Makerspace at Stonybrook Middle School is tapping into the creativity and imagination centres of Grade 5 and 6 students.

Teacher Trevor Neufeld says the class presents students with a challenge and offers them the opportunity to gain new skills and knowledge in areas of creating projects and problem-solving. Neufeld says the projects are related to a set curriculum or task outcome and skills learned are transferable to Grade 7 and 8 Industrial Arts classes.

"Students often notice things that I don't. I think I'm often expecting a set outcome and it's possibly because, if it's a project I've completed a few times, I feel like I know what will happen. Students will sometimes do things differently then I will want them to or expect them to, which can end up with a good result and have extra learning that I didn't know they would have."

Grade 5 student Nate Neufeld says his favourite part about Makerspace is designing projects.

"One of the projects I've made is a boat, a tin foil boat. We made it by using tin foil and we had to try to make a boat that could hold a certain amount of weight. We got second place and it held 25 objects."

Grade 6 student Devon Karlenzig says it's fun to take apart electronics or donated items and then see and discover what can be rebuilt from the pieces.

"Last year we made scribble robots where we had to hook batteries up and motors up to a piece of glue stick. We had markers on a Tupperware container and once you turned on the motor the glue stick would spin and it would vibrate. The whole thing would turn and make cool designs."

Karlenzig adds the knowledge and skills he gains from Makerspace will be helpful in the future when he's looking for a job which requires previous experience using tools.