Exploring with Strawbeeze at Meadowridge & Alicia Ashman

We have to start this post with a little bit of a confession. Strawbees was a Maker Kit that was suggested to us by one of our youth services librarians who had seen with at a booth at last year's Milwaukee Maker Faire. We were looking for ideas and enthusiastically ordered a Strawbees die cut machine and jumped in. But when we got our hands on it, we got all grown-upy and boring. We got all doubtful. And then we gave them to kiddos. 

We quickly learned this kit has a way of evoking the wildest and silliest of creations, such as this young kiddo's helmet with arm attachments our a new version of King Triton from under the sea. Who knew you could make so many fun things with only two materials: recycled plastic and straws.

Not to mention introducing great new geometry words like cubes, angles, or you know dodecahedron...
          
Once we got our grown-up out of our system, we have embraced strawbees as an awesome building and exploratory maker opportunity. And we learned our lesson: Always trust your awesome youth services librarians. They know what's up.

Haven't made something with Maker Corps yet this summer? Check out when we'll be at your local library on our website! 

The strawbees company has these awesome instructions for basic shapes, but we added our own flare with inspiration card and challenges. Those wings look like they're coming along! 

We've seen some great inter-generational making happening in our programs this summer. Mom can't resist making her own creation! 

We've added an extra element to our design with the addition of bendy straws! What an awesome robot creature!