Maker Kits

As I read the article entitled “School Library Makerspaces,” by Canino-Fluit, I loved the idea of having a maker club, where students could come after school to create together. Any time a school can offer activities for children to participate in outside of school, I always appreciate that because it can even the playing field for children whose caregivers may not be able to provide them with as many experiences outside of school. As I was thinking about this, it made me realize that there are also kids whose parents may not be able to provide them rides home from a club. Perhaps the parents work and the kids must take the bus home and if they’re older kids, they may spend their afternoons alone at home until their parents come home. With this in mind, I found the concept of checking out maker kits to be a really great one! The possibilities are endless, and even if the budget may not allow, I can imagine many donatable things that would make for great maker kits to be checked out. You can honestly even throw together random objects, perhaps with a prompt to make something out of them. You could add to the items available slowly over time as well. You could have kits that are centered around certain curriculum, like STEM kits as well. Please check out this blog post by Jessica Lamarre from her blog, Library Makerspace, that is what had me begin to think about this:

http://librarymakerspace.blogspot.com/2018/11/our-most-popular-makerspacestem-kits.html

This post talks about the most popular checked out kits at this school. There are some great ideas here! As the mother of a son who begged for a ukulele last year and then never ended up playing it, I would have loved it if he had had the option to check one out at school to see if he really enjoyed it or not first! And how many kids would love to be able to check out a sewing kit to try? Arts and craft supplies can be expensive, so I love the idea that kids would be able to check some of these items that might otherwise be unavailable to them. I think it would also just create a buzz around checking things out in general, and create more library traffic.

(This photo of a Ukulele Maker kit is taken from Jessica Lamarre's Blog, Library Makerspace; http://librarymakerspace.blogspot.com/2018/11/our-most-popular-makerspacestem-kits.html )

(This photo of a Sewing kit is taken from Jessica Lamarre's Blog, Library Makerspace; http://librarymakerspace.blogspot.com/2018/11/our-most-popular-makerspacestem-kits.html )

Ana Canino-Fluit says in her article that

“Making at the library should be about helping your students identify the problems they want to solve and the things they want to create and teaching them to the use the tools they will need in order to do it” (2014).

That is why I think it would also be important to include some posters or infographics available to the students about how they might use the kits. I think a great idea would be to also suggest that each kit have a journal included where each student can write about their experience with the kit, and say what they used it for and if it was useful to them. As Kristin Fontichiaro points out in the article “What I’ve Learned from 7 years of the Maker Movement in Schools and Libraries,” keeping track of what works and doesn’t work, what is engaging the students and what isn’t, is an important part of any makerspace, so I think it would be important to include a way to do this for maker kits as well (Fontichiaro, 2019).

At first I wasn’t sure if the concept of maker kits counted as a concept related to makerspaces, since a huge part of makerspaces seems to be the collaboration between students, but I think that maker kits simply add to this by allowing students to do some exploring at home, and then bring those ideas back to school to discuss with their peers. This is something I would love to offer in my future school library one day! Here are some other great ideas for kits from Jessica Lamarre's blog:

(This photo of a Polymer Clay kit is taken from Jessica Lamarre's Blog, Library Makerspace; http://librarymakerspace.blogspot.com/2018/11/our-most-popular-makerspacestem-kits.html )

(This photo of a Knitting kit is taken from Jessica Lamarre's Blog, Library Makerspace; http://librarymakerspace.blogspot.com/2018/11/our-most-popular-makerspacestem-kits.html )

References

Canino-Fluit, A. (2014). School Library Makerspaces. Teacher Librarian, 41(5), 21–27.

Fontichiaro, K. (2019). What I’ve Learned from 7 Years of the Maker Movement in Schools and Libraries. Teacher Librarian (Vancouver), 46(4), 51–63.

Lamarre, J. (2018, November 15). Our most popular makerspace/STEM/Library of Things. Blogspot. http://librarymakerspace.blogspot.com/2018/11/our-most-popular-makerspacestem-kits.html