Designing with Tinkercad Codeblocks

Since Tinkercad Codeblocks have shown up in the past year, I’ve been awaiting for the right inspiration to use it in the classroom. Of course while I was blissed out in a yoga class, I saw a ceiling hanging that would make a fun project. My idea was for my 5th grade students to use Codeblocks to create simple shapes that could be strung together to make a fun mobile of sorts. My space has a power grid setup for my drop down power and I could see these bringing my makerspace to life. And it meant using brightly colored acrylic in the Glowforge!

I will be having each 5th grader come up with at least four shapes where they will be required to add areas for the fishing line to connect to the shapes, as well as cutouts to add dimension to the designs. Once they build the shapes, the first step is prototyping with cardboard to make sure the shapes were appropriately built.

I also love this project because the cutting time on the Glowforge doesn’t take very long. I look forward to seeing which colors the students chose!