Summer Making (Part 2) – Woodworking & Installations!

Summer making in the Creativity Lab was wildly successful.  It lasted 5 weeks and taught more lessons than can be contained in one digestible blog post so here are a few bites-sized morsels: The impact of concentrated making over time on students is visible.  The results include increased confidence, creativity, and resourcefulness. Talking about what…

What’s a Hackathon Anyway?

What’s a hackathon, really?  Until fairly recently, I didn’t have much of a clue.  Reading up on one taking place in Oakland, I figured the weekend-long event would be an opportunity for middle school students at Lighthouse’s Creativity Lab to be exposed to programming and software development.  Explaining that to my 6th graders using words…

Families Scribble, Tape, and Electrify

Families engaged in creative play together – an outcome we want to build as we integrate making into our school’s practices.  Recently our fourth grade teachers invited their students and families to engage in creating scribbling machines, circuit boards, and a little bit of tapigami. Scribbling machines are fun – they instantly engage people to…

Building and Space Design

Our middle school students have teamed up with Hamilton + Aitken Architects to collaborate on a five-week-long project that has two major goals: first and foremost, we want to introduce our young designers to the concepts and practices that make up building and space design; secondly, students are working to generate ideas and input for…