Maker Advent Calendars – step by step building adventures #Makers #Making #Electronics #Homeschool
On the Adafruit Show & Tell show a couple weeks ago, Adafruit engineer Mike Barela showed some Advent calendars that are Maker oriented. So what’s what?
An Advent calendar is a special calendar used to count the days in anticipation of Christmas, essentially December 1 to 24. Many Advent calendars take the form of a large rectangular card with “windows”, consecutive doors are opened every day leading up to the 25th. Often the doors are distributed across the calendar in no particular order. The traditional calendar windows open to reveal an image, a poem, a portion of a story, or a small gift, such as a toy or a chocolate item (like the one below). But such calendars can also contain Maker oriented items, see examples below.
Maker Advent Calendars are a modern take on traditional calendars. Behind each door might be parts to make a car, a model, or something electronic.
- Conrad, a german company, has a number of these Maker oriented calendars aimed at learning Arduino, the Internet of Things.
- Lego also issues Advent oriented sets including Star Wars.
Each allows you to make something every day, either one item (Lego) or part of an exploratory journey (electronics) to a final product (model car).
Not limited to Advent! Great for step-by-step Making!
While these kits are marked as Advent calendars, they, being Maker oriented, can be done any time of year!
Say you want an educational experience, doing one activity at a time (or per day, etc.). These kits are perfect!
They would be appreciated by those learning, whether self guided via the instructions or perhaps in a classroom/home school environment.
Check out these type of calendars today, you’ll be surprised by what you find and can do.
from Adafruit Industries – Makers, hackers, artists, designers and engineers! http://bit.ly/2Ap54qP
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