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Cambridge Science Festival: Earth Day Makerspace Mashup

Cambridge Science Festival KIBO activity
The Lesley Makerspace hosted two hands on making events as part of the Cambridge Science Festival. The festival boasts ten days of STEAM-related activities across the wider Boston area, including lectures, debates, plays, workshops, exhibits, and more.

On Friday, April 22nd, the Lesley STEAM Team rang in Earth Day with a morning session geared towards the youngest of makers. Students from kindergarten through fifth grade were invited to transform a space at Lesley into an interactive aquarium. Parents and their children engaged in a bristlebot fish challenge, programmed their customized KIBO robots to swim through the ocean, constructed a life size coral reef from recyclables, and developed underwater soundscapes in Scratch.

Cambridge Science Festival littleBits activity
In the afternoon session, older makers (6th grade – high school) constructed and programmed Lego WeDo and EV3 recycling robots, created stop motion animation videos, and created littleBits robots to explore switches, sensors, and a host of electrical inputs/outputs. It’s always a highlight to watch parents collaborate with their children in design thinking challenges, and this event was no exception. Parents and teens spent the entire two and a half hour session engaging in the design/redesign process, particularly with the littleBits challenge to create a robotic trash collection vehicle.