On May 25th & 26th, the Collaboration of Shoals, Orleans, and Mitchell Schools (COSMOS) got together and held a Maker Camp for 45 students in grades 3-5 (15 from each school), from 9 am to 12 pm. We plotted and planned for weeks. We had 3 sessions each day, for about 45 minutes each. We also had snack time (fruit & pretzels& water).

The sessions that I co-ran were :
“upcycled” creatures : making something from random materials, mostly recyclables

and t-shirt designing with vinyl stickers and fabric paint

So many awesome creations and so many neat designs…I only got pictures of a few.

Other stations included button making, paper pots to start plants, lasering a name tag, mini-worm farm, learning about composting and feeding pigs

It really seemed like the kids were having fun and loved talking about their creations. 45 minutes was not enough time in most cases.

Now we need to talk about what/how to do next summer…

We have done a few little things lately.

We partnered with the STEM to Them Bus at MCCSC to hold some Maker Mondays at Bloomington Graduation School. We took in the laser, a couple of Cricuts and a couple of 3D printers. We had a mini lesson for each one week, then had open lab times on the following 6 Mondays before school ended. We had from 5-12 kids participate at various levels. There were a few technology glitches : not all students could get Cura on their laptop, some couldnt get to tinkercad.com, some couldnt get to cuttle.xyz, Design Space is 18+ so the District would not put it on laptops….always things to work out.

We went to Linton-Stockton School District for the unveiling of their MyMachine prototypes. This is a collaborative effort by their 2nd graders who designed a product to help someone, some college students in a class at IU to work a little on prototyping, and a high school in Wisconsin for the next iteration of the prototype.
 

Most recently we had a table at CRE Rural Engagement Conference in French Lick. We took some digital fabrication demo items, a couple of coding items, a Cricut Joy and a 3D printer. We had the 3D printer running most of the day.  About a dozen people stopped by, many had never seen a 3D printer in person. I got a couple of people to play with LEDs and a battery. A few visitors took postcards, hopefully they will contact us for more info/ideas/help.

Do you think your kids (any age) would like making elements for a Fairy Garden around school?
I have one near my Little Free Library at home. So I thought, how might this be another opportunity for creativity, and maybe some whimsy, in school. I don’t know where I am going to put this.

My idea was to 3D print and laser cut some items. They are about 2″ tall.
The 3D prints I found STL’s on thingiverse.
For the laser cut items, I found SVG’s on the noun project. Then I had to use the pen tool to draw a line around the outside for a cut line (couldnt get anything to trace it…though i only tried cuttle and Illustrator). At least cuttle lets you “round corners”.

What other elements should a “Fairy Garden” have?

What elements would kids make?

What other mediums would they utilize?

How much would you push “design your elements” vs. “find an STL/SVG”

I was playing with a couple of designs for the laser. One is a trinket for an upcoming Maker Camp. The other is using periodic table blocks to spell out STEAM (you cant spell STEM….no element symbols for that combo).

The trinket was the reminder that not all SVG’s are the same.
A colleague sent a logo. When I imported it to one design software, it was blank. It did show that there were two rectangular boxes… So I opened it in another (AI) and the image part showed up. But when i played with the corners some text showed up. So that was interesting.  I played around sizing and copy & pasted parts to new files…. and exported as svg. The original design software where I create laser things now said “could not find geometry”…Whatever that means. If I import the original svg into glowforge, the whole thing (image & text) shows up. Odd. BUT I dont want to engrave all that text. I really just want the image. So i went to using a jpg of the image that someone else sent me. After lasering, i really want to separate the two parts of the image (atom from county outlines) so I can make the outlines show up better without the atom getting too dark. But there are not 2 layers to the image that I have (svg or png).

On medium draftboard, the engrave was 1000 speed and full power, score was 300 speed and 50%, cut was 180 speed and full power. It took just over 4 minutes.

The other design I played with was STEAM using atomic symbols (i dont now why….it just popped in my mind)
Pull up a periodic table and get the info needed. I used number, symbol, name, mass. I did not want to engrave, so I picked a font for the symbol that was more of an outline. Archivo narrow looked good, there were many choices. Be sure to set this as “stroke” and not “fill” in order to score it. For the name  and numbers, i picked an actual single line font, EMS readability. There are many fonts to choose from for everything, so you should be able to find something you like.

