Monday, November 19, 2018

Makey Makey Inspires Our Makers To Create Their Own Dolls & Robots With Scratch!

Last week our 4th graders had the honor of inviting my friend...
...Colleen Graves, who serves as the Director of Community and Creative Content Makey Makey, to our school library in Van Meter, Iowa through Skype.
With Doll-E 1.0 by Shanda McCloskey's new book being one of our all-time favorite books about a cool little maker, when we saw Colleen's....
....ideas for Making and Literacy with Doll-E 1.0, we knew this was the perfect tie in for our work with Makey Makey in the library this month too.  
I thought it would be so much fun for the 4th graders to not only learn more about Makey Makey with Colleen, but to learn how they could make a little doll or...
.... robot out of spare parts too.
She started our time together by talking about Doll-E 1.0 and pointing out the Makey Makey throughout the book.
This really sparked their interest and they couldn't wait to learn more.
Colleen went though how the Makey Makey works and even showed them how to....
...use Scratch to make the dolls and robots they were going to create....
...talk.
And we loved this tie in with Scratch since in Rotation 4 (in November and December) we will be focusing on coding, robotics and gaming with Hour of Code coming up in December. 

Our students LOVED Skyping with Colleen and learned so much!  It was great fun seeing what Colleen had created with Makey Makey and Scratch with her daughters.  They especially loved how they made stuffed animals talk.  

In fact, they loved it so much that they asked if they could bring in stuffed animals and things from home the next day to create their own dolls and robots out of spare parts and a few....
...new parts that I bought at Walmart the next morning before school.  
I was super excited to see what they would create with a few spare parts and a whole lot of imagination, inspiration and creativity! 
They got right to work with all of the materials we brought in.
And did amazing things with the stuffed animals they brought in, 
including programing them on Scratch to....

....talk, just like Colleen!

Take a look at all of the creating, coding and fun that went on that day....
We watched them try, succeed, fail, collaborate, communicate, create, play and become part of a community of makers....just like Charlotte in Doll-E 1.0! 
Not to mention the pride and happiness that shined through our students and...
...the amazing things they created on that day.
I hope this type of exploration, collaboration, creation, testing and fun inspired all of our makers even more during those two days.  The success of this day and the experience with Colleen is something we celebrated in so many ways.

We hope you and your students give it a try too!
You will find lots of free stuff on Shanda's site here including...
...the Balancing Doll-E Robot STEM Activity,
How To Draw Doll-E and Blutooth,
Doll-E Posters, and....
Doll-E Coloring Sheets! 
You will find a post on the author, Shanda McCloskey's site here too. 
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