I’ve been wanting to build a greenhouse with my 5th grade students for a couple of years. I knew it would be a chaotic process but I finally bit the bullet and did it this winter. I’m happy to send all the plans, lesson slides, materials list, etc. to anyone […]
Making
21 posts
About a year ago, I decided to teach myself how to use the Godot game engine. It’s a powerful, open source engine that’s good for making 2D games like side scrollers, top-down adventure, visual novels, etc. It can do 3D too but, from what I’ve read, is no match for […]
My paternal grandmother was Danish. She died before I was born but growing up, I knew her sisters and brother–my great aunts and uncle. My great aunt Zeta made pickled beets. She always had a jar open and I would ask for them as soon as we got to her […]
I’m working on a middle grade fantasy book called The Bone Flute. The book, surprisingly enough, features a magical flute made from a vulture’s wing bone. I have made branch flutes and bamboo flutes but never bone so I decided to give it a try. It’s not easy to get […]
I’ve never liked the band that my pixel watch came with but I also don’t really like any of the options I’ve found to replace it. So, I decided to make my own. I started by designing it in Corel Vector: I took that to the laser cutter and cut […]
One of my favorite books growing up was A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula LeGuin. The original edition was illustrated with wood cuts by Ruth Robbins. I loved those illustrations. My favorite was the hawk in flight, circling above a tower keep. It’s a great scene in the book, masterfully […]
I’m writing a new middle grade fantasy book that features a stone age flute. While doing research, I came across this tutorial on how to make a branch flute and decided to give it a try. First, I had to find a good stick. Out on a hike one day […]
At my school, we have four pillars that represent our values and philosophy: Character, Community, DEIJ, and Academic Excellence. We also have four actual pillars in our gym/multi-purpose room/theater. A few years ago, I was teaching our 7th grade Design + Code + Make class, running a project where the […]
There is a bird family nesting in a potted palm hanging from a beam in one of the outdoor atriums at our early childhood center. The teachers asked me to set up a web cam so the students could see inside the nest and follow the progress from eggs to […]
My 5th grade robotics students are having trouble engineering their catapults so I made this prototype to inspire them.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, board game sales have skyrocketed. I thought it would be fun to have 5th graders design and build their own board games. It’s a great project for teaching the basics of the design thinking process and it pulls in a lot of skills we […]
For our last project in 5th grade Design + Code + Make this year we did an integrated unit with Science. The students learned about the wetlands biome (our school is located near the Ballona Wetlands). Each student was assigned an animal that is found in the wetlands. They researched […]