Hanzlik Hands On Academy Continued from What Is Your Why page.

The purpose of the grant is to support teachers who will instruct or expose kids to the areas of design and build activities to incorporate a hands-on learning experience within their classroom curriculum for areas such as physics, math and science through a Maker Space in connection with the Lawrence College and Career Center.

Maker Spaces are community centers with tools that combine manufacturing equipment, materials and education for the purposes of enabling students to design, prototype and create manufactured works for hands-on-learning activities.

Hillcrest fourth-grade teacher Tyler Gill and then-librarian Christina Brumfield, applied for the grant and were awarded $2,820 to cover material costs and bussing to the LCCC.  They said the opportunity to participate in this activity was extremely valuable to the kids.

“One thing they got out of this was that building and spending days working and not doing pencil and paper stuff is hard,” Gill said. “They definitely learned some cooperative skills and team-building skills… They had to be creative and use the problem-solving and creative thinking parts of their brain… We definitely grew from day one to day three.”

Gill said it was great for them to put their classroom learning into a real activity.

“They were able to see a lot of what we did in science class in action,” he said. “They had to apply what they learned here. I think this grant is fantastic. Any chance we get to expose kids to things they are not usually involved with is a win-win for everyone.”