Celebration and Showcase

This past Saturday we celebrated the journey of the Pono STEAM kits. Over Hawaiian food and music, we discussed community issues and education.  A range of the projects were showcased in my hale makerspace for visitors to see and the pond became a children's gathering spot. The day started off rainy and windy, but became sunny by the end of the gathering. While many of the community educators I invited could not attend due to conflicting events last Saturday, 25 people came over the course of the three hour event. Many were from the neighborhood and an Advisory Board member, Skye Haraga, also joined us. 

 

Gathering in the lanai garage during the rain at the beginning of the celebration.

The pond right next to the garage is a spot children gravitate to during workshops and it was no different during the celebration. Youth of the neighborhood collected water samples and observed tiny organisms in the pond using Foldscope paper microscopes.

 

 

These Foldscope paper microscopes will be part of the offerings in Nest Makerspace's new Lil Lab set up facing the street next to my hale makerspace. The Pono STEAM kits will also be available in this little share science library.

 

Above is the newly almost completed Lil Lab that will house Pono STEAM kits and other shared materials. The bamboo pole running through the little sharing library will be a place to hang leis, kits on strings, and moss kokedama. The Pono STEAM kits will placed inside the little structure for people to take and share. I informally polled interest in what to include in the sharing space. Many of the elders were very interested in the moss ball kokedamas hanging in my garage and these started a discussion of future workshops and interest in these being a part of Lil Lab offerings. Children were interested in the seaweed bioplastic, chalk and especially the solar bots. I sent a few home with the solar bot kits. Once the Lil Lab is completed, I will be attaching it to a tree stump on the edge of the yard facing the street. Currently I am working on finalizing the Pono STEAM kit lesson plans and posting them to this web page by the end of August as a free resource.

 

Pono STEAM kit webpage with step by step postcards and lesson plans

 

a neighborhood child came back with fish to add to the pond that she collected from Manoa Stream. A niu weaving in my makerspace that a child was interested in. Future kits will include niu (coconut) weaving explorations.

 

Samples of the Pono STEAM kit activiites were showcased both in the garage and in the Nest Makerspace. I gave little tours of the hale makerspace where most of the activities were displayed. Here above is the hua moa and kukui nut chalk activity from early in the gathering. The celebration was a great opportunity to meet more neighbors and educators from local public schools and to gauge interest across ages in the range of activitiy themes.

 

Above are some of the initial Pono STEAM kits that will be shared in the Mānoa Valley Lil Lab. Small moss kokedamas and niu (coconut) cube weaving mateirals and instructions will also be included.

My next and final post for this project will be a final summary, completed activity resources, and next steps along this path of growing a body of open source Hawaii place based STEAM activities.

I am very grateful for the opportunity to have a community celebration event and to be able to send everyone home with some chicken luau, kalua pork, homemade manju and haupia. Since the celebration, we have been gifted home-grown avocados, flowers, oranges, and fish for our pond. I believe this sharing is one metric of success of the project; the sharing of local bounty is a part of place-based connections and knowledge sharing that will continue to inform and expand the Pono STEAM kit resources and activities.