By Khalida Sarwari
In the technology-saturated Silicon Valley, it’s rare to go two steps without encountering a LEGO block. Where there is STEM, there is sure to be a set of the beloved building blocks.
But while LEGOs have traditionally been used to teach math and science, one local company is bringing the toys to a different, unexpected realm: civic life.
At a soon-to-be-opened facility on Saratoga-Sunnyvale Road in Saratoga, instead of robots kids will be encouraged to use LEGOs to build cities from the ground up.
Working in groups, students will be given a large swath of LEGO land on which to create their own small civilization. Elementary school children will take on roles such as city council members, working with each other to manage city budgets, enact laws and cope with natural disasters and crises.
Bringing this opportunity to Saratoga is a company called Kidizens, which offers an enrichment program that uses LEGOs to engage kids between the ages of 6 and 12 in civic and economic issues, according to Nora Richman, a site manager for the Los Altos and Saratoga locations.
“There are a lot of LEGO programs, but the difference with ours is that a lot of the LEGO programs have an engineering focus, but ours uses LEGOS as a backdrop for a high level civic education,” said Richman.
Along with play time, students learn the different aspects of government, focusing, for example, one week on police stations and another week on school districts. Other assignments could involve going out and interviewing business owners or analyzing fire stations, Richman said.
The classes are taught by teachers such as Richman, who “have ultimately found a home outside the traditional classroom environment,” she said.
The company’s goal is to motivate students to learn about everything from the intricacies of a city council meeting to the importance of managing a budget through the designing, building and governing of a society. Not only are they taught social studies, civics, history, economics, architecture and writing, but along the way they learn important skills, such as problem solving, decision making, money management, conflict resolution, public speaking and leadership, Richman said.
“We’re a social learning program, so it does promote social and emotional development,” she said. “We encourage them to run their own political campaigns. There’s a lot of public speaking and developing confidence. They learn to cooperate with others and present ideas in ways that hopefully they can apply down the road.”
The program is offered at various levels. Younger kids are involved in planning and governing on a city level, while older kids are tasked with planning statewide systems and even their own countries.
Kidizens was founded five years ago by a schoolteacher in Palo Alto and later expanded to Los Altos and Belmont before coming to Saratoga, the company’s newest location.
“We had a good amount of success at the other locations, so we wanted to bring our services to the South Bay,” Richman said.
A grand opening and open house will be held Jan. 31, 4-6 p.m., but the first day of classes is on Feb. 5. The center, at 12302 Saratoga Sunnyvale Road, will offer morning and afternoon classes on Wednesdays and Fridays. Classes are capped at 14 students, said Richman.
The cost per semester, which runs from February through May, ranges from $480 to $550.
The company is currently accepting applications for its Saratoga location. For information and to register, visit thekidizens.com.
