Once per month, our students in grades 2-5 participate in a maker week during library time. During maker week, students are provided materials and the time to create, explore, collaborate, learn, and grow. This month, our makerspace had a winter theme. Students were invited to make snowflakes and draw Olaf (from the movie Frozen). We also had an engineering design challenge that was very popular. Students were given a certain amount of materials (such as rubber bands, plastic spoons, popsicle sticks, and paper tubes) and had to design a catapult that could throw a "snowball" (cotton ball) the farthest.
The girls in the video below designed a double catapult!
I think we have some future engineers!
This month, we introduced a new coding board game. Students have to use cards to code their player to reach the "gems" first. The idea for this game came from here.
We also introduced two new technology tools that students could use.
Sphero is a robot ball that is controlled through an app. Students code the ball (using block coding on an iPad app) and then press start to watch the ball roll. The challenge was for the students to code the ball to move in a rectangle around a big piece of paper. It wasn't easy and many groups got close, but this group of students succeeded! I love their excitement at the end of the video!
Sphero is so much fun and it's a great way for students to see their coding in action!
We LOVE maker week!!
