Roominate: A New DIY Dollhouse for Young Makers #makereducation
Standford Engineering Grads Bettina Chen and Alice Brooks designed Roominate – a new toy that’s a modern, STEM infused take on the traditional dollhouse. They showcased the toy at the International Toy Fair in NYC last month, via fast coexist.
But little girls aren’t just building triple bunk beds and decorating doll house rooms with the Roominate set. When I visit Roominate’s creators at their Toy Fair booth, Chen and Brooks are standing behind a model of San Francisco’s Bay Bridge. It’s one modeled off of an 11-year-old’s design that originally featured pipe cleaners as suspension cables, and took half an hour for Chen and Brooks to recreate, they say. They’ve also seen test groups manufacture everything from amusement park rides with the spinning circuit motors to the Great Wall of China.
Still, while Chen and Brooks claim that their toy might be less “pinkified” than, say, GoldieBlox, the toy does have some trappings of stereotypical little girl-ness–pastels, two dolls, and two big-eyed pets. Parents, however, are reporting that little boys are using Roominate, too. That’s part of the reason why Chen and Brooks are also looking to expand into gender-who-cares-territory.
“We started this for girls, because it’s a problem we lived, that we continue to live. We want to get more females in the [science, technology, engineering, and math] field,” Brooks says. “That’s why we started it, because we want to make this hands-on, creative, open-ended play. But as we’ve been developing it, we’ve been realizing that that kind of play is really missing for boys, too.”
Each Tuesday is EducationTuesday here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts about educators and all things STEM. Adafruit supports our educators and loves to spread the good word about educational STEM innovations!
Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat and our Discord!
Each Tuesday is EducationTuesday here at Adafruit! Be sure to check out our posts about educators and all things STEM. Adafruit supports our educators and loves to spread the good word about educational STEM innovations!