The Maker Faire is a national festival of invention, creativity and resourcefulness, and a celebration of the Maker movement, held in numerous American cities since created by Make Magazine in 2008.
Although designed to enrich students’ technical skills, the Maker Faire at the Hudson Montessori School went beyond science or engineering, even though many of the projects the students created incorporated both.
“Hudson Montessori School is the only school in Jersey City to hold a school Maker Faire under the Worldwide Maker Faire banner, said,” said school director, Gina Reeves.
The official Maker Faire was designed to be a gathering of tech enthusiasts, crafters, educators, tinkerers, hobbyists, engineers, science clubs, authors, artists, students, and commercial exhibitors.
The event excites students in the school as well as outside local and regional “maker friends” who embrace the concept of creating and building things that may develop and further an idea, or a cause (like sustainability), or promote the arts and learning at all levels.
At Hudson Montessori School, the maker concept is embedded into its STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art and mathematics) curriculum from Kindergarten to sixth grade. Children develop their ideas and present them to others on a regular basis, so this event was a way to showcase their work.
For students at Hudson Montessori, the faire in early February asked students to explore their own talents and to show off what they do, whether with scientific projects or in some other creative form.
“When I heard about the Maker Faire, I said I gotta do this,” said third grader Ved Garg, who created a Minecraft board game. “When I created the game I imagined what we were going to do and made a plan. Then I waited until the last minute and made the board game based on Minecraft. I like showing my game off to people.”
This is the second year the school has put on a Maker Faire.
“Makers” come to the Faire to show what they have made and to share what they have learned
Each year kids come up with more ambitious projects. For example, developing machines that use hydraulics, or create figures that move, said Michelle Velho, who is the team leader for STEAM. Many of these projects are tied to studies at school.
But the fair is designed to allow students to be creative in any way possible. So that while some may build remarkably complex devices, others may exercise their creatively in musical performance or some form of fine art.
The teachers built their own robot from recycled computer material as an inspiration for students, although the students seemed to have plenty of their own ideas anyway.
Some of the projects included hydroponic plants.
“I coded a binary tree in Python, a computer program that that asks you questions after going through the maze to see which Ninja you were from the movie,” said Madison Bertrand, a third grader who created the Ninjago Training Obstacle Course and Program. “When you go through the maze, the computer counts how many strings you touch. If you touch too many you become a baby ninja. It’s fun to make stuff and see what other people make. My family saw a real laser maze on a trip and decided that we wanted to make one.”
“The idea is to find a problem and then try to work out a solution,” Velho said.
Some of the projects involved simple mechanics, but in some cases, the students went far beyond that. Some students built a simple machine with a crank that turned other parts, but the fair displayed machines that were extremely complex as well.
One of those was a project that used light and pin holes that explored patterns. Some projects collected rain, as part of a study of the water cycle.
The school is deeply involved in the study of STEAM, and so these projects reflect a variety of engineering efforts, and also use of recycled materials
Some of the second graders built circuits that opened a closet — push the button a light goes on on the board.
Rhea Vasavada, a second grader, grew crystals which she turned into jewelry.
‘I chose crystals because I was inspired by glacial and lava crystallization,” Vasavada said. “Crystals don’t always form when you touch them or move them. I made the jewelry certain shapes by bending the pipe cleaners. The Maker Faire gives kids a chance to present what they made.”
For updates on this and other stories keep checking www.hudsonreporter.com and follow us on Twitter @hudson_reporter. Al Sullivan can be reached at asullivan@hudsonreporter.com
