Makerspace for Kids
Have you ever thought about creating a makerspace for your kids at home? My kids love making ART!!! If you are new here, I’ll give a wee bit of background- we participate in a hybrid program for our schooling that involves a some time on a collaborative-project-based-learning campus, it’s a free public charter school in our neighborhood. Obviously that came to an abrupt halt in March of 2020, when the whole world went virtual. We are hopeful that our campus will be able to safely accommodate the kids and staff in some way, soon! One of their FAVORITE rooms on the campus was, of course, the Makerspace. Our neighborhood has a community Makerspace that all the kids from all our district’s schools can use too, so yes, TWO maker spaces in one teeeeeeny tiny school district!!! Early on in our homeschool journey I learned that Makerspace=magic. Here’s how you can do a super fun lesson on recycling/upcycling and create a makerspace at home!
It’s super simple and relatively low-cost to create your own makerspace at home! Start by saving boxes, containers, tissue paper, lids to things, popsicle sticks etc. You can also add in stuff like construction paper, some buttons, pipe cleaners, googly eyes….anything really, but the trick is saving them up for a bit to get a good sized stack in a variety of shapes, sizes, thickness, etc. I do keep a small makerspace stash of empty egg cartons, paper towel and toilet paper tubes and yogurt containers around all the time- but, about every 6-8 weeks we stack up a big pile of stuff and have a couple fun maker days where we go all out!
You can tie this in with a book, holiday, lesson or discussion (we made some pretty fun farms with spider webs after reading Charlotte’s Web) or you can just “trust your gut” as my son would say and create anything that comes to mind!
Here’s what you need:
We have two low temp glue guns, and don’t let the “low temp” fool ya- they get hot enough to melt the glue so they can still burn but we use them mindfully, talk A LOT about how the tip is hot so we keep our fingers clear of it, and we don’t touch the glue while it’s gooey. Definitely an activity that had more supervision when we first started doing it as they got the hang of using them. You can use school glue, glue sticks, tape, or anything else you want! For some reason being able to wield a glue gun and use sharpies lights my kids UP, so that’s how we roll on makerspace days. (also, yes, my kids have been glue-gunnin’ since they were 5….)
Upcycled food containers, shipping boxes, lids, paper towel & toilet paper rolls, empty egg cartons etc
Markers, crayons or paint sticks
ANYTHING else you can imagine or gather- googlie eyes, ribbon bits, we save gift bows and those are part of ours, feathers, stickers, pieces of fabric, string, yarn, paper, magazines…let your imagination (and upcycling skills) run wild!
Once you’ve gathered your supplies, all you need is some time to get creative!
We created robots on the day pictured at the top of this post and when I started writing this post last week I had about 12 boxes next to me for our history makerspace! We’ve been learning about the first civilizations so we are going to build some houses and a ziggurat!
Next month we have Zero Waste Week and Earth Day coming up, this is the perfect time of year to think of fun ways to repurpose and upcycle! You can make a cardboard city, make bird feeders, create cute fairy garden houses and so much more! We made little luminaries out of small Gatorade bottles last year- the instructions for those are in my Earth Day Round Up post here! We want to see your projects!! Tag me on Instagram @bethgriffin_cbc so we can see what you make in your Makerspace time!!