The Fab-in-a-Box Curriculum serves as an excellent starting point for introducing the Fab-in-a-Box cart to both learners and educators. This collection of engaging lessons is designed to get everyone started with digital fabrication, using the cart’s 3D printer, laser cutter, and vinyl cutter.
Fab-in-a-Box Balsa Glider
Students will design and fabricate a glider. Test its flight, then optimize their design by adjusting the shape of its wings, tail, or body. This activity will introduce two…
Fab-in-a-Box Dice
Design your own 3D-printable dice! Use CAD (computer-aided design) software to build out an idea in three dimensions. Choose your dice geometry and decide what to put on each face.…
Fab-in-a-Box Spinning Tops
Give engineering a spin: experiment with physics while designing and fabricating a custom spinning top! Get hands-on with energy, force, and momentum as you experiment with different 3D-printed designs. How…
Fab-in-a-Box Botanical Press
Combine art and science: customize and fabricate a botanical press that can be used over and over again to preserve leaves and flowers for crafts or dissection.
Fab-in-a-Box Stamps
Students will embark on a creative journey to design a personal logo that reflects their (or a brand’s) unique identities and values. By combining graphic design principles with self-reflection, they…
Fab-in-a-Box Invention Kits
Create your very own invention kit! Design and laser cut a set of two-dimensional shapes that can slot together to make three-dimensional structures. Finished kits can be used for…
Fab-in-a-Box Pop-Up Cards
Explore math, form, and function while engineering pop-up paper art. Use a vinyl cutter to make two-dimensional artwork “pop!” Add score and cut lines to cardstock to fabricate custom, folding…
Fab-in-a-Box Stickers
Design and fabricate your very own custom stickers! Use digital CAD software to bring your ideas to life before cutting them on the vinyl cutter. Whether you’re a budding graphic…
about Fab-in-a-box
Fab-in-a-Box provides an affordable, turnkey solution that includes all necessary tools, materials, and comprehensive teacher guides. Optimized for various settings—classrooms, after school programs, clubs, scouting groups, summer camps, museums, libraries, and community centers—this curriculum empowers users to dive into the world of digital fabrication with confidence and ease.
IN THIS COLLECTION
The Fab-in-a-Box Curriculum offers three distinct engagement levels, making it adaptable across various formal and informal contexts, regardless of the audience’s age. Each level is designed to cater to different time constraints and ability levels, with handouts generally provided for all. The Exposure level requires the lightest effort and shortest time, with many pre-supplied files and materials. The Engagement level involves a medium effort, longer duration, or more advanced concepts, with adjustable files for parametric design. The Deep Dive level demands the most effort and longest duration, often spanning multiple sessions with minimal or no pre-supplied files, and may include multiple parts. Activities include vinyl cutting for stickers and paper pop-ups, laser cutting for invention kits, stamps, and botanical presses, and 3D printing for spinning tops, dice, and casting & molding projects. Some activities, like automata and gliders, utilize a combination of tools, ensuring a comprehensive hands-on learning experience.
Desk Calender
This series of lessons will take you thhrough how to make a Desk Calender using the Brother ScanNcut.
January 13, 2025
Lantern
This series of lessons will take you through step by step how to make a Tea Light Lantern using the Brother ScanNCut.
January 13, 2025
Shadow Theatre
Lessons with 5 graders about shadow theatre. Learners listen short Fairy-tale “The Foolish Man” by famous Armenian writter Hovhannes Tumanyan, Draw an illustrative picture of the Fairy-tale, they can draw…
January 11, 2025
Spin Your Way to Reading Adventure
This lesson is designed to help students review the various genres they’ve learned about and to create some excitement about reading outside their comfort zone. Prior to this lesson students…
January 3, 2025
Social Emotional Learning + Stencils
Students develop a list of things they for which they are grateful. Once created, students chose one or more designs to visually illustrate their gratitude using a graphic design program.…
January 3, 2025
Project Planning with Physical Computing
Students plan and create their own whole-class whole-term project using Circuit Playgrounds and the Digital Fabrication tools available to them.
December 30, 2024
Magnetic Code Poetry
Create poetry from magnetic pieces that have scraps of code on them, such as ++ *= for ( and { as well as more usual poetry words that are code…
December 28, 2024
Make a statement
In this lesson, students will use the engineering design process to make an item that promotes an environmental or social justice message. The students will research an area of interest…
December 13, 2024
understanding plant life cycle
During this lesson, I showed students the life cycle of a plant, using the example of an apple, and since the students had no experience with digital production, I showed…
December 11, 2024
Christmas Cards
This series of lessons will take you through how to make a Christmas card using the Brother ScanNCut and the circuit playground express. These lessons can be adapted to be…
December 8, 2024
CO2 Dragsters
In this series of lessons, you will take students through the design and production processes in order to create their own CO2 Dragster. As a class, you will design a…
December 7, 2024
Fab-in-a-Box Balsa Glider
Students will design and fabricate a glider. Test its flight, then optimize their design by adjusting the shape of its wings, tail, or body. This activity will introduce two…
December 3, 2024
Fab-in-a-Box Dice
Design your own 3D-printable dice! Use CAD (computer-aided design) software to build out an idea in three dimensions. Choose your dice geometry and decide what to put on each face.…
December 3, 2024
Fab-in-a-Box Spinning Tops
Give engineering a spin: experiment with physics while designing and fabricating a custom spinning top! Get hands-on with energy, force, and momentum as you experiment with different 3D-printed designs. How…
December 3, 2024
Fab-in-a-Box Botanical Press
Combine art and science: customize and fabricate a botanical press that can be used over and over again to preserve leaves and flowers for crafts or dissection.
December 3, 2024
Fab-in-a-Box Stamps
Students will embark on a creative journey to design a personal logo that reflects their (or a brand’s) unique identities and values. By combining graphic design principles with self-reflection, they…
December 3, 2024STANDARDS-ALIGNED
Community contributed lessons aligned with Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) offer formal educators innovative pathways to teaching content knowledge. The Fab I Can Statements are a resource to develop technology-literate learning progressions to align with content standards.
FAB TESTED
Periodically lessons are adapted and tested by the Fab Foundation team based on a call for submissions from fabbers, educators, and makers. Our inaugural set of lessons for the SCOPES-DF project were Fab Tested in 2016 and are tagged Fab Tested on the website.
OPEN-SOURCE VALUES
Lessons are distributed under a Creative Commons CC BY-NC license, that permits free use and re-purposing by others.