Monday, January 11, 2016

Makerspace Update

Happy New Year!  Where does the time go?

We are in our 3rd round of makerspace activities here and so far things are going well.  You might remember, the first time they came to the space we all did the pipe cleaner challenge.  You can read about that here.  For the second round, they had choices based on STEAM activities (not for every letter though).

Technology - Stop Motion Animation video
Engineering - Tennis Ball Tower
Art - Origami

I have task cards for each of the activities but still have to do some explaining when all the students arrive.  Here is an example of the task card for the Tennis Ball Tower (I got the tennis ball tower idea from this blog which I found on Pinterest)




Some of the task cards have QR code links to how-to-videos like the Stop Motion Animation task card. 

This was really an eye-opening station for me to see how creative the students were.  Some just took off with it.  Here is an example of one some 5th grade girls made.


For origami, I printed out and laminated pages from this website .  These directions with the pictures were pretty easy to follow.  However, for the 2nd graders, I recorded myself making 3 things and then put a QR code to the video so they could follow along that way.  It worked better for the younger ones than the written directions.  


The kids are loving the makerspace so much and have asked how they can do this stuff at home so I put links to the activities on my libguide so they can access the videos and directions at home.

The one thing I am still struggling with is getting them to stop and clean up when it is time.  It is a disaster when they leave some times!



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