and coding while developing creative design skills and hands-on practical skills through tinkering with and rebuilding toys. By reusing broken toys there is also a sustainability aspect too.
This Summer's Reading Challenge is themed around Marvellous Makers, which fits perfectly with our planned events. This allows us to link all the skills listed above with literacy. By hosting our events in libraries we can encourage young people to enhance their learning by borrowing books on the themes of the event they've just attended.
These will be real community events - the vast majority of toys used will have been donated by local families and we aim to make the events intergenerational to encourage family learning. Events will be held in high priority wards and will be advertised through community partners who work with families from underserved communities such as Damasq and PAFRAS, who work with refugees and asylum seekers, and the council's Healthy Holidays programme, which supports children who are eligible for free school meals.
These events will be a unique opportunity for young people to be encouraged to break things! It will also be a rare opportunity to access and use tools in a safe environment. The coding brings another dimension to the event and has a legacy aspect in that those who enjoy it can join our regular Code Clubs.
If the funding is successful we would be able to buy the tools and materials that could support these events. That communities donate toys means there is an ongoing opportunity - if these events are successful we already plan to run the event again around Halloween and possibly around Christmas time.