Just remember to change the “cut” settings to “score”

STEAM
https://cuttle.xyz/@makervan/STEAM-G1DkgVOAWuhJ

Sulfur file
https://cuttle.xyz/@makervan/sulfur-L7gFPSHBqJpp

Tellurium
https://cuttle.xyz/@makervan/tellurium-5FdKdoJr0Re1

Americium
https://cuttle.xyz/@makervan/americium-3BQCwzH0F2Pz

Tinkercad ( tinkercad.com )  is an awesome browser based, free site, where you can design for #3Dprinting, code for design, and create circuit emulations, and most recently, some “physics simulations” with gravity and your designs.

A few weeks ago i posted about importing custom fonts into it. There is also a “script” font – use the “search” (magnifying glass) next to “Basic Shapes”. This will give you 8 more fonts!

The other day I was saying to myself “you need to make a video about designing cookie cutters” … then Matt Ebel @The3Dclassroom pops up on my timeline with seasonal playdough cutters (color coded!!).

I don’t know his wrkflow but here is mine :
1) find an SVG, i like to use The Noun Project
2) import the SVG…at this import screen , pay attention to the size. Most often it is MUCH larger than you want. I tend to change one dimension of the “Art” to 100 mm (aka. 10 cm – about palm size). You can always change dimensions in tinkercad.

3) You want to play with the “Fill Mode” to get the look you want

Silhouette                                   Outer Line                        Inner Line

4) I am going with “Outer Line” and changing the “Line Width” to 2 mm.
Would 1 mm be okay?
Height of 10 mm is fine (1 cm) but you can change that also if you wish.
I don’t know if changing corners or quality does anything, I have not noticed it in the limited time that I have played with this.

5) Now we need a “lip”.
I copy and paste what I have.
Then change the line width to 5 mm (experiment to see what width is good for you).
I also change the height to 2 mm.

6) Finally, I align and group the two shapes.

All ready for export and printing.

Last week was some pollinator work with students.
We were at Washington Community Schools Primary school for a few days working with 9 First grade teachers and 180 students. We discussed bugs and flowers and what they needed to survive. Many students knew lots of things, so usually we asked a question and someone shared the answer. Like what is the “I” word for bugs or “how do bugs help flowers”  and “what do they need to live”…
Then we read a story about bugs, “Bugs don’t Hug” by Heather Montgomery and illustrations by Stephen Stone.

Since bugs need a habitat and we didnt have a place outside that was “ready” for us to create one, we assembled “bug houses” aka “bug boxes” that were laser cut (think triangular prism — and they knew that shape also). then we wen outside and put things that bugs would like in the box, like parts of flowers, grasses, twigs. For some reason, a few kids wanted to put rocks…it’s their box they can do what they want.

On Earth Day, we spent our afternoon at Unionville Elementary for their Earth Art Resources Technology Health event. We had some laser cutouts of butterflies and bees to color, some small (earring size) butterflies to give away, we made paper pots to start seeds, and we laser cut some personalized “bag tags/keychains”. We were partnering with the MCCSC STEM to Them Bus (borrowing their electricity). they were making paper seed bombs.

Someone wanted to do some learning experiences with circular motion so my mind first went to making tops. Obviously we could make them from recycled materials & junk, or even some actual hardware (like bolts or eye screws). But Eric Steele had just shared “Grandchild Gift” on Cuttle to laser cut a Spinning Top.

I thought we could explore various distributions of the pennies.

I made one of his to play with, then designed something like it, but the shafts were just a simple slot. My first mistake was “rounding” the rectangles for the shafts… the slots don’t end up the same height :

meaning the supports nubs for the round platform are not at the same height. Also, for some reason, I made the shafts 3/4″ while his are 1/2″
(First version)

My second change to his design was to eliminate the penny slots (at least for now). The bottom is just rounded and the platform is a full circle. I think that platform is what students can play with : add weights in various locations, cut out sections, make different size or shapes as the platform.

