Fall 2014 Workshop Schedule: Niagara Street

Here's the schedule of events for our Fall workshop at Niagara Street School

Week 1: Toddler alert

Squeeze it, chew it, pull it, shake it.  Using colour and texture, invent a new toy for toddlers. 

Week 2 :Play as you go

Redesign the Niagara Street Playground.  Go ahead- add water features, nature zones, tree houses or crazy play structures.

Week 3: Spooktacular Light Show

Scare your friends by creating a ghostly chandelier, a haunted light sculpture, an illuminated decoration for Halloween.

Week 4: Evil Genius 

Invent a machine to catapult a marshmallow grenade across the playground. 

Week 5: Move over Lady Gaga!

Design an out-of-this-world outfit for a rock star super-hero.

Week 6: Rock-On!

Join the junk band: twanging, tooting, bashing, plucking your own hand-made instruments. 

Week 7: Game on

Designers test a new event or sport for the 2015 Pan-Am games.

Week 8: Structure challenge

Build a bridge that can hold an elephant.

Week 9: DEMO DAY

A showcase of the squad’s inventions and ideas for families and friends to see.

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.

Design-a-thon (2013)

This year, Invention Squad's all day school design event took place on November 22nd.

With help from a bunch of incredible volunteer designers, kids took part in a series of workshops. We made fantastic spaghetti structures, glittered hand-pots, taped cityscapes, up-cycled CD mobiles and school logos.  The idea of Design-a-thon is to immerse the students in a whole day of hands-on, creative activities. One kid described this as "the best day of the whole school year".     

Logo T

Invention Squad ran a design competition to challenge the school kids to create a new logo for the school t-shirt. The final design was a combination of the best ideas from the students and alludes to the "small school with a big heart". All of the kids were given a free t-shirt to wear on the last day of school!

Kinder Book Design

Fresh off the press: Invention Squad has collaborated with Kindergarten kids to produce their very own illustrated books. The books are called "The Important thing about Spring" and "What I Never Do".

Opening the pages of "What I Never Do" gives you that bitter sweet memory of being a little kid. All those things we tried once: throwing pizza on the wall, feeding our brother garbage and giving ourself a haircut-and weren't supposed to do. All those things we wished we could do: riding the ferris wheel, going to the beach, staying up all night and playing Mario Bros. 

And then there's the ones that are just so lovely...

Upcycled Furniture

Invention Squad ran an all day workshop for Grade 5 Clinton Street students. The brief was for teams of kids to work together and design, model and then build either a table or a chair. Constructing furniture -especially chairs-is one of our favourite challenges because it requires a delicate balance between ergonomics (a comfortable fit for the body) and artistry (a design that looks great).

In our workshop, students are given a chance to move from a 2D sketch to a small construction paper model and then scale it up to create a full size piece of furniture. This open-ended prototyping exercise requires thought about how to make a structure strong and stable and yet comfortable at the same time.

Some of the tables were attractive as well as functional. 

Fantasy Homes

You have been commissioned to plan a new dream house.  Your client is Harry Potter. Your client is the Prime Minister. Your client is an alien hamster. What does their new house look like? Is it made of wire, wood, candy or balloons? Does it have any special features: high tech hubs, indoor gardens or play zones? Here's some of the blueprints the student architects at Clinton Street Public School came up with in the Invention Squad planning workshop.

This design workshop asked the participants to consider how functionality relates to space, shape and layout. Who is using this space and what do they need to do in it? How big does everything need to be? How do people move around in the space?