Materials

What should I buy? This is always the first question I get when people ask me about our PlaykerSpace. Start small, figure out exactly what you hope to accomplish by creating a MakerSpace, and go from there. Many items can be found for free or inexpensively as you work things out. We started with donated items; we asked the teachers for any blocks, magnetic letters, tangrams, Legos, Lincoln logs, cars, marbles...they weren't using, and we got lots of donations. We also found some great stuff in storage--a brand new box of Cuisinaire rods, some plastic tubing, tons of magnets, craft sticks--enough to get us started on our first set of stations.

The first week of PlaykerSpace, I created a backstory using some stuffed animals. I had a dinosaur, a duck, and a mouse. Mouse had taken Dinosaur's magic stone, and Dinosaur refused to let Katie Duck come out and play with Mouse until he returned it. The students had to return the magic stone to Dinosaur all the way across the room, but they couldn't touch it with their hands, and they couldn't walk while they were holding it. They were given tiny cups and plastic spoons and told they could use those if they wanted. This was an incredibly higher-order scenario, and our students struggled with the out-of-the-box thinking it required. Most classes figured it out with minimal questioning, but others found it quite difficult to find a solution. This has been my favorite station, and it was done with found items.

Another station my students and teachers loved was creating a marble run. I found some plastic tubes in my garage from an old Rubbermaid storage shelving unit, and I hot-glued magnet dots to them. We used them with our magnetic oil pan on the end cap to create a marble run. The students went nuts over this one, and it was cheaper than a cup of coffee.