Interestingly enough, even when you put the support nubs at the exact same height on 2 different pieces of the shaft…they don’t end up at exactly the same place. I am thinking that has to do with kerf and the way the slot gets cut out. So i had to trial and error to get them the same. (notice the tiny gap in the picture on the left)

Now I have a 3/4″ shaft file and a 1/2″ shaft file .
The platform is up to you/the students. It just needs the appropriate size cross in the middle (two rectangles placed perpendicular – both 0.125″ by 1/2″ or 3/4″)

(video https://youtu.be/MRIye2PVJ1M )

We are doing an #EarthDay2023 event in a couple of weeks. I was cutting some butterflies & bees out of wood for kids to color/paint when i thought about a smaller version for earrings. I shrunk one of the butterflies down to 1″x1.5″.
  and

Then I thought of “options”.

The blue I had being scored…but I could also cut it out or fill it in and engrave it.
If I engrave it, what settings do I want to use..same for all circles or different.
I put the smallest ones as black to do them differently (glowforge separates different colors).

I know it is difficult to tell in the picture…. top left is scored, bottom left is engraved, bottom right is cut out.
Here is individually ( i need a camera other than phone…)
(score                                         engrave                                             cut)

When you make small butterflies, the antennae are a problem. I broke a couple.

Two things I do not know yet… is the hole big enough for a ring and is it in the right place so it wont break off easily. Now I need to get some earring parts.

My cuttle files :

https://cuttle.xyz/@makervan/butterfly3earring-wYkP8Ht0iFGv

https://cuttle.xyz/@makervan/butterfly3earringEngrave-PK0YF9Rjzify

I imported an svg from thenounproject.com and added the circles on the wings

We participated in McCormick’s Creek Elementary School STEAM night.
We brought stomp rockets (here is our template).
To save time, you can tape the top closed instead of cutting, rolling and taping a nosecone.
A half-litre or 20 ounce bottle is enough air to reach almost to the gym ceiling

It was a pretty busy night. We had at least 50 pre-schoolers through middle school age stopping by. Some just wanted to launch rockets, some would make their own.

It was a successful evening.
Though some middle school boys took a while to figure out that stomping on a flat bottle doesnt do anything…they did figure it out eventually.

There are two, micro:bit  based robotic building kits that I have looked at recently. The micro:bit is a $20-$30 micro-controller, depending on where you buy it (adafruit). One is the Brown Dog Gadgets Bit Board Rover. The other is Elecfreaks 32in1 Wonder Building Kit. I bought my BDG on kickstarter and my Elecfreaks on amazon. BDG & Elecfreaks both have a variety of nice items for STEM/coding & robotics.

They both have tutorials/instructions for building and coding different contraptions (BDG ; Elecfreaks) (let me know which one you think has better instructions).
Elecfreaks has a makecode extension (extra set of blocks) specifically for their expansion board. Brown Dog Gadgets uses the basic makecode set, but you need to get extensions when you use the distance sensor and neopixels.

-I like that BDG included neopixels & thumbstick & a pen holder for drawing.
-I don’t love the water level sensor in the Elecfreaks, but can understand them wanting a variety of ideas beyond things that move in various ways.
-The BDG brick adapters (3D printed and laser cut) are nice , Elecfreaks includes some screws to help with this
-Number of parts can be misleading because there could be lots of tiny connectors, but that is not the case. Elecfreaks definitely has more parts.
-I think the servo and motors in the Elecfreaks kit are supposed to be stronger, but I have not played enough to tell.
-The expansion boards are both about $30. I like that the Wukong has a rechargeable Li battery. The BitBoard is neat that it connects to Lego and you can use makertape laid on the Lego nubs to make circuit connections (you could also use alligator clips). They have some differences in their features that need further explored.

Which do you like?
I was waiting to mention.
One kit costs $90 and the other $180.

By the way, I am always a fan of buying things individually to get what you want…if the price doesnt get too outrageous. Buy the board you want, buy the I/O devices you want,, find the building pieces you want…buying in bulk (for a class/lab set) can brings prices down.

Or sometimes you buy a kit, then augment. For example, I would like another servo or two and a neopixel ring/strip and a thumbstick or IR distance sensor (slightly different than the line followers) for the Elecfreaks kit. For the BDG kit I would add another servo and IR distance sensor. I also like OLED and 1602LCD for displays and arcade buttons for inputs. Sometimes I shop amazon, sometimes China (with long lead times)