Blue Sky School + Maker Junior + Modern Niagara = The Cardboard Arcade

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     The cardboard arcade was the third workshop for Blue Sky School. This was a very special workshop because we were partnering with this amazing business called Maker Junior.

Blue Sky School Pioneers and Advisors are comfortable in the board room!
     "Maker Junior combines arts, crafts and other creative concepts to teach kids about science and technology," says Hari, co-founder of Maker Junior." Maker Junior was helping kids out with their projects for the cardboard arcade. Alison and Nanik, the other co-founders of Maker Junior brought in many supplies for the kids to incorporate in their project.
Digging through mountains of supplies for creative inspiration.
We kept Alison, Nanik and Hari very busy for our entire workshop!
Nanik ran a mini-workshop for builders about how to incorporate LED lights and conductive tape into their designs.

     "This was a great opportunity for me to get creative and work with my friends and meet new people, I think that it is great that Blue Sky School and Maker Junior are working together," Grace Hill says, Student Advisor and Pioneer Student for Blue Sky School.

Ideating, iterating, prototyping and giggling.


At Blue Sky School, we LOVE seeing multi-age groupings in action and watching some of our youngest learners lead the older ones.
     "Looking around, I could see that everyone was engaged in their projects. This is what school can be like!" says Shauna Pollock, future teacher and co-founder at Blue Sky School.

     The cardboard arcade was an idea invented by Caine Monroy. He is a little boy who had to spend his summer at his father's auto parts store in East Los Angeles. Instead of moping about the store, Caine took this as an opportunity get creative. He started by taking some used boxes and made them into an arcade. "I cried when I watched the video," Grace Hill says. I could tell that after we watched the video, all the kids were motivated to start building.

"I think that it is so important to do projects because they are authentic and meaningful and it shows that you can change the world," Shauna says.

It was wonderful to see the builders share their amazing creations with our guests. They created terrific games and confidently presented about them to a large group.
Thank you for reading this blog post, please let me know what you think in the comments below,

Grace Hill,
Student Advisor and Pioneer Student, Age 12

Comments

  1. Unknown2 June 2017 at 17:23

    What a fantastic post Grace! I enjoy reading about what inspires you and its clear this collaboration between Blue Sky School and Maker Junior is full
    of wonderful possibility!

    ReplyDelete

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