Term 1, 2022
We had a chaotic start to the year with the first two weeks of school delayed due to the pandemic. Over the following weeks many students and staff were absent due to being close contacts or having Covid-19, and had to isolate and work from home. Then in Week 6 the school was closed for several days due to the floods. Despite all of that, we had a great Term 1 in Makerspace, creating, exploring, learning new skills and making friends.
Week 3 – Makerspace started the new year with getting to know you activities – giant colouring-in, badge making, playing games, making puzzles and origami were very popular for our new Year 5s and Year 6 .
Week 4 – Valentines waterfall heart cards challenged the students and they made these movable cards for their friends and family.
Week 5 – Black-out poetry. Students chose a page from a book and found words from that page to make a poem. Then they obscured any words not needed for the poem from the page and designed an artist design to complement their poetry.
Prizes were awarded to the best black-out poetry. Our judges were the Head of English, Head of Art and Head of Middle School. All the entries were displayed it the library. Congratulations to our winners.
Week 6 – Makerspace students had a great week with Spheros, robotic balls that can be coded. Students used block code to give their Sphero instructions eg. light up, change colour, go in a particular direction, at a particular speed, turn and even make sounds. We had lots of fun and some run away Spheros, so we corralled then into an area to test out our our coding instructions.
Weeks 7 & 8 – Macramé is always a super popular activity in Makerspace. This term the students had two challenges. A macramé mermaid tail pattern to make a key chain. Students found this very challenging but with lots of concentration and persistence they produces some beautiful designs. The following week the students learned some more traditional macramé knots to make a bag tag, using a square knot pattern or a spiral twist with an optional bead.
Week 9 – Makerspace students have been looking at First Nations artist, Chloe Webb’s design for Wingaru Egg Baskets. Wingaru Kids provides quality teaching resources with content created by First Nations people in an engaging format so that students can learn authentic and accurate knowledge about First Nations culture, the world’s oldest continuous living culture.
Week 9 – In conjunction with students around the world, All Hallows’ students devoted part of their lunchbreak on Friday to conduct a Sit-In to protest for Climate Justice. At an international level, these events demand that our politicians take our future seriously and treat climate change as what it is: a crisis.
The students collaborated and created, making their posters for the Climate Sit-In in Makerspace.
At a local level, it is hoped that the messages about this crisis reaches our own students and encourages them to make small changes to their habits in order that they can contribute to climate justice themselves. Our newly launched Environmental Sustainability Plan outlines our school targets to promote sustainability on our site. This year our focus is on waste management and recycling. We can make a difference one piece of rubbish at a time.
Week 10 – The students made funky bunnies with amazing patterns and bright colours while concentrating on meticulously mindful colouring, chatting to friends and singing along to our Makerspace playlist. Makerspace is a creative and joyful space to be.
