Tag Archives: Brian Louie

Building Ballet Barres in Kindergarten

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Earlier this week, Ms. O’Brien’s Kindergarten class followed a blueprint, took measurements, and built two ballet barres with the help of Mr. Louie.

Ms. O’Brien shares:

Our class chose dance as their focus for the class emergent study. This study is based on the girl’s questions, observations, and interests. When possible, dance is integrated into all units of study (math, reading, writing, investigations/social studies, and social and emotional learning). In a ‘persuasive writing’ activity, the girls wrote a letter to Mr. Louie requesting his assistance in engineering a ballet barre for our classroom so the girls had a proper space to “warm up.” Mr. Louie accepted and guided the girls throughout the design thinking project.

Below is a photo of the written request from the students to Mr. Louie:

More about our Maker Program:

The Hamlin School Maker Program is designed to deliver moments of impact where girls engage in real world problem solving through Human Centered Design Thinking. Students become problem seekers, focusing on community empathy and collaboration, using ongoing client feedback to drive the direction of their projects. Through their Maker work, our girls work diligently with tools, while developing a new lens by which to see possibility, adaptation, and innovation.

 

 

 

 

Design Thinking with Power Tools

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Grade 8 students in the Design Thinking elective recently ended their semester. They diligently created projects with an emphasis on human-centered design. Human-centered design comes from students working with a client (teacher) to solve a problem. To start the process students needed to first empathize and ask others what their problems were, rather than assuming a preconceived solution. One Hamlin student worked with Ms. Curran to solve the problem of floor space in our science rooms. Together, student and teacher came up with the need for vertical shelving to store laptops.

Creating iterations and prototypes, the student eventually finalized the product design with regular input from the client/teacher. Band, miter, and circular saws, and other tools, were used to make the computer cart (shown in the photo).

-My project was to build a computer cart for the science labs. I was able to work with wood while having fun with my friends. I really liked using power tools and I would definitely do another project like this again in the future.

 

Making A Ukulele

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Grade 3 students are making ukuleles with their own hands, hearts, and creativity. Like so much in life, this project began as an idea.

Hamlin music teacher Kate Roseman states:

The idea for the ukulele project came from a conversation I had with Mark Picketts last year. During that conversation, Mark mentioned that there was a project like this at another school, and I got really excited about the potential of bringing it to Hamlin. Originally, I was thinking about doing this project with Grade 4, but when I mentioned it to Brandy (Garcia), she immediately became excited and said we had to do it with Grade 3. Brandy’s enthusiasm and passion has really brought this project to life! Making connections to art and poetry was something I wasn’t even thinking about.

With the help of design and maker teacher, Brian Louie, the vision is now under construction.

Mr. Louie had never made a ukulele before, but he was able to watch Instructable videos about the process and was excited to model taking risks for our students. Mr. Louie knows how to play the ukulele, so he already had a feel for the instrument.

Our students are working through the following to construct the ukuleles:

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