On Saturday I took the children to an edutainment theme park that I had heard some of the mothers raving about.
KidZania was founded in Mexico and has locations in the U.S, Dubai and Japan. One of the locations is in our area so it was easy to get to. Its objective is to provide fun, on-the-job training geared for children. The role-playing takes place in a realistic city setting where the fire trucks and paramedic vehicles actually drive around. The setting includes actual corporate names not make believe companies. This led to my uncertainties about the whole concept. I was interested in seeing what corporations are marketing their brands through the kids to the parents. The big names included Coca Cola, Sony and Epson and the rest were Japanese representations for everything from Pizza-La to SMBC bank. I wonder how much they payed to be in the mini city.
We arrived and were processed as if we were at an airport boarding a flight. We walked through the tunnel into a new, indoor world. The city was two stories with bridges linking places like the hospital and the theatre. I couldn’t believe how exciting it was and I hoped that the children would be able to do activities that interested them and maybe influenced them on a direction they might choose for their future.
They both chose to become fire fighters first. After training (which was all in Japanese) the call came in that a building was on fire so down the stairs they went, put on their fire suits and departed in the fire truck with sirens wailing. They pulled up to a building that did look like it was burning (very well staged), hooked up the hoses and used real water to spray out the fire. The looks on their faces was intense.
Parents do not participate nor are they allowed near their children while the activity takes place. The kids are under the care of the adults who work for KidZania. That means that parents take a lot of photos or just hangout and eat at the coffee shops that are incorporated in the city offering chairs for waiting parents. The whole park is a captured audience and no outside food or drink is allowed so we are almost forced to consume.
For his next activity Lucas chose to do construction. Eleanor went off to be an Emergency room Doctor. She wanted to work with the newborn babies but the wait was going to be one hour so she was flexible. It was so heart warming to watch her in her hospital greens performing CPR and using a defibrillator on the patient. But it also taught her a life lesson that I am not sure a six year old needs, that of the anxiety of trying to save a dying person. She had been nervous enough about the fire and now her heart was racing again as she followed the Japanese instructions on how to keep a heart beating. She chose a more benign activity next, that of a parcel delivery girl. She had to go to other companies and pick-up parcels and then shelve them. She loved that one.
Lucas loved construction as he was able to connect items that made Christmas lights go on as well as build an arch bridge which he then walked over to learn about its strength. He decided to work on a wall mural as his next activity and then it was time for Pizza-La for lunch. They have a little shop on the side of the activity room to sell food made by professionals so we ate pizza and waffles to keep us going. Eleanor was hooked. She wanted to make pizza so she lined up for that next. Lucas went to work in the Design Studio to draw.
It all went really smooth as the place is very well organized and in the end Eleanor had a pizza to bring home for dinner. They were exhausted from fitting into the very structured role-play and I had enough hanging around as my excitement had waned. The teaching here was very much about thinking inside the box. We left the building and took in as much fresh air as we could before freezing. It was good to be back in the real world where the kids could be irresponsible and creative once again.
