What happens when three LEGO, Barbie and robot-loving women with engineering, math and science backgrounds build a toy for girls? You get Roominate, a miniature room that can be stacked, attached, and customized with working circuitry.
The designers of Roominate want girls to be artists, engineers, architects and visionaries. Wooden walls snap together to construct rooms; lights, fans and buzzers are wired with color coded circuits and switches — and then there's the fun of building furniture and decorating Roominate. Roominate just received funding through an overwhelmingly successful Kickstarter campaign.
Learn about the product, design and team at the Roominate website.
(Images: Kickstarter)
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As a female engineer, I really want this product to take off so that when the times comes my daughter (who is 1 now) can have this. I would have loved to play with this when I was a little girl (next to my legos, circuit sound board, old taken-part baby monitors, and soldering iron). Great idea!
I wonder what we would say if "three LEGO, Spiderman and robot-loving men with engineering, math and science backgrounds" built a toy "for boys"?
My oldest would be all over this. Just the little details of being able to change design and structure and still have it be creative and for lack of a better word, girly. It's about time toy manufacturers caught on to something other than dolls and strollers. Girls like lego and cars just as boys like kitchens.
exactly ellabee!
I would buy this for my nieces, but I wish there was something for my sons.
"A design toy for girls" ?
Wait, isn't this 2012???
And this:
"The designers of Roominate want girls to be artists, architects, designers and visionaries..."
What's wrong with wanting girls AND boys to be anything they dam* well please?
It's depressing that they got so much support for ill-conceived project.
Rustypatina said it all.
What a fun toy!
@rustypatina - Part of the issue is that overall, girls still aren't being encouraged to pursue these fields. There are many female arists, architects, designers, and visionaries - but they are not yet the norm to the extent where we don't need to encourage them in this way. Parents don't need to encourage their sons to want to be fire fighters or jet pilots. This is a societal norm already instilled in all the toys you see. Girls are still being given a lot of kitchen sets and dolls, but not as many chemistry sets and circuit boards. I see Roominate as being a bridge between the two. It acknowledges that girls are still being pushed toward certain "roles" in society while providing them with a little more boost toward the engineering field. Girls can still play with kitchen sets, but here's a circuitboard to show you how to give your kitchen set electricity, too.
As a female computer engineer - I love LOVE love this!! :) Computer/Electrical engineering is still the one engineering field that is mostly men. There were only 5 women out of the 120 that graduated with me 4 years ago, and almost every meeting I am in at my work and with customers I am always the only woman in the room. I encourage any toys that help girls become more comfortable with circuit boards and electricity.
Sums it up: http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1883
I am all for anything that encourages girls to go into STEM fields.
/female electrical engineer
//tired of always being the only woman in the room
@Rustypatina: When I graduated from electrical engineering in 2008, about 10% of my class was female. There was one female associate professor that I knew about and a large handful of female grad students (among hundreds of grad students and professors). That is not very good if you consider that I went to a competitive top 10 school for electrical engineering with one of the biggest faculties and a very attractive grad program. And from what I have been told by the high school liaison officer, the number of females applying to electrical engineering had decreased by the time I graduated. Now the 2012 class is about 7-8% female. So yes, it is 2012...so what? There is still a long way to go in my field. I think this can only help.
This is a great idea, but I fear it will not satisfy lots of girls. The furniture is so plain and looks like you just pressed it together. As a former dollhouse-loving little girl, I can attest that it is all about the realism and the details. That furniture would not have passed muster with me. Also the rooms are a little small. However, the modular nature of the toy and the ability to wire for lighting -- THAT I would have loved. I think this product is a good start, but isn't quite there yet.
@rustypatina has it correct. It is basically a fancy dollhouse for good little girls to interior design with lighting and fans you can plug in. Where is the math? Where is learning about electronic components? Where is the engineering?
As a socially acceptable toy, it passes. As a way to break the stereotypes which hinder women from exploring the hard sciences, it fails.
P.S. it does look like fun but I just don't see it encouraging a child to be an (electrical) engineer any more than the LiteBrite toys do.
My first thought was how cool, I want one. Then I read the comments. Wow, lot of these post seem very personal and understandably so. I say give this a chance. The 1st draft isn't always the best.
This is great! And lets not squabble about the 'girl' label! If boys want to play with it, good for them. The more the merrier.
