“We thoroughly enjoyed the STEAM kit but it wasn’t without it challenges. This wasn’t to do with the nature of the kit. The kit was great. Fun, engaging tasks. Our children struggled with the collaborative nature which is more a reflection about the need for us to do more problem solving through the year. And deliberately teach more skills needed for collaboration”
“Hi guys,
Room 10, 11 at Maungatapu School worked together on this activity. There was alot of collaboration and students were very engaged. They came in from morning tea and were greeted with a very engaging scenario. They loved being secret agents..however the puzzles were quite tricky for us juniors so we roped in some senior children to help. Our students showed great perseverance to crack. We have passed the kit on to the middle school teachers for them to give it a go as well. We appreciate these engaging and high quality activities that School kit provides us with - we often dont have the time or resources to put together such wonderful activities. Thanks heaps.”
“Wow, what a huge amount of thinking must have gone into the design of this kit! It was a little difficult for me to wrap my head around at the end of the year, but we gave it our best shot and the children loved it. Thank you for providing these types of opportunities for children across NZ.”
“This kit really provided some 'what the heck is going on moments' for students as they arrived at school. Here is a recount from two students about this kit: ";I arrived at school with my mum and we came into the school grounds from the staff carpark so I didn't notice anything different at first. But, I came into school from the front gate and walked up the path to my classroom and saw a 'caution top secret' sign on the door. This was very odd. We both wondered what was going on and a lot of other students did too. First we had to choose a name. There was a name next to each letter of the alphabet so you had to have the name next to the first letter of your name and also the name against the month you were born in. The teacher chose the groups. There was a card that you put your thumbprint on and then go in your group. We got to work with some people that we wouldn't always have worked with. There were around 6 groups with three or four people in each. It was really exciting to go into our class after we got into groups. We had to peel the caution tape off. There was the handprint part and swipe the card. What was really cool was the different obstacles that were set up. There were different clues and some of them were really really hard. It takes a long time! Not a short time! It was very challenging. There was a part about arrow direction and it had around 12 squares and you had to collect four dice. Some of the other tasks were a maze and you had a sharpie on a string and you had to make the sharpie go all the way through the maze. I really liked the red 'paper' activity because you had to put it against the window and you could see a word. But not everyone did the same activity or challenge but my group liked the red 'paper' one. You needed to talk a lot with your group. The sign language challenge was the most challenging for me because the sign language was the other way around and we couldn't tell which was which. There were sign language pictures - four pictures that were transformed into letters. It had to spell a word. It took about half an hour to solve this to get the word exit. There was also a code thing that had to be done. A little bit later we found a key and another group had an envelope and the key opened the envelope with a key lock and then the groups combined. It came down to three groups. One of the first tasks with the combined group was something with 12 sticks. The next clue told us where to go. The dice one took about 10 minutes so it isn't easy or fast to finish. There was a maths question next. There were laser beams that you had to crawl through and Purple Monkey was one of our Teacher Aides. My group was the second group that got to go down the corridor to find Purple Monkey. Some of the positives: working with a group and talking and cooperating with others and working with some people that I don't usually work with. It was still fun though. There was also quite a cool invisible ink thing where you had a pen with a light on the end - an invisible ink pen and it then gives another clue. It was good that all the group members were talking and collaborating. Having the secret agent names was also cool.
I would recommend this kit but remember it takes awhile and has a lot of challenges!”
“What a great way to end the year.....working together as a team to solve a problem. The students were engaged and loved every second of this kit. Best one yet!”
“Thank you for an awesome, well organized kit. The instructions were detailed and easy to follow. My students had great fun cracking the codes and used some out the box thinking . Awesome fun.”
“My year 5 and 6 students absolutely loved solving the clues to find purple monkey. The instructions were very clear... but there was one or two things that I was unsure about. what were the pills in the spy bags for? Did I miss something? :)”
“It was great that they sent it all to us. It was hard to set up and find time at such a busy time of the year to complete this. Would be better in maybe term 1 or 3. My students enjoyed it and were extremely engage. Some things didn't as expected such as all the keys worked for all the locks but overall it was an enjoyable hour and a half”
