I Made This Myself

"Don't you love it when a plan comes together?" That saying John "Hannibal" Smith used to use on the "A Team" television show expresses the feeling I got when I read about the MakerMovement that encourages children to build what they imagine and crowdfunding by a Kickstarter, RocketHub, or Kiva. Since there is a way for anyone to find investors, anyone in the world who has an idea for a new app, 3D printer creation, programmable device, or, what one visionary has proposed, an automated factory on the moon, now has an opportunity to raise the money needed to make an innovation a reality.


     In an interview conducted by station KQED (kqed.org) in Northern California, Dale Dougherty, CEO of MakerMedia and editor of MAKE magazine, told how he began promoting hands-on learning at a Maker Faire in 2006 and later at MakerCon conferences. He is devoted to the idea that tinkering with the tools and materials for making things can be fun.

     Project Zero, a research study developed by Harvard's Graduate School of Education and tested by classroom teachers in Oakland, California, aims to inspire students to be curious about the designs that make things and nature work. When students looked at a pencil and a snail, they began to ask questions, not only about how they worked, but also what kind of designs could help them do a better job. Some youngsters even suggested ways to make life better for the snail. And there was a crossover to discover the new words needed to describe a design process and to defend ideas of how things are made.

     Since schools can't do everything, there is a greater role for parents, childcare, Boys and Girls Clubs, 4H, community centers, church youth groups, and scouting programs. They can provide the things kids need to help them create, perform, and learn: blocks, LEGOs, Tinker Toys, Erector Sets, computers, 3D printers, pottery wheels, found objects, cameras, watercolors, easels, musical instruments, a stage, and garden plots. It's rather expensive, but, for $16.95 per month, tinker.kiwicrate,com/inside-a-crate will send students, 9 to 16+, a hands-on STEM (science, engineering, technology) inspired maker project.

    Making all kinds of materials available to students helps them discover new possibilities. That's reason enough to provide a place to cook, bake, sew, make jewelry, and knit. Inspired by puffy sourdough and flatter pizza dough an artist combined them and twisted, carved, and painted them into what became an octopus sculpture. A businessman inspired children to create sculptures out of the shredded documents he dumped into a pail of water.

     According to experiments at Hanyang Cyber University in South Korea, involving the body in learning also helps improve memory needed in any subject. When hands manipulate objects, for example, the brain has more cues to remember what was learned. When my mother was a math consultant for the Chicago Public School System, the first thing she did when she visited a school was observe what manipulative devices were in use. If she saw few or none, her next step was to try to find the supply room or closet where they were kept, because she knew that after the Russians sent up Sputnik, the federal government funded purchases of many such devices to aid learning math. I remember seeing one of my favorites, a scale that allowed kids to balance numbers on one side with those on the other. A big "5", for example, would equal a little "2" and "3" on the other side.

      Earlier blog posts have related ideas. See "Transform Spaces into Creative Places," "Back to the Land," "Tin Can Art," and "Global Drawing Power."

Music of the Sphere

Music, as I write about it here, is not the "music of the spheres" used in the Medieval sense that the Sun, Moon, and planets emitted a harmony of inaudible hums,  but it is the music of our earthly sphere that transcends national boundaries.

     The Gangnam Style of South Korea's PSY and the earlier popularity of the Spanish Macarena testify to music's universal appeal. How often we see Mexico's Mariachi bands in movies and music videos! TIME magazine (January 28, 2013) noted that U.S. musician, Sixto Rodriguez, recently learned that his recordings were as popular in South Africa as those of Bob Dylan and the Beatles. Canadians, Justin Bieber and Carly Rae Jepsen, have no doubt they are popular in the United States.

     Listening to Mozart may or may not help children mature or develop a higher IQ, but music definitely can transport young listeners to different cultures. New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art store (store.metmuseum.org) sells a "Global Glowball" that enables children six months and older to light up and play a regional song when they touch one of 39 areas on the globe. Babies also can shake their rattles to the Latin rhythms of the samba, cha cha, rumba, salsa, and bossa nova, and they can fall asleep listening to a lullaby passed down from immigrant ancestors. Later, they can learn to play an instrument according to the method developed by Japanese musician, Shinichi Suzuki, polka around the house, and play musical chairs to Tchaikovsky's "Nutcracker Suite" or the South African township rhythms on Paul Simon's "Graceland."

     Just as we did, children can learn to identify orchestra instruments by listening to a recording or live performance of "Peter and the Wolf" by Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev. Kids also can listen to 10 classic children's songs on their own wind-up Fisher-Price Record Player, recommended for children 18 months and older and available at YoungExplorers.com. Nowadays, they even might to learn to play instruments from other countries. For a Jamtown bag of fair trade world music instruments the whole family can play, go to multiculturalkids.com. Or check out the list of pan flutes sold by boliviamall.com, the global music gift basket of a hand drum, flute, tambourine and ju-ju seed shaker from SERRV (serrv.org/1-800.422.5915) or the rainsticks, maracas, and didgeridoos at musiciansfriend.com.

     Children also can play music on homemade instruments, like those spoons that can bang out rhythms on pots and pans and combs that serve as harmonicas when covered with tissue paper. In the news 9/20/2013 was the variety of bottles someone in Copenhagen uses to play Mozart. TIME magazine (May 27, 2013) mentioned that astronaut Don Pettit had made a didgeridoo out of an International Space Station vacuum cleaner hose. TIME also reminded us that globalization may be only the first stop in the universe, since Chris Hadfield, from the International Space Station, serenaded Earth with David Bowie's "Space Oddity."

    Music can bring people together around the world. After years when the Taliban banned music in Afghanistan, concert goers in Washington, D.C. and New York City recently had an opportunity to hear boys and girls playing traditional and other instruments together in the 48-member Afghan Youth Orchestra. When traveling around the world, be on the lookout for museums that are devoted to musical instruments. I was surprised to read that there is A World of Accordions Museum in Superior, Wisconsin, that not only features accordions from Europe, Japan, and Africa but also houses the piano, organ, guitar, and accordion method books by Willard "Bill" Palmer that have been translated into 17 languages. You can read more about this interesting museum at museum.accordionworld.org.

     When my daughter was young, I remember reading that a good ear for music indicates a child may find it easy to pick up languages. In case there is something to that, you might want to go to the blog post, "How Do You Say?" to pick up some ideas for introducing youngsters to foreign languages.