We love all things STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) Education at the Makerspace! I have been creating makerspaces since 2013. Our project for mobile makerspaces in LA County came to fruition in later years with MākMō, and the Fort Worth Library Makerspace developed into the Panther Lab. I am also a member of the Dallas Makerspace with a community of 2000 North Texans. Examples below are some of the activities we created with the public.
Make a ridiculous Stop Motion Animation
It was winter, so the library makerspace staff and I decided to make a stop-motion animation film to promote books. We created a zany story about a Yeti, designed the miniature set, recorded the characters on a podcasting mic, used Audacity to edit, and moved the characters a frame at a time for video recording. Afterward, I stitched the clips together with Adobe Premiere and added special effects. Speed ramping is silly and fun! Watch out for Bumbles. The Yeti wants his books.
Make a Conductivity Chart
I love materials science! Show kids the different ways electrons can travel by creating a chart below. Electricity travels in a loop. This chart will light up an LED bulb when you have a button cell battery on the right positive and negative alignment. Try different media such as aluminum tape, phone lines, alligator wire, jumper wire, copper tape, and some interesting new materials from Adafruit, such as velostat, conductive ribbon, conductive thread, conductive fabric, conductive ink, and conductive fiber. Resistance may vary.
Make a Hydraulic Robot Arm
An articulating robot arm powered by hydraulics is an excellent way to show kids how everyday items can teach engineering. I found this activity on Instructables because everyone loves robot arms! I also 3D printed a bracelet for the claspers. Warning: this takes a lot of time, and the cardboard may collapse from gravity after a while.
My HeartBot Hebocon: battle robots for dummies
Hebocon is for the low-tech crowd who wants to create clunky robots by hacking from other tools in existence, such as egg beaters, barbies, or what not. I created one for kicks, but adding the Arduino may be overly technical for the battle.
Make a Paper Hot Air Balloon
Ingredients: coffee filters, Gemma microcontroller, conductive thread, etc.
These look pretty cool if you can fill the room with lit-up paper balloons.
Make an LED Panther
Fold the Panther, and add LEDs for eyes! Download the pdf I created for the makerspace: pantherslibrarykb. Don’t hesitate to send an email to me with a request, and I will make a cut-out creature for your makerspace.
My first Needle Felting (after tons of poking). It’s a springy eyeball!
ingredients:felting needle, various colors of wool, pad to work on
Wire a 3D figure
Wire for bending into shapes is a good exercise for armature design.
Make Flower Brooches with a Cardboard Flower Loom!
Code with a micro:bit!
The BBC gave a million of these away to UK 7th graders. It’s a great way to use python for results in the physical world.
Make an Arduino Robot
Solder an LED Heart
Connect the Pi Noir Camera for the Raspberry Pi
(Don’t 3D print in hot pink like I did! I painted acrylic black over it later.)
Duct Tape Superhero Masks
Stop Motion Robots! 2012
Paper Engineering for Cards
Terrarium-style Tree for Ugly Sweater Party
