Science study trips and experiment demonstrations gain popularity

Children learn to repair fossils at a lab in the Paleozoological Museum of China, in Beijing, October 2014. [Photo by Li Zhiming/provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

As middle-class parents strive to foster their children's curiosity and scientific inquiry, businesses providing science experiments and demonstrations are burgeoning in China.

Five-to-eight year-olds carefully repair fossils using tiny tweezers under microscopes, observe and sleep around gigantic dinosaur skeletons, before getting up in the morning to make sandwiches that imitate earth's geological layers.

The one-night, hands-on science experiment, run weekly at the Paleozoological Museum of China, is one of the projects a Beijing educational company is offering little budding scientists.

Activities take place outdoors too. An ongoing botany study is leading children all the way to the rain forest in China's southwestern-most province Yunnan, with top Chinese scientists teaching basic skills of scientific measurement and inquiry.

Eyeing a rising number of middle-class parents who dislike exam-oriented education and instead value "learning by doing" and early science investigation, Beijing Micreate Education & Technology Co. Ltd was established in 2012 to tap into youth science education, a barely developed market in China at the time.

Around the same time, science education businesses targeting youngsters were taking off across richer parts of China, namely the eastern and central areas. That market is particularly growing in provincial capitals but also smaller cities.

"Science was deemed an unimportant course in Chinese schools, not as significant as Chinese, math, or English. But luckily, parents are rethinking science and technology education to meet the demands of future generations," said Wang Huwen, founder of Micreate.