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A parent’s account of Cresconova Labs’ Microorganisms course

I’ll be honest: when another parent mentioned an education centre in Chelsea teaching children to work with AI, my first instinct was to roll my eyes. We hear enough about AI doing children’s work for them. The last thing I wanted was to pay for my daughter to sit in front of a chatbot and call it learning.

Then I visited Cresconova Labs. Then I watched what actually happened.

The Microorganisms course doesn’t begin with AI at all. It begins exactly where good science should: at the source. Students prepare their own microscope slides, examine real microbial samples, and sit with what they see long enough to form genuine questions. What are these organisms? How do they move? What would they need to survive? These questions weren’t provided by the lesson. They were drawn out by it. The children earned their curiosity before they were handed any tools.

Only then, once real knowledge existed, did AI enter the process.

The task was this: take what you now understand about your chosen microorganism and prompt the AI to help you design a macro-environment in which it could thrive.

That framing changes everything. The students weren’t asking AI to do their thinking. They were testing their own thinking against it. And to do that well, you have to understand something first. My daughter had to know enough about her organism to recognise when the AI’s suggestions made sense, and when they didn’t. She had to evaluate, push back, and redirect.

This is the heart of what Cresconova Labs calls Human + AI Interaction. The human always comes first. The framework moves students through five deliberate steps: Question, Frame, Unpack, Own, and Iterate.

Question teaches them the difference between a surface prompt and a meaningful one, that a lazy question gets a thin answer, while a layered, precise question draws on the full depth of what AI has absorbed from human knowledge.

Frame trains them to build the prompt with care: what context to include, what to constrain, where their own assumptions might quietly shape the output.

Unpack is where it gets genuinely interesting. AI produces fluent, confident-sounding answers. This step teaches children that fluency is not the same as accuracy; that every output carries the fingerprints of its training data, including the gaps and biases. Students learn to ask not just what the AI gave them, but what it left out. Whose perspective is missing? What would this look like trained on different data?

Own is a commitment: I evaluated this, I decided this, I stand behind this. The AI cannot be held responsible. Humans can always.

Iterate closes the loop, refine the question, improve the frame, and go again.

What this produces is children who understand when to reach for AI and how to interrogate what comes back. Not passive users. Critical thinkers.

After the AI phase, students built their environments physically, by hand, using the Labs’ fabrication tools. My daughter’s model sat on her desk for weeks. She’d made it. Not in the thin sense of having typed some prompts, but genuinely: the ideas were hers, the judgment was hers, the decisions were hers. AI had been a collaborator, the way a reference book is, except requiring considerably more critical thinking to use well.

That’s the point. In a few years, every room my daughter walks into professionally will involve AI somewhere. The question isn’t whether she’ll use it. It’s whether she’ll know how, whether she can spot a plausible wrong answer, ask a better question, and own what she decides.

Cresconova Labs is building that capacity right now. I came in sceptical. I left wishing the course had existed when I was twelve.

Sponsored Post – Top 3 tips on how to sleep better with Panda

Panda is an award-winning luxury homeware brand, empowering customers with eco-friendly home and sleep essentials designed to promote rest and relaxation with the brand’s signature touch of nature. Using bamboo across their innovative product range, alongside powerful sleep technology, sustainable production processes and extensive research, Panda delivers quality that doesn’t cost the Earth.

Sleep is an important factor when it comes to health and wellbeing – aiding with physical and mental health, to ensure you’re refreshed and ready to face every day. We all know that as parents our sleep can suffer from time to time, so it’s important to prioritise rest, relaxation, and products that will help you get your eight hours.

1. Your sleep environment

When it comes to bedtime, your sleep environment is incredibly important. Your bedroom should be a calm, clutter-free space that is both dark and cool enough to sleep well. If your sleep has been lackluster lately, take 10 minutes to assess your bedroom and follow Panda’s sleep space checklist below:

• Declutter your bedside tables
• Open your windows to let the fresh air in
• Strip your bedding and put fresh sheets on
• Remove anything noisy or overstimulating 
• Dust your furniture 

All of this will get you off to a great start for a better night’s sleep! There might be some bigger changes you need to make, too. To ensure your room is dark enough at night, consider blackout blinds or thicker curtains – and for distraction-free bedtimes, think about removing screens like your TV, tablet or phones from the room. Have a look at the temperature of your room, too; the ideal temperature for sleep is 15.6–20°C.

2. Your bedtime routine

It’s not just little ones who need a bedtime routine – as adults, and as parents, we should have one ourselves. Routines help to train our brain, meaning that when you do the same thing each night before bed, you’re signalling that it’s time to go to sleep. It doesn’t necessarily matter what your particular bedtime routine includes, only that you repeat it each night. Yours could look a little like this:

• Light exercise like yoga or a walk
• A warm bath
• A caffeine-free drink
• Half an hour of reading
• Nighttime skincare 
• Lights out

There are also certain things you should absolutely avoid when it comes to your bedtime routine! These include alcohol, caffeine, doomscrolling and intense exercise.

3. Your sleep accessories

Investing in really high quality sleep accessories is a great way to improve your sleep set-up and enjoy better bedtimes. From your mattress and pillows to your duvet and bedding, it’s important to consider what works best for you – do you prefer a memory foam pillow or feathers, for example, and is a hybrid mattress actually the right option for you? If you have allergies, a skin condition, joint pain or you’re going through the menopause, it’s vital you choose sleep accessories that are going to help rather than hinder your sleep.

Bamboo is the fabric of the future for many reasons: it’s an incredibly sustainable resource, but it’s absolutely packed with benefits! It’s hypoallergenic and naturally antibacterial for fresh, irritation-free bedtimes – making it perfect for little ones and parents alike. Bamboo is also beautifully soft and smooth, highly breathable, moisture-wicking and thermoregulating!

Panda’s super fluffy, lightweight but oh-so-cosy Cloud Bamboo Duvet is ideal for year-round comfort – the thermoregulating properties of bamboo, used in both the cover and the filling, mean it keeps you cool on hot nights and warm when the temperature drops. This intuitive duvet is a must-have for dreamy nights, and suitable for the whole family.

When it comes to pillows, you need something that is both comfortable and supportive; depending on your sleeping position, you can opt for lower or higher loft heights – but generally, most people need a medium-firm pillow that’s not too low. Panda have won plenty of awards for their bamboo pillows, which are made with third generation memory foam and all feature a dreamy bamboo cover. 

And did you know, typical bedding can generate 17,000x more germs than the average toilet seat in just one week – so it’s super important to wash your bedding regularly! Aim to put fresh sheets and bedding on your bed once every 1-2 weeks, but more often if you’ve been ill, have pets, or suffer with your skin. Panda’s gorgeous 100% Bamboo Bedding is naturally antibacterial, as well as being soft, gentle and incredibly breathable.

Better sleep means better days: rest helps you to heal, and routine is key when it comes to getting all of the sleep you really need. If you need a bedtime boost to help you achieve better sleep, hopefully our tips can ensure you’re well on your way to snoozing soundly…