We Love Making Stuff
Building as a way of learning
Project Make-It started in 2015 when Eric Eskelsen and I, Amos Curlee, founded the Make-It Workshop at New City School in the St. Louis Central West End. The Make It-Workshop is a maker based STEAM afterschool program. We teach kids to 3D print, solder, cut, wire, etc while building individual and team projects.
Every year Eric and I look for a team project that we think is good enough to invite other afterschool programs to participate with us. Project Make-It Mini-Golf was born out of that process. We loved how the kids gravitated to cardboard construction. The simple format made coding, mechanics, and electronics tangible and easy. Our students dropped right into different jobs on their teams. We could not wait to see how other kids responded to the challenge.
Growing our Community
New City School, Mathews-Dickey, & Herbert Hoover Boys’ & Girls’ Club.
New City School is proud to partner with New City School, Mathews-Dickey, & Herbert Hoover Boys’ & Girls’ Club this Fall to participate in Project Make It: Mini-Golf. The program will start in the fall and each team will build 1 mini-golf hole for the course. At upon completion, we will gather all the holes at one location for a celebration, competition and a virtual award ceremony.
We feel that it is important for us to learn from each other. We want the kids to see what others are building to help and fuel everybody.
Play, Practice, Mastery
The evolution of learning
Sometimes playing is the easiest way to teach the basics. If you’re having fun, you won’t even realize you’re learning. If you like what your doing you will want to practice the details. Practicing the details and playing will lead to mastery.
Through STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, & Math) Project Make It introduces robotics and coding to students by creating fun stuff. By making a project fun you increase the chance they will want to learn the hard stuff.
