I arrive home to a school bus parked in my driveway. The tow truck that brought it is just pulling out. Mrs. Brainiac is here again to share a little more about Jerry Brainiac’s deep rooted craziness. I know the presence of this bus means we are getting involved in another STEM type project. Something … Read more
Mrs. Brainiac here, back with Part 2 of Why You Should Lie to Your Kids. Creativity, resilience, curiosity….all great traits that are encouraged by lying to your kids. And those traits result in kids becoming innovative and thoughtful adults that have the grit to get ahead by making mistakes, fixing them and moving on to … Read more
Last week I traveled to Appleton, Wisconsin and visited the MakerSpace located there. It was located in a small building behind a hair salon. It is a great place for members to tinker, fabricate and collaborate in making projects that appeal to them. Each month members pay a fee to have access to all of … Read more
I started volunteering in the Maker Space at my son’s elementary school a few weeks into the school year. The students had already begun their projects. Their challenge? To design a toy. They had researched and designed their projects on paper and had begun the building phase using engineering design principles. My first morning, the Maker … Read more
Compliance: the act or process of complying to a desire, demand, proposal, or regimen or to coercion (Webster). I met with a fellow award-winning educator on Monday who was a wonderful teacher with a creative mind in the classroom. She developed lessons on financial literacy for children in grades k-8. She received awards for her work and was … Read more
Yesterday afternoon I visited a former student, Tanya. She was in my fifth grade class in 1993. What a joy it was to see her and meet her family. She is tapping maple trees on her property to make syrup. This is something that she learned in my class. We reminisced about all of the … Read more
One of the most indispensable tools in my own office {my own personal Maker Space} is the lowly bone folder. As I was working on our latest product, a 3D light up Washington Monument, I used the bone folder to score the card stock and make clean folds in the paper. Sounds lame. But I can’t … Read more
Hydroponics gives your students an opportunity for hands on, authentic learning that is novel, STEM related and gives them a chance to tinker. We’re currently exploring Hydroponics and Aquaponics in a blog series (read Hydroponics 101.1). Choosing the container that you wish to use for your hydroponic system is crucial. There are two ways that … Read more
Last week our local paper featured an article about a man in our area named Ben. Ben has converted a bicycle to an electric bike by mounting batteries and a motor on to the front wheel. For his next project, he converted a motorcycle to all electric. Finally, he converted a small car to all … Read more
Legos®. Those colorful, creative little bricks that kids love to tinker with. It takes grit and persistence to build a project out of these little guys. It’s all the stuff kids enjoy. Problem solving, trial and error, risk taking. They use their own special engineering design process, they make mistakes, have failures that set them … Read more