.png)
Smithsonian Spark!Lab
Smithsonian Spark!Lab is where Magic City Discovery Center visitors become inventors and innovators. It is a unique learning space where visitors are challenged to invent solutions to real-world problems. Older children, families, and learning groups are given opportunities to explore their inventive creativity – to create, innovate, collaborate, and problem-solve – through hands-on inventing activities. Spark!Lab encourages 21st-century skill-building and gives children the freedom to put their own ideas into action. The Magic City Discovery Center is only 1 of 11 museums to have a Smithsonian Spark!Lab.
How adults Can support Discovery, Creativity, Exploration, and play in Spark!Lab
-
Take a look at all the activities in the room before you start and let the children decide which project to start working on!
-
Let them interpret the prompt or the supplies however they want! As long as they are safely using their imagination, they are doing it right!
-
Engage in conversation as they are building! Why did they make the choices they made? Is there a story behind what they are building and creating?
-
Remember it is about supporting rather than leading!