This past weekend we co-hosted a “Designing Making Experiences” professional development session at Castilleja School in Palo Alto. We offer several of these workshops a year, with the goal of helping attendees integrate making into their curriculum. For two days, participants ideate, collaborate, and prototype a project that they can bring back to their classrooms. Here are…
Our kindergarteners made some awesome sock puppets last week. They measured and cut their own materials, and safely handled hot glue guns by themselves. What do you think of the “Creepy Carrot” puppet? We love it!
Part of joining the Creativity Lab team meant making a project of my own. Can’t teach making or talk making unless you’ve got some experience making—right? So, I brainstormed what I might like to do, and why it might make a good project. I wanted to incorporate some circuitry, as it’s a big part of…
Lighthouse hosted its Expo Wednesday night, to showcase to parents what our students have been hard at work on this year. Check out some of the awesome projects the Creativity Lab had on display:
For one of their first projects of the trimester, our seventh and eighth grade makers have been journaling—not writing in journals (though, they’ll be doing that, too), but making journals of their own. The making began by unmaking. Like biologists with their frogs, students dissected books to explore their inner workings. (We have some potential…
On Thursday and Friday, we hosted a “Designing Making Experiences” session at the Creativity Lab. Makers from as far as Greensboro, NC joined us for the two-day intensive on creating maker-based curriculum for the classroom. As part of the session, participants were encouraged to work on a curricular project that they could bring back to their…
One year ago I moved from D.C. to Oakland, CA to be a Maker Ed AmeriCorps VISTA at Lighthouse Creativity Lab. Today is my last day of service. It is hard to decide what to share, but important to me, probably more personally than professionally. But that is beside the point. It’s like that old…
Our own Aaron Vanderwerff has been nominated for a piece he wrote for EdSurge, “Makers in the Classroom: A How-To Guide.”
In a perfect world I’d sit them all in two long rows, facing each other, scissors in hand, able to look up, across, or over for help and we would walk through cutting tightly curved lines. But what world is perfect anyway? Welcome to making with first graders. As a fun introduction for making Making…
It started with the Creativity Lab director presenting us with the idea of teaming up with the non profit organization, Lava Mae whose motto is, “Delivering Dignity one shower at a time.” We all were immediately excited and honored to get to have this wonderful experience offered to us and we got started. Our task…