How did an entire school year just fly by? Because a majority of the Mentors will be graduating in a few short weeks, this week marked the last Michigan Makers session until we return in the fall! We had a full range of STEAM activities for our students to dive into: resistance dying, LittleBits, Rainbow Looms, Legos, and TechBox Tricks. There’s something for everyone!

I was inspired by this simple yet cool idea for using rubber bands, paper, and cardboard (which we had lying around and went unused by our students for some time):  https://babbledabbledo.com/easy-art-projects-for-kids-rubber-band-art/

Can you believe that with a little bit of water color, you can make that? We brought this idea to our students, and they all went for it! You could hear a lot of, “Hey, how did you do that?” and, “How did you make that effect?” going around among students. Our Makers were more than happy to share with their peers how they made a certain effect and to share tips on how to make the rubber band lines more distinct (TIP: Gently dab the water color onto the paper, no wiping!).

One of our students admitted that she’s terrible at art and was convinced that whatever she makes is going to look bad (thus deciding not to try). We reassured her that if she didn’t like what she made, that’s OK! We encouraged her to try anyways and let her know that all the Makers were there to experiment and ask/offer help to each other when we needed it. One of her friends made a design that she liked, and after asking her friend how she could get her paper to like her friend’s, she engaged more with the activity and stuck it out to the end, making her own custom design.

Legos have been a hit with our savvy Makers, and this week was no exception! Students dove into the bin, building airplanes, landscapes, houses, and cars.

We had sets of TechBox Tricks out and tipped them off on how a simple circuit from the Techbox Tricks could power up and bring their Lego cars to life. You should see how hard they worked: Tinkering away, they were tried balancing battery packs in the vehicles and positioning a small motor to spin a car’s axles. Other vehicles ran on potential energy stored in a wound-up rubber band strung across the axles! Watch out, world. We’ve got some problem-solving, super motivated engineers coming your way in a few years!

It’s been a great year with these Makers. Every week, we’re impressed with how these students put their heads together and commit to making something. We’re proud of all the hard work they’ve put  in this year and hope they continue to be Makers in the future!

We’re a few days into November, but we can’t quite shake the Halloween spirit! This week, we grabbed some rolls of masking tape and a couple of straws to make spooky “mummy hands”.  We had a new Maker Mentor, Prakruthi, join us this week and we’re so excited to have her!

If you’re looking for a simple project that keeps kids engaged with just a few materials, this activity fits the bill.

This activity works best in pairs: one student is the “hand model” and the other wraps the masking tape around the hand model. The students can switch off after one mummy hand has been completed.

This is how it works:

1. Place a plastic straw on the hand model’s hand so that it lines up from the tip of their middle finger down the center of their hand.
2. Wrap masking tape around the hand (over the straw) in layers with the sticky side facing OUT (smooth, non-sticky side touches the skin). This is important because if the sticky side were touching the skin, it would be difficult and dangerous to remove the hand from the “tape cast” that forms. From our experience, it works best if you start from the base of the hand and wrap your way up the hand and around the fingers!
3. Once your hand is covered, do a final layer of tape so that the smooth side faces OUT, creating a smooth, non-sticky exterior.
4. To extract the hand, carefully use scissors to cut from the base of the hand up the palm (almost to the fingers) along the straw. The hand model can wiggle their hand out and tape the cut in order to close the hand.

We had a bunch of fun with these! Some got creative with their hand poses and made claws with them. We heard kids talking about how cool it’d be to put lights into the hands or placing sensors in them to make noises when someone gets too close to the hand. Creating a mummy hand is just the beginning! What could YOU do with a mummy hand?