Interactive multimedia displays and creative activities designed to stimulate physical activity and developmental function are providing wholesome fun for children aged three to five at the 13^thSharjah Children’s Reading Festival (SCRF), which continues until May 22 at Expo Centre Sharjah.

At the ‘Kids in Action’ nursery, located in Hall 3 at the festival venue, Beirut-based Wakazoo Group has conceptualised and executed an array of state-of-the-art education technology systems developed by KIDSjump TECH in Florida to evoke curiosity, creativity, and innovation in young children.

Edutech made fun

A highlight of the interactive playground is ‘My Space Art’, where a smart scanner converts children’s colouring pages into animations on a screen.

“There’s a barcode printed on the colouring page, which is placed under a camera that automatically detects the picture as a 3D object,” explains Samer Nehme, Senior Architect at Wakazoo Group. “The camera scans the colours, applies them to the 3D object, and the object is then animated on the screen.”

As the children unleashed their creativity on the space-themed colouring pages, the celestial landscape portrayed on the screen quickly became populated with 3D dancing spacemen, aliens, and soaring rocket ships.

The ‘Save the Ocean’ game, on the other hand, features a screen displaying ocean waste floating in water, which disappear when tapped. After completing the game, set up inside a small, elevated crawlspace, children can plunge down a slide leading to an enormous bright blue ball pit.

Stimulating the five senses

“Kids in Action encourages learning by stimulating the five senses,” said Ali Bourji, Managing Director and Producer at Wakazoo Group.

In the ‘Aroma Tubes’ game, for instance, children place their head into a tube to identify the mystery scent inside, such as bubblegum, pine, banana, and more, while ‘House of Sounds’ exercises the sense of hearing by testing their ability to recognise randomly generated noises.

Other sense-stimulating activities in the nursery include a cupcake decorating station – for taste; kaleidoscopes that simulate the vision of cats and dogs – for sight; and a sandbox filled with laser-cut letters to form words – for touch.

‘Kids in Action’ is open to visitors from 4 – 8pm daily at Expo Centre Sharjah until May 22.

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