Makerspace Mayhem Pt. 1

One of my professional goals at the beginning of this school year was to create an after school club for the Lower School students. Lego was my weapon of choice, and after speaking with the other librarians and Head of Lower School, I got the go ahead to start work on my Lego club. As excited as I was, I still felt like maybe Lego was too narrow for our students. While the majority of the younger ones love Lego, to the point of shouting "CHIMA!" upon seeing a tiny poster we had hanging, I thought maybe Lego could fit into a grander scheme of things.

Like I wrote before, I attended a workshop about Makerspaces that left me with the impression that it was truly the way to go. Lego is part of it, but its such a broader scope of activities that I think it would be great. The other library staff have suggested having monthly themes. For this first month, however, I think I might have them just "explore" and see what happens.

It could be a disaster.

But it will not be.

In order to have room to store all of the supplies, most of which I snagged from my mom's craft cabinets, we are doing some major shifting. Our library was so discombobulated when we got here and we have fixed most of it. There were some sections that we were still clinging on to that needed to change. Here's the (kind of) before picture of our reference/random/audio book shelf in the Learning Commons area:

 

Tah-Dah!

Here it is. The pile o' junk on the left is all remnants of my formative years. Its kind of special for me to let these kids use the stuff that used to make me oh-so-happy. If you look at our bookshelf, you'll see on the left a bunch of country and state books. We're going to put them out in the main collection so kids can actually get to them. 

The middle section contains audio books, which a lovely parent volunteer is helping me shelve as I write this out. The Everybody audio books are on top of the Everybody bookshelves, since most of them are in slim cases that will only cause more chaos than necessary. We talked about getting a basket to put them in, too.  The JF audio books will be shelved with the JF titles as well. I think its great that we are keeping them still. People say CDs and DVDs are "dead media", but you would be surprised at how many people still use these and feel more comfortable with them--even kids! Now that they can see the audio books out, I think it will give them an even greater variety to choose from.

The right used to be our reference section. Yes, you read that correctly--USED TO BE. I interfiled what I thought kids would actually read and weeded the rest. That means we have a dog (or maybe cat?) encyclopedia that I kept, along with a dino pop up book. 

Since this portion is more about logistics (AKA where the heck are we going to fit all this stuff), I can now get started focusing on our activities. The one thing I really want to get is a potholder loom. Its lame, probably, but these kids may not even know that's a thing! They also have all kinds of other looms like for scarves and whatnot. 

This is only the beginning. After e-mailing the Head of LS my plans, he said we can do the first one this month. Time to get my rear into gear! I will be finishing out reorganizing and taking tally of what we have and don't tomorrow. Perhaps I'll even get the chance to go to Michael's or something. 

And so...

The Mayhem begins.