KidsSTOP™ – Fun morning for the kids!

The boys checked off KidsSTOP™ at the Science Centre last weekend and clocked in a whole morning of fun! I have had fond memories of the Science Centre as a kid, and now it’s my kids’ turn to hang there. If you always have no idea where to bring your young kids on weekends, I have just the place for you.

KidsSTOP.

I have heard of KidsSTOP from my friends who are parents, but never ventured into it until now. Partly because Jerome was still pretty much an uncontrollable baby till a couple of months back and I prefer to do activities that involves both kids so that we can spend the weekend together as a family. (Warning: Long post with loads of images!)

If you haven’t already heard…

KidsSTOP™ is a one-of-its-kind edutainment centre in Singapore that aims to engage children from pre-school to lower primary levels, aiming to expose them to science in their formative years. In an environment specially designed for young children, trained science communicators guide and facilitate play and learning in various thematic zones. Exhibits and zones are designed to promote and foster parent-child bonding through hands-on activities and programmes.

The first thing Jerry spotted the moment he entered, was this airplane. Needless to say, he ran towards it and spent a long time there.

This does reminds me of KidZania Bangkok that we recently went to, but I quickly found out that it is quite different. While the former allows the child to immerse itself in a real life environment, and learning to earn his own keep, KidsSTOP is all about fun with science. There are loads of interesting, fun things to explore that even Daddy had a lot of fun (told ya I have 3 boys!).

KidsSTOP is built around different themes – Imagine, Experience, Discover & Dream. Each theme has a few stations for the young children to explore. We didn’t manage to cover them all (we started late), but I’ll try my best to bring you through those that we went. most of the stations have a trained facilitator to aid and explain to the children the science behind things.

IMAGINE: Built Environment, Supermarket & Dino Pit stations.

Built Environment a re-creation of a bustling construction site complete with hard hats and safety vests. This is where we spent most of our time at! Jerry got hooked at this giant claw machine where he gets to control the giant claw from a control panel and I guess it is really quite cool. Just have to applaud this kid’s hand-eye coordination.

When the balls level gets really low, Jerry puts them back through this air tunnel that sucks the ball one by one. My little kid just went around delivering cement in his hard hat and safety vest. Too cute!

I especially enjoyed this station a lot. The balls comes down when it reaches the top and you would have to design a pipe way down for the balls so that it goes back into the container. The husband did some cool design on the pipes leaving a huge gap where you see the ball appearing and then disappearing down another pipe. Errrm, I dunno who is really playing.

There was also gear wall where you fix gears together and make them turn to activate the cuckoo clock. I tried my hands at it and let’s just say I wasn’t very good at it.

At the supermarket station, the kids learn the smell of some of the food, and for the first time in my life (ikr), I finally knew where vanilla came from. Jerry & I also had a fun game of identifying the vegetables through a simple fetch game. Jerome went on to check out his groceries at the cash register! Too cute.

Kids can learn more about dinosaurs, hunt for traces of their existence and excavate them. This looks totally fun but I didn’t let my boys play this because we had a family birthday party to attend to that afternoon and I didn’t want them to get dirty/sandy.

EXPERIENCE: Encourage kids to appreciate art and nature through interactions with live animals, stop-motion animation and more.

This zone just had to be my favourite because there were live animals! It’s so cool to be seeing cute little chicks, hermit crabs, crickets and frogs. Can you tell I am a nat-geo kinda person?

DISCOVER:  Introduces children to STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) principles and there are loads of interactive displays on magnetism, light and sound!

Design your own flying machines and launch them into the wind tube. The boys launched their flying machine into the wind tube and the experience kept them amazed for a long, long while. They just keep doing it over and over again.

Jerry weighs himself and discovers that he is as heavy as 1747 $1 dollar coins! You can try it out and find out how many watermelons you weigh too.

You can get your height measured too. Here’s the Choo family height chart, where it says I have shrunk 2cm.

DREAM: Children can explore their fantastical imaginations. Facts & friction gets all mixed up into an interesting medley. The highlight is a 9-meter high structure for children to climb through leaves, doors, a flying fish, giant gears and more to reach a whole new hidden world that’s out of sight. (Tip: Socks required for this)

We missed the Giant J Slide which is one of the key highlights of the place, so we might just pop back sometime soon! A 7 metre tall slide just sounds exciting and just the thing for me for my kids.

My conclusion?

The kids loved it! We had to drag them out of the place when it was about to close. Both kids refused to leave even though they missed their lunch for this. I liked that it catered really well for small children. The place is huge (more than 3000 square metres) and it didn’t at any one time felt like it is overwhelming packed with kids even though it was a Saturday morning when we were there. We didn’t have to wait long for any of the stations that required taking turns, and it was a huge plus point considering how impatient small kids can be.

I also heard that there is a visitor capacity capped at 300 visitors per session and they stop allowing people to enter once they reach the limit.

The husband & me both found it intriguing that we too can have fun and not feel bored. I was pretty intrigued with some of the stuff I learnt and saw. It just shows that there is so much to learn, even when you grow old!

What you should know before going? 

KidsSTOP operates in 2 sessions everyday. They do have a 2 hour slot on weekday mornings but is reserved for preschool group bookings only. The admission fees are only valid for 1 session so be sure to check the timings to ensure you maximise your dollar! In between the sessions, they sanitise the entire area to ensure that it is clean and safe for the young kids.

The charges are similar to that of an indoor playground but I do find the accompanying charges for adults a little steep.  That said, a membership does help to save quite a bit should you intend to go often.

Bring socks. For both adults and kids. The fun bits all need socks and they are compulsory! I didn’t know this beforehand and was pretty bummed that the kids couldn’t do the Big Dream Climber.

The place is also closed almost once a month for maintenance, so do check under the important events section to make sure you don’t clash on those dates.

If you are still not convinced, do check out my friends’ experiences too. Daddy blogger Cheekiemonkie & Mummy blogger Veraday describes their day at KidsSTOP when it first opened their doors and Mummy blogger Christy talks about her experience during the Halloween event.

Oh, by the way, if you are already down at the Science Centre, might as well maximise the trip and visit the rest of the exhibits too! I previously wrote about the Transformers 30th Anniversary Exhibition which ended on 1 March 2015.

If you frequent Science Centre and its exhibits, tell me what you like or didn’t like about the place. If you haven’t been there, let me know if my recommendation is spot on if you do visit?

Disclaimer: This is a sponsored post and the kids were invited to a morning of fun at KidsSTOP. All thoughts and opinions are of my own.