Magnetic Puzzles:

We setup a booth with 3D puzzle challenge at La Salle Primary School Spring Festival. To make the event fun and challenging, we designed and built three sets of 3D puzzle based on three landmark buildings. There are three difficulty levels. Students could win prizes if they could assemble the puzzles within certain time limits. Bank of China is level 1 with 6 parts to assemble. Space museum is level 2 with 12 pieces and Louvre is also 12 pieces at Level 3. Children was having fun while learning about history of the buildings and their geometries. They learn how to identify and build 3d puzzle by recognizing similar 3d patterns. We also get to see how different children react to complicated forms. Some understands the 3D relationship immediately, but some have hard time even with two basic pieces. Some of the children and parents enjoyed the game so much. They came back to challenge multiple times. Our booth was placed third in the competition among all other booth designs in the Festival.

This is actually third time we created educational toys for children. The first project was Magnestic Play which was done at New York Hall of Science. The second one is Big Book with New York University. Both Projects were collaborated with Hsin Factory. We are a big believer of Jane McGonigal said about gaming. She gave a TED talk and said it is possible to solve the real world problems by playing more games. Of course, she was referring to intelligent games with realistic issues. Our toy on the other hands are inspiring children in a micro scale. We do believe those toys will slowly let children to understand the concepts of efficient structure and sustainable designs. When they grow up, they will solve real world issues in creative ways.

Special Thanks to Edmund Chung from La Salle Primary School and Parent Association who helped us to organize the Spring Festival.

-Vicky Chan, Architect and Educator

 

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