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… Read more »

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… Read more »

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…. Read more »

Don’t ignore Dollar Tree as a materials supplier. They have much more available on their website, though you have to buy in bulk from there. Each product is a different amount, 24, 36, 48… Sometimes you can’t do it cheaper or the time to make it would be too much. For example, this set of… Read more »

There is a way to get more than the 3 font options in Tinkercad. Here is a great Instructables  and I made a short video based on it. Basically : 1) download a font file (free ones obviously) (here is one possible site) 2) convert the .otf (open the zip to get at that) to… Read more »

Last week we went to The Club at Crosspoint, a co-working space in Fishers, for the Launch(ed) Women in Technology Conference. The conference is hosted by Indiana University President Pamela Whitten and offers opportunities for middle school girls to learn, explore and interact with innovations, tech products, and STEAM professionals. About 200 young ladies attended…. Read more »

On Feb 27, we went down to Jasper to the Southern Indiana Education Center to do some #MakerEd #MakerSpace training with about 2 dozen educators. All tables had a pile of stuff to create with, and the assignment was “make something”. We gave them about an hour to create. We went around the room, chatting… Read more »

In 2020, we were all looking for remote/virtual things for our students to do. With the help of my Twitter friends, I compiled a list of ~80 sites where students can design & create a variety of things. There are coding sites, virtual robotic environments, picture editing, drawing, vector graphics, audio recording, avatar creation, music… Read more »

We rotated through 5 Kindergarten classes (~30 minute each) at Linton-Stockton Elementary to explore ideas of why things sink/float. We asked “why things sink (or float)…” and there were lots of good ideas about “heavy” and “light” and “big” and “gravity” and “pushing up”. One young scientist said that the water was heavier than the… Read more »

I am going to work with some kindergarten kids on “sink & float” because they are doing some content that is about boat voyages. We will give them a variety of items to conjecture then test whether they sink or float. We will try making a foil “boat” to hold some pennies and see how… Read more »