The Importance Of Design Thinking

November 05, 2017
Ever since I started teaching, I have wanted to add some type of “Maker Space” into my classroom. This year, I finally figured out a way to make it happen! I thought it would be helpful to share what I have learned from incorporating this type of area into my classroom and lessons.
1. Organization and easy access are key. First, I put my "Maker Space" in a cabinet. It was too hard for my students to get to the materials and for me to keep up organizing them, etc. Having "user friendly" organization also allows your students to take ownership of the entire space. 





2. There are certain simple skills that are helpful to teach to young students (in addition to the exploration time that they have with the materials). 

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 3. Design thinking lessons are vital to adding purpose to lessons that incorporate a "Maker Space."
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4. These types of designing lessons can be incorporated with any subject area!

 Below are some examples of lessons my students have done.

  • Reading: My students read "The Most Magnificent Thing" and then had to come up with a problem in their life to solve, just like the main character did. Then they designed something to solve the problem.
  • Math: When learning about Even & Odd, my students designed and create their own "Even Monster" and "Odd Monster" using items and technology available to them. 
  • Science & Social Studies: When learning about Properties of Solids & Fire Safety, my students thought about the properties of different solids and used those properties to make the tallest ladder they could. 

You can also find some other makerspace activities we love to do here.

Hopefully this helps you in your journey to incorporate new and exciting ways to add purpose to what your students are learning! 

Oh, and if you try out a new makerspace activity in your classroom, I recommend taking this course so that you can earn Professional Development credit for trying out the lesson!

Happy Teaching!

Andrea Sign

How To Make Maze Bumper

October 30, 2017

1) Get a piece of card stock, folded it in 1/2 hotdog style. Cut on the folded line (so how they have 2 pieces). 


2) Take 1 of the pieces of paper. Folded it in half.  

3) Take the bottom (the side that wasn't on the folded edge) and folded the bottoms back about half way. (See picture above)

Repeat so it looks like this. 

4) Open the folds. There will be 3 folded lines. In between the 2 middle rectangles, put glue.  

5) Then fold the glued pieces together so they stick. Then the students unfolded the bottoms a little so that it was in a T shape. The kids all thought this was similar to making a plane. 

6) Cut the T flaps in half so that the T wasn't too wide.

Glue onto your maze!
Andrea Sign

How To Make A Kid Friendly Maze

October 30, 2017


Last week, my 1st graders made these Spooky Halloween Mazes as a connection to the book The Roll-Away Pumpkin. 

Here's how to make one of your own:

  1. Cover a box with construction paper. I used the box tops that go with the boxes that hold printer paper.
  2. Put some paint in each students box (whatever color they wanted). Then they each got 5 marbles. They put the marbles in the box top and rolled it around. This created a marble art background! This also painted the marbles - which I told the students were supposed to represent the pumpkin in the story.
  3. We spent about an hour making the bumpers.
  4. I gave each student a cauldron to place at the end of the maze. In the story, the pumpkin lands in a cauldron. 
  5. They placed their cauldron & bumpers where they thought they were like them. They had their finger pretend to be the marble and practiced running the maze to make sure the maze was how they wanted.
  6. They used stick glue to glue their bumpers down. 
  7. I hot glued their cauldron and also created a little ramp for the marbles to use to get into the cauldron. 
Andrea Sign

Making Reading Come Alive!

October 29, 2017
It's the Roll Away Pumpkin! 

After reading this book, I told the students that I noticed a pumpkin note sitting on my desk and I was thinking that maybe the Roll-Away pumpkin was rolling through our school! They were so excited to go hunt for the pumpkin! 





The hunt led us back to our classroom where I we found some fun science experiment materials!  

The students were so excited and loved using these materials to make a volcanic pumpkin! 

The next day, we re-read the story. I reminded the students about how great it is to re-read stories because each time we read it, we notice new things. This time, the students noticed that this story is similar to the gingerbread man story. 

After reading, we incorporated brought the story to life by using STEAM and creating pumpkin mazes.  

They had so much fun creating these mazes and were so proud with how they turned out! I could barely get them to stop playing the mazes as they walked out of school that day - they were obsessed!
Andrea Sign