HELP is on hand for parents looking to inspire their children at home during the coronavirus lockdown – and it’s all free.

Recognising that most parents are not trained teachers and may be slightly stretched trying to educate and keep their children entertained, global IT and business consulting services firm CGI has released an online programme which is being given an enthusiastic response.

“Packs are educational, but most importantly excite and inspire children,” said one of its creators Luke Kittow. “The content is informative, with the primary aim being to inspire the next generation of budding STEM enthusiasts.”  

Utilising a variety of technical, physical and active activities, CGI UK sees the experience as an opportunity to help teach children about the STEM industry and inspire them to get involved and potentially consider it as a career option. In the case of CGI members, it provides the opportunity for parents to teach their children about the industries that CGI operate in.

The Herald:

The programme has been born from the Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) camps that CGI has been running for the past year in UK schools and communities to encourage students to think about a STEM career. These have been so well received that when the coronavirus lockdown was announced, Kittow had a packed diary of events which had to be postponed.

It was then decided to try and recreate the camps online and, incredibly, the technological experts at CGI managed to have STEM from Home up and running within two days.

It was trialled internally but went down so well that, after just the first week, staff asked to share it with family, friends and clients.

As the demand was there, CGI decided to make it accessible online for anyone to use, with new content released every Wednesday to keep youngsters engaged.

Aimed at children aged between six and 14-years-old, activities are designed to be completed from home with minimal resources necessary for activities that include designing a robot and creating a STEM superhero. As well as competitions and programming, children are also challenged to take part in physical activities, including nature trails and designing their own home exercise routine.

“The STEM camps are the flagship programme of the CGI corporate social responsibility programme and we thought it was important to continue to inspire the next generation,” said Kittow. 

“The key aspect of the online programme is that the activities can all be completed from home, everyone can get involved and parents don’t have to go out and buy resources. It aims to spark interest in the topics for children, allowing them to realise the effects on their own lives and maybe consider careers in the respective industries.”

Topics covered so far include robotics, coding, helping the environment, sport and healthy living, with engineering, space and more still to come.

The programme will remain on the CGI website post lockdown, allowing parents to continue to help build the next generation of STEM talent from home.

CGI’s Philippa Green said the online programme was reaching a wider and more varied audience than the company’s STEM camps.

The Herald:

“With the camps we are trying to target individuals that are under-represented in the industry like females and people from disadvantaged areas but this is reaching further and anyone can be involved,” she said. 

“Although it is aimed at six to 14-year-olds, all students can take activities as far as they like. We’ve had competition entries from four-year-olds up to 16-year-olds so we are engaging most age groups.”

Green added: “The camps came to a prompt halt because of Covid-19 but we did not want to disappoint people and wanted to continue the momentum we had started so it made sense to take it online. We also wanted to support our members with children who are working at home and give them something different to do.”

She said they had been “pleasantly surprised” at the reaction to the programme which has now been picked up by CGI’s offices in Australia, India, Canada and Belgium. 
“People just wondered what on earth they were going to do with their children and this is a simple way to keep them occupied,” said Green.

TASK THREE: ENVIRONMENT

TIME: 
Each activity should take approx one hour (three activities)
 
Resources required:
PC with internet 
Pens and paper
Recycled items for craft and physical activities. All items can be found in the home.

THE third pack in the series focuses on the environment, looking at the key issues facing the planet and ways in which people can help to secure a sustainable future for the next generations. 

It points out that some of the most significant environmental issues today include pollution, climate change and natural resources running low. 

The Herald:

The first activity is to design an Eco School for the future. Children are asked to consider their own schools and whether they would keep any of the existing facilities or whether it should be a completely new creation, bearing in mind it has to benefit the environment as much as possible.

The bonus activity is to create an environment magazine. In this project, the students learn how to use HTML and CSS to create a multi-page magazine website with a two page layout, revisiting HTML and CSS techniques from the previous week’s activities in the process. 

The magazine should give the general public tips and advice on how they can help to save the environment and the children are asked to include at least five top tips and images/graphics where possible.

The physical activity involves incorporating a nature hunt into the children’s daily exercise routine, searching for nominated items such as trees and birds as they keep active whilst exploring their local environment. 

The activity can be completed in the garden or on a short walk under the Government’s lockdown guidelines. 

There is a checklist provided so that items can be marked off as they are spotted.

----------------------------------------------------------

TASK FOUR: HEALTH AND FITNESS

TIME: 
Each activity should take approx one hour (three activities)
 
Resources required:
PC with internet 
Pens and paper
Recycled items for craft and physical activities. All items can be found in the home.

THE fourth pack in the series focuses on sport and healthy living and aims to encourage everyone to enjoy sport and live a healthy lifestyle, especially during these challenging times. 

Children are asked to code their own sports games, create a healthy living poster for children and develop their own home exercise routine. 

The first activity involves creating a skiing game in which the player has to avoid randomly appearing obstacles to score points.  

In this activity, the children learn how to control sprites using a keyboard, how to draw a background and how to animate a sprite.

They are also asked to create a healthy living poster for children, giving information on how to live a healthy lifestyle. It can be drawn by hand or produced digitally.

The Herald:

The physical activity focuses on exercise, with children challenged to create an exercise routine for them and their families that can be completed either indoors or in the garden.

They are asked to include a variety of exercises that will increase the heart rate and include as many different body parts as possible, with stretches before and afterwards to avoid any injuries.

Bonus activities in the pack include learning how to use App Inventor to make a quiz app, making a game in which players have to save the earth from space monsters, creating an animated sunrise, creating a webpage to tell a story, joke or poem and making a paint programme.