I went to Lakeview Elementary to do 2 learning activities about our solar system with 2 5th grade classes. I found some info and some nice posters to share, and answered questions from them. NASA has a nice 11×17 pdf set of prints. The most difficult parts of understanding our solar system is that you cant do relative sizes and distances in the same scale…and understanding the massive numbers that space demands. I have a 9 foot canvas circle that represents our sun and 1 inch wooden spheres to represent the earth to help. Students made a necklace with that 1 inch sphere and a quarter inch sphere for the moon. We also got into groups and each group made a scale model of our solar system based on a 10 foot sun. Then they compared to other groups. They also had to put them in order. We did go outside and tried to recreate our solar system with people… a big group for the sun, 1 person for mercury… and had the “planets” orbit the sun, so we talked a little about days for each planet to orbit

this one shows our sun is a smalll-medium size star

There is a website that will calculate scale numbers for whatever scale you wish

I attended both days of Tinkerfest 2025. I was one of 26 exhibitors that had a wide variety of tinkering for families. I brought PVC pipes & connectors for free build, jewelry trinkets to make a bracelet or necklace, paper circuits & circuit blocks, and a 3D printer (most people have never seen a 3D printer in action).

First they had me outside on Friday, but they quickly realized not much foot traffic would come outside…some would come out at specific times for the pumpkin launch. So they moved me inside (in the past we have been inside).

There were about 300 students on Friday and 700 people on Saturday. Not everyone stopped at every booth, but we had a some pretty good business. We had lots of great discussions about 3D printing and circuits.

These 2 are items from the IU School of Medicine

and the museums mastodon puzzle

North Lawrence Community Schools and Mitchell Community Schools collaborated on an event for all 2nd graders (~350), “Careers on Wheels”. It was held at the Lawrence County Fairgrounds. They had a wide representation of careers : Rogers Group, Bedford Police Department, Lawrence County Sheriff’s Department, StatFlight, EMT, Farming, General Motors, A1 Trucking, M & E Honda, Superior Steam, Uplands Maker Mobile, TASC Bus, 812 BBQ, Barry Miller Motorsports, Limestone Chapel of George Funeral Care, ServPro, Reynolds Construction, Marion Township Fire Department, E and B Paving, Mobility Systems Engineering Branch, and Logistics.

I set out a variety of examples/tools/materials/ideas that we work with most at events (3D printing, laser cutting, cardboard tools, cutebot & talebot, paper circuits & circuit blocks). This was a quick format (6-8 minutes per class), so there really was no time to make something & the kids were a little disappointed in that. But some tried out the bots, some tried the circuits, a few watched the 3D printer. And for some reason, it was exciting to walk up the ramp to look at the inside of the van…

80 Eastern Greene 6th graders are reading “A Green Place to Be: The Creation of Central Park.” They have worked  together to design their own Eastern Greene Park on large banner paper while discussing drawing things to scale etc. They left a space in the middle for something special. That something special is a treehouse. Then they will read “Up in the Leaves: The True Story of the Central Park Treehouses“

So I brought cardboard, cardboard tools and different craft materials for them to build with. First they had to sketch some ideas of what they want their treehouse to look like. We tried to get them to draw more than one side and some did well with that. Then they were allowed to get some materials and start building. We emphasized that they needed to measure, then draw a line before they cut. We also emphasized working from the corner, not cutting out the center of the material (cardboard, craft foam, cardstock)

Of course they were excited to do this. Kids love making stuff. Everyon had different ideas. Some tried for a round treehouse, one went with oval. Though most did rectangular. There were ladders made of yarn, ladders made of straws, ladders made of craft sticks. A few people wanted a circular slide to come down from the treehouse, a couple of groups had a zip line.

We ran out of time and most did not finish – time flies when making stuff. On Fridays the have a “catchup/reward” period at the end of the day. ~25 kids came back to the room to work on the build. Next week they will have some time to add finishing touches.

I worked with the 12 kids from the CoLab homeschool group the other day. They wanted to do something creative with their logo. They purchased some tote bags and fabric paint. I created some stencils of the logo, some laser cut in 1/8″ wood, some using the Cricut and vinyl, some using the Cricut and laminated paper.

They have a very busy logo. So I used Lightburn to trace it. This gave me a nice black & white vector drawing. I printed a few of these on poster paper as a large coloring page. Then I removed most of the elements using cuttle (I probably could have used Lightburn or Illustrator). 

The first vinyl stencil stuck well, the others did not stick to the tote bags at all. The wood worked fine, though 1/16″ would be better. The laminated paper worked okay, some little edges didnt stay down, so one had to be careful. One thing we did not anticipate was the paint bleeding through to the table. So the 1st group got an abstract version on the back side. The second group added cardboard inside.

