Structures: Designing Places to Play

Instructor: Jan Ham
Ages: 9-12
Four Thursdays, 10-11:30am

January 21st through February 11th

Tuition: $140.00

Non refundable materials fee: $50

Do you like to draw, build and play?

In this four-week hands-on design/build program you will develop and share your ideas for play spaces, treehouses, and whatever other great play places you can imagine. You’ll be building and testing structures, but you will also be using the Engineering Process of Design to develop your own unique ideas. Along the way you will try some ‘Structural Design Challenges' and ‘Archi-Math’ activities sharpen your STEAM skills

create scale people and landscapes

turn basic structures -- arches, columns, trusses and beams -- into play structures

draw sketches of your ideas design and draw scale site and play space plans

build and share great models of your play space.

This course, based on activities from Designing Playgrounds, includes access to a file on “Great Resources to Use On Your Own to Learn More About Architecture & Design,” a list of key Massachusetts STEM+Art+21st Century Learning Standards, and optional extension or homework activities. All supplies used in class are included in kits available for pick up.

This programming runs 4 Thursdays from January 21th and 28th, February 4 th and 11th.

A $75 non-refundable deposit will hold your place and be applied toward your tuition. Full tuition for this program is $140.00

Instructor Jan Ham, of the Children’s Design Studio, founded the Boston Society for Architecture’s K-12 Learning By Design in Massachusetts program, and taught an Architectural Studio course at UMass Lowell’s College of Engineering’s DesignCamp. She has seen, first-hand, the power of hands-on project-based learning; and believes that, given the opportunity, children are eager to, and wholly capable of, expressing their ideas about their world through design.