Community Open House at Artscape Youngplace

Join Invention Squad and others for RECESS @ Artscape Youngplace
A Community Open House featuring:
Art * Live Music * Creation * Conversation * Performance * Arts Market * Food & Drinks

Starting at 4:30 pm
– Drop-in, hands-on kids and family-friendly programming by Invention Squad (until 6:30 pm)
– Informal tours of ULTRA-PARALLEL at the Koffler Gallery (until 10 pm)
– Arts market (until 9:30 pm)

Starting at 6:00 pm
– Community dinner (pay-what-you-can, until 7:30 pm)
– Exhibition Reception: TYPOLOGY’S Flights & Landings a two-part exhibition of work by three multidisciplinary artists from three different cities: Brooklyn-based Tamara Gayer, Berlin-based Christine Gedeon, and Toronto-based Janine Miedzik (until 8 pm) 
– SKETCH Working Arts for our Open Studio Showcase and Exhibition with live performances and artwork by youth involved in all of SKETCH’s programs (until 9 pm)
– Artists open studios
– Live melodic techno music with Juno-award nominee Arthur Oskan (until 10 pm)

Starting at 8:00 pm
– The Koffler Centre presents an artist talk with playwright Hannah Moscovitch and artist/architect, Philip Beesley
– Intergalactic Arts Collective presents a Double Bill of Dance:  “Sara does a Solo” by Sara Porter and “Experiment b” by Gerry Trent ham

AND MORE!

~illustration by Alicia Neuter

-text with thanks to AYP website

Design-a-thon 2014

Invention Squad ran this year's Design-a-thon at Niagara St. PS.

A team of talented designers ran hour-long workshops throughout the school to give the grade students a whole day of hands-on challenges. 

In the Fancy Footwear workshop, the kids designed and constructed their own shoes out of paper and glue. Students were asked to incorporate four different methods of creating strength using just these very limited materials. The kids made some amazing footwear- both fancy and functional!

The Critterville workshop challenged kids to build an animal home from picnic wear (plastic cutlery,  foam cups, paper plates, straws and coffee stirrers). The students explored how to join materials in novel ways to shape and stabilize their structure. We asked them to do this with no glue and as little tape as possible. This encouraged them to think about strength, balance and material manipulation-all critical  qualities for architects and builders. Despite the fact that kids love tape, some of them rose to this engineering puzzle! 

In Logomania, the students learnt some of the elements of graphic design and branding. They came up with vibrant pen drawings of logos for the Toronto Zoo, the Design-a-thon itself and Invention Squad.

In the Mouse House workshop students explored paper engineering to make pop-up houses. Many of them enjoyed painting their pictures in exuberant colours.

Robot Design was a very free-form workshop run by Walnut Studios and a couple of volunteer OCAD students. Students animated found materials to create a whole range of charming robots.

In the Skyscrapers workshop the design challenge was to build the tallest structure possible out of construction paper. Some of the groups formed teams and turned this into a competition. Students were introduced to concepts of mass, tension and compression and how to mitigate these using trussing and cross-bracing.  

Invention Squad would like to thank all the fabulous designers, volunteers and school staff who made this fun event possible!!

Tech Night Workshop

Thanks to all the participants of Invention Squad's Tech Night. It was great to learn how our teachers at Niagara Street are integrating the use of technological tools into their classes. We saw demonstrations of a Smartboard, Podcasts, Student Blogs and Wikis, iTouches and a pico-projector. Thanks to Principal Angela Marsh (who is a member of the Principals’ Technology Advisory Committee), Teacher-Librarian Kim Delamere and Grade 5/6 teacher Sophy Wong (who is a demonstration teacher for the TDSB for her use of MacBooks). Sephra Khan and the Niagara Eco Club made an excellent environmental display on the pros and cons of technology.

Some of you enjoyed Hands-on Activities provided (for free) by:

Howard Goldbach at our local Music Lesson Centre: the Toronto Institute for the Enjoyment of Music.
The Children’s Technology Workshop who run afterschool programs and summer icamps at the JCC.

Robot-Building was facilitated by Brian Cartwright-who is just a friendly bloke that I recruited to help at the last minute.

John Willis and Jacob Pickup-who presented circuit building.

Mikael and Chloe Sandblom demonstrated the web-based design program SketchUp, Floorplanner and GoogleEarth. You can see what our kids came up with above (check out the grand addition on the School).

Other help was provided by Jalen Patel (who turns out to be a computer whizz), Marcus and Lily Mazzulla, Dianne Smith, Kathleen Pellow-Harris, Shaniq, Betty Stewart and Kimberly Sorokiwsky.

The Parent portion of this event, including the cyberbullyGot2Go talk, was funded by a Pro Grant from the Ontario Covernment. The School Council funded the Mad Science Show.