Building a Space for 3- to 7-Year-Old Makers

It is afterschool time in the Creator Space. Four 10-year-old students are using the iPads to explore a tangram challenge on the Osmo app. An 8-year-old boy is navigating a Wonder Workshop robot around the space, sending it dodging under tables and chairs. Three girls from P4 are using beads and hot glue guns to make bracelets, and there is a steady stream of 6- and 7-year-olds building houses and rockets inside of the enclosed LEGO bench. With so many tools and materials to choose from, it is surprising that there are no children from the Kindergarten classrooms. Two 5-year-old girls from K3A walk through the space with Marina Benavente Barbon, their K3A teacher, on the way to the nurse. They look around and pause to ask older children what they are working on, but quickly lose interest and leave. Later, when asked why the Kindergarten classes don’t use the space throughout the day, Marina replies “it feels like a big-kids room.”

 

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