Santa Maria has a new place students can come to play/explore/create/learn through hands on activities. This new space is called Makerspace!

The girls will have two projects to work on each term. During Term 2, girls are making LED bracelets and taking apart some machines.

As well as this, there are some STEM kits available for students to learn with, including the Littlebit kits, we also have lego and the LEGO EV3 robots will be available too.

In this space students are not specifically taught but encouraged to learn through experience, trial and error, and play.

Makerspace is available to all students but targeted specifically to Years 5 – 8 students at the moment. There is no commitment, students can participate at any time and enjoy what is on offer.

The first session held on Monday was overwhelmingly popular. The girls worked on three different activities. Some were starting to make LED bracelets, which involved sewing with conductive thread; this makes the bracelet light up when worn.

Another group were building an invention from the LittleBits Steam Student kit, using snap together circuitry. The final activity was using the Littlebits Droid kit to build the Starwars R2D2 and then bringing it to life with LittleBit electronic blocks. Students use an app to program the droid with some block-based programming and try to complete some of the 22 missions available.

Makerspace is held at lunchtime on Monday and Thursday in the library café.