My mother had a homemade Barbie house we played with this way from the 60's (without the working circuitry, of course!). I ADORED making and remaking that house & dressing the Barbies for it! And btw, the clothes were mostly hand made from aunts and the furniture handmade, too and I was STILL severely discouraged from being an engineer or anything with math or applied science (teaching science was ok, though), lol! It's all in the family and societal support--the disunity over it will discourage young, impressionable children). Some of my classmates went on to successful careers in engineering. Ah, those darn Mrs degrees can be so debilitating...
no, let's squabble about the "girl" label because even though we do need to encourage more girls into STEM fields we need to stop labeling toys as "girl" or "boy." toys don't encourage--parents, mentors and role models do. All the women engineers here can encourage young girls via the multitude of mentoring and other volunteering opportunities designed to expose children to various fields.
Teaching all kids more about how the world around them works? Sounds great to me.
http://www.xkcd.com/342/
It's - fine. I guess it's just technical enough with the snap in wiring to have a bit of a nod to encouraging STEM stuff. Actually, I'd say the stacking portion is the most engineering friendly in that it encourages 3D thinking and visualization. Otherwise, it's just kind of a watered down construction set.
I'm a female engineer and I wouldn't have been very interested in this. Of course, the toys I did mostly play with (all horse figurines, all the time) wouldn't really be considered very STEM predictive either. I did build a LOT of forts/houses - in the woods and in the living room. And I did dig elaborate irrigation systems for my horses in the backyard. Eh, just push your kids outside, they'll make useful (and partially destructive) fun.
MeeCee and Suzeh wish there was a "like" button here. I had an elaborate dollhouse with a combination of homemade and purchased furniture/accessories -- and my horse figurines lived in it; those ones from Breyer that are about 6" tall. AND I had a homemade Barbie house -- a tall bookshelf that was in my closet. That furniture was nearly all homemade. A vivid memory: my buttoned-up mom trying to explain why she didn't want me to use her pads as Barbie mattresses. A
Wish I could say all that creative play made me grow up to be an engineer, but personal inclination plus "the new math" headed me onto a liberal arts path.
Can we just stop with the "for boys" and "for girls" toys? Please?
If you have ever walked down the toys aisles in a Target or Wal-Mart, you know why more toys in this direction are needed. Right now it is super easy to buy toys for my son (2 years old), anything with wheels and the kid is in heaven. Now my daughter (1 year old), I want to avoid the scary pink aisles because well they are scary. She gets cars like her brother and loves Duplos but there just doesn’t seem like the same selection that is available for her. There needs to be a push for more toys that supports interest in STEM for both boys and girls. (And for those who are going to attack for gender biased toys, my son loves his tea set and kitchen).
I totally agree with the other engineers here. My graduating class for electrical engineering was 4 girls out of 150 and that was a big deal. I was almost always the only girl in my classes. I had only 1 female professor in 7 years of schooling. This is a problem
"Parents don't need to encourage their sons to want to be fire fighters or jet pilots. This is a societal norm already instilled in all the toys you see."- PI
This is exactly my issue. There are plenty of toys encouraging boys to be construction workers, race car drivers (auto mechanics?) or superheroes, but not so much engineers or anything else in the STEM fields. Nothing against fire fighters, but I think that's just the boy equivalent of home maker. It's true that there are more science kits and things of that nature geared towards boys, but as far as regular toys I don't see how there is are any more for boys than for girls. If I'm wrong, please direct me to the aisle in Toys R Us that I'm missing.
@Linnybee - LEGOS are primarily directed at boys, as are Lincoln logs, transformers, model cars (which often have moving parts, etc.), and many other things that encourage exploration of how things work. What kind of exploration toys are aimed towards girls? I can't think of one currently.
Many people have a weird conception that STEM only means high and mighty academics. Wrong. You know who the best engineers are? The ones that know how the real world works and have intuition for it. They're the ones who tinkered in the garage with the car, or created elaborate lego constructions. Sadly, in this day and age, females who do that are still thought of as 'weird'.
I am also a female engineer (mechanical for me) and I think these are a good idea. I think they need a little more refinement as it looks a little shabby right now, but overall a solid idea. No, they may not directly encourage STEM like a MINDSTORMS lego kit, but they do encourage exploration of electricity at least, and that is a good thing!