Makerstations: Portable Makerspace Activities

I first took an interest in the maker movement after hearing Dale Dougherty speak at Microsoft's Hack the Classroom event in January 2016.  Making wasn't new to our grade 1 class - we make art, write books, bake muffins, build with cardboard, create with code, play with lego and more. However, after I learned more about the maker movement, we did try some new "maker" activities in our classroom and the students responded very positively to these extra opportunities to be creative.  We ended up attending a Maker Faire, hosted by our partner class at Miniota School. 

This school year, I wanted to offer students at our school some more opportunities to engage in maker activities.  Thanks to a grant from our school division, I have been able to further explore this topic and create some awesome resources for our students and teachers to use. 

I attended some great PD sessions about makerspaces at the 2016 Riding the Wave of Change Conference.  Krissy Venosdale and Diana Rendina were both great presenters and I used their websites to help me plan our school "Makerstations".  I put together some potential makerstation kits and then asked staff to vote on what they'd most like to use with students.  Based on that information, I ordered supplies and resources.

We now have available the following portable makerstations for our school:

• Perler Beads
• Lego
• Duct Tape Creations
• Simple Machines 
• Cubelets & Robotics (shared with coding club)