We have had a great month again in our Makerspace Program! Students have been busy exploring new projects, working on exciting and amazing creations, and having a blast trying new things! We have new participants this week as well and their enthusiasm can be overwhelming sometimes, but is very welcome!

Students continued working on perler bead creations, and their attention to detail as well as a healthy amount of patience is inspiring. We all cannot wait to see their finished projects.

StikBot creation studios continues to be an area of interest with the students and one of our students was able to present a stop-motion movie he created at home with his action figures. There were many requests to play the movie multiple times and many students were so inspired by that movie, we will soon have new stories and creations to watch in the near future.

Mr. Tyler is working on building a Makerspace Site for updates and postings about the program on the Andover School Web site. It will be linked from his classroom page and will be live soon. He hopes to showcase many of the projects that students have created and document student achievement with videos and photos on a regular basis.

We would also like to thank a current Proctor student, Nathaniel Dunbar, for graciously giving us his Lego Mindstorms collection for the students to use. All of the Makerspace students are very excited for more materials and resources to use!

Speaking of Lego Mindstorms, we had a bit of an impromptu Robot Battle the other day where students pitted their Mindstorm creations against each other. It was exciting to see students puzzling out how to set up the space and how to switch out parts on their robots to change the way they each tried to control the battle arena.

We are also always on the lookout for any new materials we could use for creating different things. Paper towel tubes, Standard Lego Kits, those green Lego building bases (we would love to create/build a lego wall for students to build on, so we could use quite a bit of these green boards). Mr. Tyler also plans to introduce students to Rube Goldberg machines and work with any who are interested in trying to build one. Plastic domino sets would be an awesome addition to the Makerspace program too.

Thank you also to the East Andover Town Library for generously allowing us to explore and try out 3D Doodler pens! The students were psyched to try out this new technology, and draw/create in 3D! Did you know that your local libraries often will have programs and opportunities available to students and town residents similar to a Makerspace program? The library is such a great resource to continue exploring and learning new things, just like a Makerspace, and unlike the Makerspace program, it is open every day! Be sure to visit your local library for these exciting (and FREE!) opportunities!