Look What We Can Do in the Innovation Commons!

This year has been so much fun purchasing and rolling out all the wonderful MakerSpace and STEM activities that I have added to the Innovation Commons.  What I have discovered is that the kids need very little direction and just dive into their creation and investigation.  Most recently I ahve been working with Kindergarten and 4th graders.  The biggest take away for the teachers has been they notice zero behavior issues during this time because the students are so engaged.

Here are some of the great things I have added and a little about them:

Snap Circuits - "Snap Circuits® makes learning electronics easy and fun! Just follow the colorful pictures in our manual and build exciting projects, such as FM radios, digital voice recorders, AM radios, burglar alarms, doorbells, and much."
I started with the Snap Circuits Jr and it became so popular that I ordered a larger kit, as well as the Rover and Green Energies Kits.  For students to really begin understanding the working circuits in an explorative way is very important.  They really feel the ownership of making something work.

Contraptions & Structures


Students love using contraptions and structures by Keva.  They design, build, and engineer buildings and marble ramps.    "Young thinkers can build unbelievable ball track structures with this simple stacking plank system. Create ramps, funnels, chutes and crazy contraptions like the "Black Hole" and "Bounce Plate." Then find out if the ball rolls as expected. Fostering unlimited creativity and experimentation, KEVA planks build an early understanding of proportion and balance, while teaching basic principles of physics and engineering." Many view this as such a creative outlet that it's their go to center.  

Other purchases that I have made that the students find amazing:

Osmo

Tiggly

Sphero and BB-8

Dash & Dot

Lego WeDo 2.0

Little Bits

Magformers

Ozobots

K'Nex

Currently my Kindergarten students are working on creating a city for Bee-Bot to be able to drive through.  If you aren't familiar with Bee-Bot, he is a programmable robot for the younger students.  They give him directions by pushing the arrow buttons on his back.  Once they have put in the correct sequence, they hit start and Bee-Bot will move how they have programmed him.  We've used him to teach programming but also to practice shapes, letters, sight words, and numbers.

They are learning about communities and each child chose a different type of building in the community they wanted to build.

The most important thing that needs to happen with the many STEAM activities is the discussion.  Whether it's collaboratively with peers as they work to solve problems or you as the teacher asking them to share what it is they are doing and how are they making it happen.  Discourse is important.  Here is document shared by my district that I have found very helpful.