I also had battery & bulb so we could work in stations

I had the opportunity to work with 10 of the ROI STEM Fellows Alumni. We met at the Loogootee HS Fab Lab. This was great because they got to visit another lab setup and talk about different ways of doing maker projects.

Everyone designed a laser cut nametag. We utilized cuttle.xyz for the design process (they now have free accounts for educators). I have a slideshow walking people through it. Loogootee has XTool P2S lasers. The XTool design space did something different with the colors that I had chosen…I didnt look closely (Brandy was working that since they are hers.) Glowforge and Lightburn separate “fill” and “stroke” then they separate all the colors into separate actions. Just from the quick glance i took, I think it only separated “fill” & “stroke”… but Brandy made it work

We also did 3D design with Tinkercad and printed on their Prusa MK4S. The goal was a board game piece with multiple shapes stacked and a hole or slot.

The final part of the day was working pieces of a Scale K-12 lesson, “Who Let the Dogs Out“. It is about designing & prototyping a dog park with a safety feature. So it means learning about circuits (battery & LED and copper tape = paper circuits), using a micro:bit, using a micro:bit to control a safety light and a gate (servo).

A couple of days later I went to visit a current STEM Fellow, Melanie at Shoals Elementary. She is new in her STEM position, having moved from a grade level classroom. We talked about how I could help, some project ideas and some resources for the digital fabrication tools they have. Since I was in the neighborhood, I stopped by the Mitchell JH Novus Lab to see how I could help them. They are having some issues with 2 of their 3D printers. After some test prints and hearing the extruder click often, we think it is under-extruding. We did not fix that yet. In the other printer I found 2 separat pieces of filament stuck in a feed/funnel component and could not get them out. It is an easily replaceable part…but when I removed it I ended up tearing the filament sensor ribbon cable, which is a little more involved replacement (more parts need removed). I ordered those 2 parts for them and will get back there when my calendar allows.

I headed south to Paoli for their 2025 Fall Festival. They had many things happening over the weekend : fair rides, car show, food vendors, other vendors, pickle ball tournament, 5k, sidewalk art competition.

I set up near the sidewalk art competition. I had laser cut some Paoli Ram logos for a necklace trinket, and had the gnomes & fairies and beads for jewelry. I also had battery & bulb for a science lesson. Since they were doing sidewalk chalk art, we had a “make your own sidewalk chalk” station. It takes plaster of paris, water & paint to tint it. Kids squirted some paint into a small plastic cup, I added some water and they mixed that up with a craft stick. Then we added plaster of paris a little at a time until they got a thick pancake batter consistency. They poured/scraped it into a silicone mold. They had to let it set for at least an hour before they could take it home (wrapped in a paper towel and in a baggie)

There were hundreds of people at the Festival, but I only got  18 kids and a dozen parents to stop at the booth to do something.

Several IU branches hold a week long summer Kids College Camp for 5th-9th graders. They see the campus, learn about some college & career paths, and get some hands on learning activities. I did an activity for the Indy camp and the Kokomo camp.

For the Indy camp, we did “Dr. Frankenstein” in a 2 hour session. Students were to create a hybrid robot/animal…an animal that has its senses enhanced. We utilized cardboard and craft materials. They made a sketch to get some ideas flowing, then got to work. There were a variety of work ethics present, so some it was more difficult to get them going, but eventually they all got to making something. They was a wide array of hybrids and no one burned themselves too badly on the glue guns.

 

For the Kokomo camp, we did geodesic domes in a 1 hour slot. It is tough to finish a geodesic dome in that time, especially if your team doesnt work well together. The triangles are easy to make, the pentagons take more time & care. We did get at least one completed in each of the sessions.

The Community & School Partnerships keeps bringing MS/HS kids to visit IU and see what college campus is like. This time they brought 30 students from a school in Chicago. The students formed groups and built the Teacher Geek Air Racer kits. They worked very well and a couple of the got the car to move. This is a difficult one because it is a tiny motor with some cardboard fan blades attached that propels the vehicle. So many variables.

The Indiana State Museum had a day for homeschoolers to come and check out some interactive learning. I had 3D printing demonstration and paper circuits. There was and environmental education booth and I say bug specimens. There were Ozobots and a little town. They had a table with old technology taken apart to learn about the insides of tech. One table was for kids to build a grabber to retrieve items from inside a sewer (a small garbage pail with a “grate” over top). There was also a music station were they could try different instruments. And there was a pottery wheel. 500 people attended.