Kinder Makerspace
Something great is happening at Queen Victoria…..the kindergarten staff is creating a makerspace! And although this was not part of our original TLLP proposal, we’ve tried to support it by sharing resources and using release time to help get it off the ground!
We have a room that is used periodically throughout the week, so this space has been set up so it can be used as a kindergarten makerspace as well. The teachers and ECEs have set up a schedule where an adult is in the room (or adults depending on ratios) at certain points in the day, and kinder students can visit and create, test and explore.
Here is the space:
Note the lack of furniture. It really isn’t anything special, until you think about what a maker environment needs. There are wide open spaces, lots of floor space (both hard and soft) so that creations don’t have to be limited by size. A big window with natural sunlight, tables as work areas. Most of the materials are found: cardboard, wood scraps, pinecones. Other items have been purchased: Makedos for cardboard creation, Lego, Codepillars for beginning coders.
Documentation and sharing takes place on the bulletin boards. For each area of the Kindergarten document, there is a space where student creation can be posted. Most of these will be photographs, but if actual creations are “postable”, they can be placed here.
The kinder team is at the very beginning stages of their makerspace journey. I’ll try to document this journey as they move forward, but here is a wee success worth sharing:
These makers created an airplane that they could actually sit in and “fly”, using cardboard and Makedos (screws, screwdrivers, safe-saws, hole punchers). The arms-up cheer afterwards says it all!
Thanks for sharing this story, Adele! I think that the Kindergarten classroom is the ultimate Maker Space. Our whole day is “making.” I wonder then, how does this space vary from what’s happening in the regular classroom? How could the learning that happens in this Maker Space make it back into the regular classroom? Thank you for making me think some more.
Aviva
Thanks for the comment, Aviva. In each kinder classroom there is indeed play-based inquiry happening. And this of course leads to “making”. Because of the safety issue, materials and tools may be limited within the classrooms, so this alternative space allows for more choice for students–thus allowing these students more room for creativity. The learning is seamless between the classroom and the makerspace–students show the desire to make based on interest, and they make in the classroom or the makerspace. Their creation can come back to the makerspace, and/or the educator in the room asks probing questions to further the learning.