ROGERS -- The LPGA Tour's Walmart NW Arkansas Championship has grown into an annual family outing for many as the event has grown to encompass much more than just golf during the past 12 years.
This year, the tournament organizers have added the Walmart and P&G STEAM Center to help entertain young spectators, according to its website. STEAM stands for science, technology, engineering, art and mathematics.
Walmart and P&G STEAM Center
The children’s center includes educational activities, healthy snacks and a viewing deck on the 16th Green.
It is open from 10 a.m. everyday throughout the tournament week and free to all spectators.
S-Science
T-Technology
E- Engineering with the Amazeum
A-Art with Paper Towel Murals
M-Mathematics
Source: Staff report
Children moved freely from one station to the next, looking fully immersed in each hands-on activity.
Michael Brown and his wife Ani Romero-Brown have been coming with their children to the tournament for four years and said, while they didn't know much about golf at first, they have always had a great time.
"In the bus on the way here, we always take a family picture and you just watch your kids grow up," Michael Brown said. "We don't play golf, but we take it as an opportunity and to walk the course together as a family."
The STEAM Center tent offers a wide range of activities from painting to circuit blocks. The tournament has offered activities geared toward children in past years, but parents said Saturday the STEAM stations were more educational.
"This year, it's definitely more engaging," Michael Brown said as he helped his daughter Paz with her art project.
Amazeum staff ran the station with circuit blocks Saturday, which teaches children about how electricity works. The Amazeum is located near Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and features exhibits and learning spaces inside the museum with hands-on activities.
"It's a great way for kids to learn not just about electricity but to fight through those frustrations when something doesn't work the first time. They have to use a lot of trial and error to figure how it works," said Paul Stolt, Amazeum marketing manager. "It turns them into innovators. There's that artistic creativity when they are trying to figure out how to make it work."
The concept that failure is part of learning and growing was a common theme at many of the stations in the STEAM tent.
Walmart Technology presented a computer that can identify different fruits and how fresh they are, demonstrating to children how the technology works or what went wrong when it doesn't, said D'von Jackson, technical project manager at Walmart Labs.
"We made it so you could test more items," Jackson said. "It's showing children what can go wrong. When we did a demo live, the first time it failed. It's things we tinker around with until we find what works."
Today is the last day of the LPGA tournament. Tickets are available at www.nwachampionship.com for $10 each and children 17 or younger get in free with a ticketed adult, according to the website. Activities, such as those in the STEAM tent, are free for all spectators.
NW News on 06/24/2018