6/20/13
I had my wisdom tooth pulled out this Monday and boy does that hurt a lot.
I presented the squishy circuit to the first two groups that came in. And by 3 pm my teeth started to ache and swell up again. So I taught one of the teen helper how to work the squishy circuits. He taught the course very well we even took out the makey makey to give that a test drive.
6/18/13 started the beginning of summer reading at Widener Branch. A magician came to celebrate with us. So I learn that by changing the set up of the class room can improve the participation of the children and keep it appear more organized.
This past week working on our Connected Messages mural I could sense that the leaving the theme topics a bit to open ended lead to more [adult] intervention in each kids work than I would like.
Our first day working on our mural we documented some of the kids running stories that play the line between humor, fantasy, and real life. However, after having a a mock viewing and eulogies for Uncle(and exhausting our inside jokes) it was hard to get motivated to create more or begin to delve into more serious topics.
This was all cleared up after diverting our attention to our Makey Makey contest entry for some fun and unintended inspiration. After trying to make some badges that one would “unlock” for completing our Group How-To(thank you techkim) we realized that we could use the badge sketching templates as a means of expressing ourselves on our mural. We unintentionally created a way to make patterns, display things we like, and even create our own achievement badges for what we have learned(something I have wanted to do since the start of this summer). It’s truly an awesome way for the kids to get work onto paper and who-knows we may scale and copy these bad boys to hand out at the Maker Celebration!
Our contest entry, due 8/13, still under development as of 8/7: Magnetic Makey Makey Mazes
Last Wednesday I held a Makey Makey workshop at Spells Writing Lab. Our game controller workshop was icing on the cake for their work story boarding and creating their own games in Gamestar Mechanic. It was wild to come in and see the variety of different games based off of the same platform.
As this was my first big workshop I was a tad bit nervous as to how it’s introduction would flow into the working session. To my surprise and delight after briefly explaining how the Makey Makey and its component parts work the kids became very attentive(handing out the alligator clips and the Makey Makeys was helpful). This coupled with a quick demonstration of how a high five could make our CANABALT player jump created an explosively energetic kickoff to making. Immediately the kids took to group work stations and began gleefully tinkering.
06/13/2013. I was super excited for this activity. To me this is the easiest and one of the coolest experiments I’ve done with kids. There weren’t as many kids but I had a lot of adults and librarian that were interested in this experiment. They even ask me about how to make them so they can go back to their… Read more →
06/14/13. The activity that we did today was the Oobleck monster. This is the hardest activity out there. This activity is really mess and if I had to redo this activity I would take it outside to do it. Other then the activity being messy I had about 15 kids in one room. It’s the most kids I’ve had. And… Read more →
