Father and son building a Bristlebot dragon!
Family-friendly policies. We’re sure you’ve heard of this term more frequently these days than ever before. Indeed, it has become a hot topic in recent years.
Susan Madsen, founding director of the Utah Women & Leadership Project (UWLP), aptly summarised this reality: “COVID-19 (forced) many companies (to adjust) work practices and (include) flexibility and family-friendly policies. However, we are seeing such positive results from it that it may change the landscape for the future of employment.”
Countless studies prove that pro-family policies improve employee satisfaction and productivity. So how exactly are companies encouraging family bonding these days? Read on to find out!
Challenge
A multinational consumer goods company approached us to organise an introductory coding workshop for parents and their children. They recognised that many of their employees’ kids were in primary school and so there was a perfect opportunity to provide an educational yet fun workshop that would bring families together.
The challenge was simple: conduct an online coding workshop that would offer parents and kids an enriching time.
Solution
This wasn’t the first time we were approached to conduct parent-child workshops. So we had a couple of ideas in mind…
Bee-Bot Workshop
First, we thought of our most successful parent-child workshop that we ran in collaboration with the Asian Civilisation Museum. We’ll let the photos speak for themselves:
Parents and kids helping Bee-Bot find its way around the map.
As you can probably tell from the beautiful smiles, the workshop was an astounding success. Kids enjoyed creating outfits for their Bee-bots (a yellow bumble bee robot). Meanwhile, parents were enthralled by the coding challenges that called upon their creativity to find different ways to navigate their Bee-bots across the adventure-filled maps.
Nonetheless, we felt that as much as we wanted to conduct the much-adored Bee-Bot workshop once more, it was better suited for preschoolers, rather than primary school kids! Therefore, we had to go back to the drawing block to brainstorm another workshop.
Droid Kit Workshop
Our next idea was to explore the possibility of a Droid Kit workshop as it was much celebrated amongst parents and kids.
This Star Wars-themed workshop always earned 5-star ratings from parents and kids as they build a movable robot, the R2-D2, and navigate it through a maze.
Little kids building the R2-D2 robot before launching it for its mission!
As such, it seemed like the perfect choice! What better way to get parents and kids tinkering with technology than R2-D2 robots?
However, yet again, it dawned on us that this wasn’t a great fit for our client who had specifically requested a coding workshop. Both parents and kids needed to learn coding in some way or another!
Meow:bit Workshop
“Well, the third time’s the charm”, we thought. And turns out it was. As we thought more about our client’s needs, we slowly realised our Meow:bit workshop was perfect in every way!
A screenshot of the MakeCode block-based programming environment that allows users to build GameBoy-style console games. This was the game that our parents and kids built during the workshop.
Generally, coding evokes an image of a person sitting in front of a computer and hacking away tirelessly at a keyboard.
However, with the Meow:bit (see above), the added element of a GameBoy-like console allows parents and their kids to enjoy their code in its physical form. They get to write code for games and play their final masterpieces! Needless to say, this workshop hit the jackpot. Our client loved the idea!
Outcomes
The parent-child bonding workshop we held brought great joy to our participants. Not to blow our own horn, but it was so good that our client referred yet another MNC in our direction for a similar parent-child bonding event.
We are developing even more hands-on and fun activities as we engage with programmes in libraries, museums and schools. If you’re looking to organise family-friendly fun workshops for your organisation, reach out to us at hello@tk.sg and we’ll be glad to help!