1. Collaboration & Teamwork Skills
Athletics are not the only opportunity for your child to develop collaboration and teamwork skills! Robotics is a great activity for your child to get involved with that will help them develop these skills. Robotics requires a lot of collaboration from working together on problem-solving, planning solutions, mapping out and allocating tasks and responsibilities, and executing tasks together as a group. The ability to work together is a skill that should be fostered early, especially if your child has an interest in robotics or engineering as a career. Even if they’re not interested in robotics long term, knowing how to work alongside others, share resources, support their peers, and feel confident enough to contribute their own knowledge are all skills that will be critical for them to know going into any career field.
2. Technological skills
You may be thinking, my child might know more about technology than I do! They already know how to use cell phones, iPads, and computers at a young age. While this may be true, there is more nuance here than you might think! Children right now were born into a technological era, so they know how to use the technology available to them as children, but that does not necessarily mean they have strong technology skills. The ability to understand and adapt to new technology quickly is a very important skill in this day and age and comes from experimenting with different types of technology. Robotics will teach your child the basic tenets of coding which is an ever-increasing field of study. Knowledge of coding will open up opportunities in a variety of fields for your child!
3. Creativity and Critical Thinking
Robotics will continuously present your child with problems that need to be solved on a grand scale and a small scale. Your child will be given a problem or a brief for working on a specific project. They will have to work to develop something that either solves a problem or fits a specific description. In addition to problem-solving in a grand sense, as they build their project they will face problems and road bumps that they need to deal with. In both the small and large-scale problems they face, your child will have to think both critically and creatively to solve these problems and find solutions that work. Robotics presents a lot of great opportunities for your child to try new things and really get creative! Expanding their creativity and critical thinking skills will be important no matter what career field they go into late in life!
4. Handling and Overcoming Failure
Another important skill that will be valuable to your child in every area of their life is learning how to handle and overcome failure. Failure is an unavoidable part of life. Learning how to accept failure as part of life and not something debilitating is such an important lesson to learn at a young age. Robotics is great for teaching these lessons as your child will always experience setbacks and failure in this field. They will never get everything right on their very first try, which is part of the beauty of robotics! They will fail and have to work with their team to overcome their obstacles and think critically and creatively. As they face failure they will also have a group of peers to go through the process with. They can experience failure together and continue working together to overcome the obstacles ahead of them. Robotics is a great way to help give your child a positive attitude toward failure and view it as an opportunity to get up and try again instead of giving up!
5. Build Self-Confidence
Robotics offers a variety of opportunities to build up your child’s confidence. Especially if your child is involved in competitive robotics, they will make considerable accomplishments as they compete. Their tenacity and determination will be put to the test and as they see their hard work paying off, they will benign to naturally build up their confidence. Robotics also offers a regulated setting where your child can experiment and take risks. As they take these risks and see their knowledge and decision-making skills support the success of their projects, they will start to trust and take pride in their own intelligence, abilities, and instincts. This is a great way to build up your child’s confidence in themselves and their decision-making. This skill is not just important in STEM but in any career field, as well as, their personal life!
Where Can I Find A Robotics Program Near Me?
STEM is a rapidly growing field of study and becoming very popular among children’s and educational organizations. If you want to learn more about robotics to see if it’s a good fit for your child, check out our Ultimate Guide to Robotics! If you’re ready to register your child for a robotics program, some great places to look are non-profits, local libraries, as well as private educational organizations. But if you’re located in South Jersey then you’re in luck! The Police Activities League of Egg Harbor Township and Atlantic County offers a variety of robotics activities throughout the year including our competitive robotics team, our smart car/robot workshop, and GoBilda robotics workshop and summer camp. We also offer other non-robotics-based STEM workshops and clubs throughout the year! If you’re interested in learning more about our STEM programs, get in touch with us!
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