How to Enhance Creativity and Inquiry-Based Science Education in Early Childhood-Robotic Moon Settlement Project

In this novel empirical study, the authors investigate how creative are our children and how robotics education final projects can promote creative thinking and engage children in science, engineering, and technology topics. This study is based on a unique Early Age Robotics (EAR) program running since 2016 for over 2000 children. A final project, related to use of robots in Moon settlements, is used to motivate children to be creative and to promote inquiry-based science education. Using a mixed-method study, we analyzed interviews and projects of 46 children (aged 5 - 7) who studied technology and robotics as a compulsory component of their curriculum. In addition, posters created by first graders were analyses by judges to establish diversity and originality of the solutions. Children's explanations of the need, the technological challenge and the solution are analyzed. Child's feelings about himself, his team and others' creativity are investigated. The results show that most of the children are very creative, value their teams and their creativity. Also encouraging is the gender equality found in this technological area. The findings show that after careful decision process, when given the same problem, children successfully identified different needs and challenges and created numerous solutions. Interviews show that most of the children understood what the need of the project was, what the challenge was and what they created. These significant results should be considered by EAR stakeholders to motivate children to be original, to promote creative thinking and science education in early childhood.