This January, I’ll be co-teaching Making & DIY Culture, a JanTerm course at my school. Today I’m sharing the projects my teaching partner and I have chosen for 2017. The course is 18 days long, students take one course in that time, and we have several field trips planned in addition to these projects. I want to stress that pretty much every project here is something we found online. Links in the titles.

Wooden Crate

The project: Build a small crate using hand and power tools.

Why we chose it: This project serves a utilitarian purpose — students need a crate to hold parts while other builds are in progress and overnight. We also want to teach them to use the mitre saw, a hammer, and a drill.

Toy Take Apart

The project: Cut open and disassemble mechanical toys such as Tickle Me Elmo. Learn how they work. Reassemble working components into something else.

Why we chose it: We first learned of the Toy Take Apart from our lower school Design Thinking teachers but weren’t sure last year how the big kids we teach would respond. Yes, it was that popular. Kids hack apart mechanical toys to find motors, gears, speakers, and voice boxes. We challenge them to then reassemble those components into something totally new.

Plush Monsters

The project: Use Arduino LilyPad platform and felt to stitch a working circuit inside of a small plush toy.

Why we chose it: These little guys are so precious, they speak to a different type of maker than the more famous electronics or woodworking projects, and we get to to teach kids to sew. Side note: the most challenging part of this project last year was teaching 15 year olds to thread a needle. Who knew?

Glass Cutting & Etching

The project: Repurpose and personalize empty glass bottles into drinking glasses or candles.

Why we chose it: I’ve been dying to try this, so we added it. After a schoolwide wine bottle drive, we’re ready with over 100 empties (English teachers drink more than the rest of campus, combined, btw). My teaching partner and I have tested parts, but not all, of this project — which makes her nervous and me excited to finally get a personalized drinking glass.

PVC Trebuchet

The project: Build a working tabletop trebuchet out of PVC.

Why we chose it: We want kids to have some experience working with PVC and everyone loves a trebuchet project.

Arduino 8×8 LED Matrix

The project: Solder up a working LED matrix that’s controlled from an Arduino.

Why we chose it: It’s Arduino, a platform I love. Sure, LED matrices are available pretty cheaply but it’s got just enough soldering and Arduino programming in it to be interesting.

Raspberry Pi Photo Booth

The project: Brighten up parties with a photo booth based on the Raspberry Pi platform.

Why we chose it: Because Raspberry Pi was missing from the course and it’s a popular platform for makers, the end product is usable by our school community, and it scales fairly well to a group of 4 students. We plan to split the group so 2 kids work on the RasPi and 2 work on the housing & props.

Thrift Store Lamp

The project: Design and build a lamp out of nontraditional materials. Given $10 in thrift store materials and a make-a-lamp kit, can our students make a whimsical and usable lamp? Fingers crossed.

Why we chose it: This is our final project and pulls together several skills we taught during the course. It’s also our first time giving the kids so much flexibility with the design process.