After a brief hiatus, we are back in action! It feels great to be tinkering again. This semester, we are seeing a bunch of new faces joining Makers, and we’re happy to have them with us. Now let’s make stuff!

We brought back some old favorites like TechBox Tricks and K’nex. Our new Makers hadn’t seen TechBox Tricks before and were eager to figure out what to do with the kits. When one student connected pieces from the TechBox Tricks kit together to turn on a spinning motor by just waving his hand, other students wanted to try it too! Some students would put the pieces together but didn’t know why theirs weren’t working. This became a great opportunity for us slow down and figure out how the kit’s circuit worked. We figured out the differences between circuit inputs and outputs and why their order in a circuit mattered.

We also brought in a creative thinking game called Design Studio (seen below). It’s a kit that challenges students to tap into their creative potential and invent  imaginative things like remote controls for pirates or couches that wizards would enjoy. We were happy to see students dip their toes into this game, going for multiple challenges and iterating on their ideas along the way. With some prompts and guidance from the kit, these students imagined and sketched some truly unique inventions!

Something stood out to us this week: team work. When one student was stuck, trying to figure out why her LED wasn’t lighting up in her circuit, another student offered to look at her circuit to troubleshoot the issue based on what he figured out just a few minutes before. We saw this happen with a circuit puzzle game, as well.

We love seeing students reaching out and giving other students a hand up. Putting multiple heads together to solve problems is a life-long skill, and we’re proud to see this happening so naturally with this group. From a learner’s standpoint, we know empowering it feels to demonstrate something that you just learned and help someone in the process!

We have some new activities coming up in the next few weeks. Stay tuned!

We’ve been a bit tech- heavy these past few weeks and wanted to change things up. One of our activities was inspired by “mystery architecture” activities, where students are given a mystery bag of materials and must use the materials to build a structure to meet a challenge.

We challenged the students to work in teams and build a tower as tall as they could in 25 minutes. The ONLY materials they could use were the ones in their mystery bags. The structure must stand long enough for us to take a measurement.

Here’s what was in their bags:

• 20 toothpicks
• 20 mini-marshmallows
• 10 pieces of dried spaghetti
• 4 packing peanuts
• 2 drinking straws
• 2 coffee stirrers

The students took the the challenge right away. Some students surveyed the contents of their bag before strategizing how to best use the materials. Some dove right into building, sticking spaghetti into the marshmallows and creating height. It was exciting to watch them take such different approaches!

As structures started coming together (and climbing higher!), we noticed a lot of students taking a step back and figuring out how to address structural weaknesses. One team used a paper bag as the base but wanted to increase its stability since it was flimsy. Their solution? Roll up the opening of the paper bag (like you would to a long-sleeve shirt) to give it some stability. One student focused less on overall height and more on creating a solid, supportive base. We noticed all teams experimenting with triangle and square-shaped supports, figuring out which would be most secure.

Our highest tower stood at more than 3.5 feet tall!

To wrap up the day, we introduced them to LittleBits. These kits come with components that snap together to make light, sound, and motion. Because the components can be arranged in so many ways, we saw a range of creations: a light that only comes on after pressing a pressure sensor and a light switch, to a sound device that produces intergalactic sounds. The kids were asking about whether we could combine kits and make bigger versions of what they were working on. To be continued on at another time in Michigan Makers…?