Let’s talk kindness! This collection is in honor of Fred Rogers from Mister Rogers Neighborhood. Mister Rogers taught children and adults emotional management, acceptance, tolerance, love and how to deal with the feelings inside that we just can’t put our finger on. He gave his advice to educators and members of the community to take a holistic approach to teaching the whole child and their spectrum of understanding. These lessons focus on expanding the educational topics of digital fabrication to social emotional ones as well.
3D Printed Mister Rogers Neighborhood Trolley
In this lesson students will design a 3D model of Mister Rogers Neighborhood Trolley. We will be looking at how he took a stand against racial inequality in 1969 when…
143 Pittsburgh’s Day of Kindness Vinyl Stickers
This lesson is a guided introduction to Mr. Rogers Day of Kindness. Students will create a vinyl sticker for their laptops, staff will assist in the design and fabrication of…
Mister Rogers Sweater Keychain
In this lesson students will design sweater keychains in honor of Mister Rogers. We will be looking at how his work in helping children develop socio-emotional skills inspired congress to…
about Wonderings from Pittsburgh
Mister Rogers spent his entire adult life teaching his audience racial justice, how to deal with difficult life events, and how to be kind to one another. I believe that it is our obligation as educators to democratize education to its fullest extent. The way I have found to do so is in bringing the life lessons that Mister Rogers taught me into the classroom.
IN THIS COLLECTION
These lessons are directly related to Mister Rogers and his ideological sensibilities on education and emotions. The first is a vinyl sticker that has the symbolic “143” on it. Mister Rogers always kept his weight at 143 pounds because there is one letter in “I”, four letters in “love”, and three letters in “you”. Next is a lesson outlining how to laser cut a keychain out of his beloved sweaters, which were all hand sewn by his mother. In the lesson we take a look at how he accomplished receiving 20 million dollars in funding for PBS just by discussing the emotional learning he did on his show with congress. And finally, a lesson to 3D print the famous trolley from his show taking the viewers into the “land of make-believe” while discussing the stand he took against racial injustice in the late 1960s.
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.