In Tinkering, students explore materials, supplies, tools and concepts in an open-ended, adult-guided way. Past Tinkering sessions have involved making custom Minecraft controllers with Makey Makey, exploring linkage mechanisms with cardboard and brads, testing out paper circuits to make light-up cards and pictures, taking apart consumer electronics and toys to see what’s inside, and a multi-week construction of an elaborate Rube Goldberg device. Tinkering is where we try out new ideas as a group, and encourage one another as we try to get our thing to work.

Much of what we do in Tinkering is fine-motor intensive. Students should be able to properly use scissors well before signing up for Tinkering, in order to prevent a great deal of frustration for them on our projects.

Tinkering is very popular, and class size is limited. If this Tinkering session fills, another may be added – please let us know if you’re interested in a different date or time!

Engineering is Elementary introduces students to engineering and the engineering design process through hands-on classroom builds and experiments!

Engineering is Elementary introduces students to engineering and the engineering design process through hands-on classroom builds and experiments!

This year’s planned units of study are:

Catching the Wind: Designing Windmills (Fall Semester/Quarter One)

A Slick Solution: Cleaning an Oil Spill (Fall Semester/Quarter Two)

An Alarming Idea: Designing Alarm Circuits (Spring Semester/Quarter Three)

A Long Way Down: Designing Parachutes (Spring Semester/Quarter Four)

Hop To It: Invasive Species (Summer Semester / July-Aug)

You can read more about Engineering is Elementary at IfSpace here!

Join the IfSpace Invaders, our premier middle and high school robotics competition team! FTC is like a sports team for robots – each year, the FIRST organization dreams up a new challenge for our bot. We work as a team to strategize how to score the most points, design our mechanisms, assemble and tune the robot, CAD new parts and pieces, and program its operation. You don’t have to be an experienced roboticist to join FTC, however! We need team managers, graphic designers, team spirit leaders, historians, and all around hard workers to be successful as a group!

STEAM Lab is an opportunity for our Elementary aged student to explore STEAM through projects, experiments, and tinkering. Both in small groups and individually, students will work on designing and building, programming and predicting, hypothesizing and observing, and making connections between what happens in class and how things work in the world. This class is hands on, with different STEAM invitations presented each week.

We’re delighted to found the first Homeschool chapter of the Technology Student Association in Florida! As a group, students will explore different technologies as they choose the field in which they would like to compete. Learn more about the TSA and potential projects at their website here!