Lewis and Clark Learns

I am so appreciative of the Lewis and Clark PTA support of our MakerSpace!  Earlier this school year, I submitted a PTA grant application for the amount of $650.00 and it was funded.  The grant was mainly for 2 additional sets of Dot and Dash robots to use with my younger kiddos to introduce robotics and visual programming.  I was also able to pick up the Dot and Dash accessory sets, two 10-port usb chargers, and a couple of surge protector power strips.  The kids and I are so ready to dive in to our robotics unit!  Along with this unit of study, I want my students to be stumped, to fail, evaluate the situation and figure out how to complete a challenge based on their learning, not mine.  I want my students to know that if there is a problem, there are multiple ways to solve it.  Additionally, the kids will be working collaboratively with others, demonstrate perseverance, think creatively, and realize that hard work produces great results!

This is what I made... What are they, you ask?  They are vendor aprons for my daughter and her friend to wear at their Gladfest craft booth next weekend.  They are makers and specialize in miniature clay charms like these... I used this as an inspiration...just a simple Lowe's tool belt. The girls will be using the aprons to hold supplies, phones, and their earnings.  There are six total pockets as there are also pockets on the inside of the apron.  Because this was something I had never made before, I had to spend some time in the last week and a half thinking about how I was going to make them so they would turn out as I imagined them in my brain.  I had to figure out the pocket situation and how I was going to put the two sides together.  What I realized this morning as a sat down at my sewing machine (thanks mom for the amazing Bernina hand me down) that my thinking time drastically cut the time I had to spend in my studio.  ...

Much is happening in our library.  We continue to strive for a balance of reading, making and thinking! Yesterday and today we celebrated our summer readers with an ice cream reading celebration. In the past we have had one big party for all kids K-5. That usually means we have around 130 kids in the library enjoying ice cream with yummy toppings.  We have noticed that our kindergarten kiddos tend to get lost in all ice cream madness.  So we changed things up a bit this year and our kindergarteners celebrated their reading with ice cream bars yesterday afternoon in the warm September shade.   Storytelling started this month.  What a great group we have!  They are so dedicated and excited for our storytelling sessions.  Each week they have a short assignment and the kids have amazed us by remembering what they need to do from week to week.  Our resident storyteller is Mr. Eric Haynes.  He is so good with the kids...the...

You contemplate taking the empty toilet paper roll from your local Starbucks bathroom. You purposefully buy the cheapest paper towels so your family can accumulate empty cardboard tubes more quickly. You drive past a construction site and think to yourself, will they REALLY need ALL those materials to complete their project and wonder who you could talk to for permission to dumpster dive. You realize that your family hardly fills the recycle bin anymore because every box, can, water bottle, and plastic container you use throughout your day is taken to school for the MakerSpace. Everyone around you (adults and students) knows they can bring you ANYTHING they don't want and you will take it. After all, you just never know when you MAY need it for an upcoming project. You look forward to lunch duty because it is yogurt parfait day and the plastic domes that cover the parfaits are fabulous additions to many projects (rocks in habitats and parts for Rube Goldberg machi...