Scientific educational playroom at the university: an extension experiment in teaching physics to the community

Abstract

The Scientific Educational Playroom is a space within the UniversidadeEstadual Paulista, Physics Department, and campus of Rio Claro, with theobjective of allowing the outer community to have access to scientificknowledge available in the university. Its main objective is to attend the studentsof the primary school their teachers, professors of the universities and otherpeople interested in this subject. It has a collection of the toys and theexperiments/toys, which Science activities for the primary school students areimplemented in a playful way throughout workshops with the students of thepublic and private schools of the region. The Sciences teacher may consult andreproduce its assortment since the toys and the experiments-toys wereassembled with low cost materials easily found in the market. As result theteacher has at his disposal an alternative didactic tool for enrichment andimproving of the activities of his classes. This article describes the beginning,the characteristics and the philosophy of the Scientific Educational Playroom,which is an extension project that was born from the challenge of guidingchildren to the pleasures of the knowledge throughout the science, particularlyPhysics.