The Makerspace at HES came about because I visited another school with one, heard the stories about students creating and building and how easy it is to teach the standards of any grade through a Makerspace project. In an article from The Cult of Pedagogy, John Spencer puts it best.

“I see a Makerspace as simply a space designed and dedicated to hands-on creativity,” he explains, “and the key thing there is they’re actually making something. Creativity is sometimes idea generation, it’s sometimes problem-solving. But (in) a makerspace, you’re actually going to create some kind of product. Now it could be a digital product. It could be a physical product. But there is an actual product, so you’re not going to, say, design an event or a service project. That’s not what a Makerspace is for, so it’s a space devoted to and differentiated and set up for making.”

The truth is, you don't HAVE to have a MakerSPACE. Teachers can do these exact projects in their rooms. And, many of them have for years. But, how much room does a teacher really have in their classrooms to allow kids to wander, comb through drawers and containers to find those "just right" materials, start their building, and then, maybe need to come back and do it again? How many teachers have robots in their rooms? Ten bins of Legos? "Eighty thousand" bottle caps? Green screens?... The Makerspace can be magical.

2nd Grade Weather Project Website