Asher Wadsworth, 11, is fashioning a silver paper ring on her finger attached by a wire and alligator clip to a circuit board.
"Mum, I'm the conductor. When I touch the tinfoil, I close the circuit. The energy runs through my body. It's painless."
They're not just constructing the touch pads for the game, the children are also designing the code required by the computer.
Their final step is to add sounds. The teachers are unperturbed by the growing cacophony of meows, squawks and music. For me, it's the ideal time to check out what the two other groups are doing.
By comparison, the adjoining room is strangely quiet. The kids are learning coding -- giving a computer the instructions it needs for a game to work. One boy shyly tells me about the characters he has created and gets increasingly animated as he explains that he's told them to chase each other, bounce off the edges of the screen and shoot fireballs.
In another space, the younger boys are making paddles out of cardboard, tinfoil and plastic cups that will power a waka on the computer screen. Their teacher, national technologist Damon Kahi, has demonstrated the basic idea but reveals quietly to me that there's a deliberate mistake in his design.
"I don't want them to just copy what I did. They'll only get so far and then realise there's a problem they have to solve."
It's exactly the kind of subtle lesson that Frances had in mind when she came up with The Mind Labs concept.
"In school, kids are taught the answer to the question but not the 'why' behind it. They're encouraged to go down one path -- getting from A to B the fastest. Zig-zagging to find the answer is simply not efficient."
Damon grew up learning from his inventor father and is now passionate about younger generations holding on to that classic Kiwi "No8 wire" creativity. "It's giving them permission and the ability to innovate. If you foster it at an early age they become problem solvers."
There are now energetic virtual waka races going on around us. The children have figured out the glitch.
Back along the corridor -- that I'm told is wide enough for chair racing -- past the robot with a microwave for a body, eccentric colourful couches, butterflies and chains of paper clips hanging from the ceiling, I take a seat in the cafe. From here, I can see through the glass walls that Asher's group has started a new project.
The final hour of the day is game time. The kids are encouraged to try out the games others have created. Soon there are Nerf guns being fired at cardboard faces that touch off the sensor to keep the score. There's a "Simon" game of colour matching and another group has created a maze-like computer game.
Asher is frustrated that their Bop It-style game isn't working smoothly. Their teacher, though, praises her team for creating one of the more intricate designs. Frances nods and smiles when I tell her. "In everyday life, failure means you haven't succeeded. Here, failure means you're learning."
Need to Know
The Mind Lab offers a full programme of activities throughout the holidays, September 28-October 9, for children 7 to 12. Full-day camps are scheduled across a range of subjects, giving you the opportunity to sample an exciting mix of technology, creativity and innovation.
