User Generated Education

Each summer, I teach a toy making and hacking camp for 3rd through 6th graders. It is three hours per day for five days. I enjoy offering “the public” similar activities as I do with my gifted students during the school year. I know there are rewards for the kids while engaging in hands-on/minds-on learning. I also get rewarded by observing students do activities I developed and/or found. I get such joy in witnessing:

• 100% engagement. All students were actively and joyfully engaged. It reinforced my belief that there is a human need to create. I wrote about this in The Magic of Making: The Human Need to Create.
• Their creativity. I was in awe about the directions they took with the activities; how much they added their selves to the base project.
• Their ability to create the project without direct instruction. About half of them were able to just fly with it without my assistance; by just studying my prototype.
• Their eyes light up when their projects worked as they envisioned them.
• Their interest in their peers’ projects.
• How valuable experiential learning is. I wrote about this in The Imperative of Experiential and Hands On Learning:

The Camp Projects

Through the five-day camp, I offered the campers the following activities:

• Stomp Rockets
• Gliders
• Galton Board
• Bead People
• Box Foosball
• Bobsleds
• Fingerboards
• Pizza Box Pinball Machines
• Toy Take Apart and Repurposing

There were 20 campers with a $400 budget equalling $20/camper for mostly consumable materials. About 1/3 of that was used to purchase used battery-operated toys for the final activity – toy take apart and repurposing.

The following slide deck provides an overview of the camp activities. I used it to present the activities to the campers.

Stomp Rockets

The materials and supplies list and the directions for making stomp rockets can be found at https://www.instructables.com/Stomp-Rockets-1/

Using stomp rockets as a first activity was a great way to start off the week. It was high impact, and the campers enjoyed watching how high they travel.

Foosball Games

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The materials and supplies list included:

• Glue (any kind with work)
• 10 Clothespins
• A Shoebox (or a small box 4 ½ inches tall, 8 inches wide, and 13 inches long)
• 4 wooden Dowels
• A Ping Pong Ball or Toy Soccer Ball
• A Sharpie or Pen
• A Knife A Ruler

Directions for making it can be found at https://www.instructables.com/Shoebox-Foosball-Table-1/

The campers liked both making and playing the game. I was happy to show them how to use rulers to insure proper construction which integrated math directly into the activity. It was also fun to hear how they played the game with their families during the evening.

Galton Boards

The materials and supplies list included:

• Printable
• Cork or poster board
• Hot Glue
• Push Pins
• Craft sticks 
• Round beads – 1/4″

Directions for this activity can be found at https://abakcus.com/diy/how-to-make-a-galton-board/

I like how Galton Boards directly incorporate math concepts, and how fun it is to watch the beads drop. This was a totally untested activity but want to give it a try. It wasn’t successful. I think a few campers liked it, but overall, the struggle making it didn’t equal the rewards.

Bead People

The materials and supplies were simply beads of various sizes, bead wire, and wire cutters.

Since I knew making the Galton Board would be a challenge for some of the campers, I offered them the choice to make bead people. There are pretty simple to make, but here are some directions – https://workshopsessayer.com/diy-bead-dolls/.

Most of the campers really liked making their bead people. A few weren’t quite successfully, so it follows that they didn’t enjoy it.

Paper Bobsleds and Bobsled Runs

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The materials and supplies list included:

• 100 lb. cardstock – one or two pieces (plus straight track template [5 to 8 sheets] and curved track template [4 to 5 sheets] printed on the cardstock)
• Old double AA batteries (2)
• Optional – 3” wide packing tape (for tracks; to make them smoother)
• scissors
• hot glue

I created an Instructable tutorial which can be found at https://www.instructables.com/Paper-Bobsledding/

The campers seemed to enjoy making the bobsleds but making the tracks work correctly proved a bit difficult for them. I don’t believe I would use this activity with elementary-level students in the future

Fingerboards

Here are the directions I created for this activity:

As I predicted, at the end of the camp many of the campers expressed that this was their favorite camp activity.

Pizza Box Pinball Machines

I created an Instructable tutorial, Cardboard Pinball Machine Using a Pizza Box, Strawbees, and a Micro:bit, for this activity which includes the needed materials and directions, and can be found at https://www.instructables.com/Cardboard-Pinball-Machine-Using-a-Pizza-Box-Strawb/.

This was a fun and successful activity for most of the campers. It did require lots of iteration which was okay for the majority but proved too much for a few. Also, for some there wasn’t enough time to add the micro:bit scoreboard and servo-driven flipper.

Toy Take Apart and Repurposing

The materials include old battery operated handheld games and/or stuffed animals, various size screwdrivers, and low temp glue guns/glue.

I have done this activity on several occasions with my gifted students. See more at https://usergeneratededucation.wordpress.com/2017/04/08/toy-take-apart-and-hacking/ and https://usergeneratededucation.wordpress.com/2022/05/23/toy-take-apart-and-repurposing-a-creative-problem-solving-lesson/.

I always end this camp with this activity. The campers love taking apart the battery operated toys and creating new ones. They are told to make prototypes of new toys using the parts of from their (and their co-campers parts). As is typical, though, a few campers had some difficulty being creative with their new creations.