Characters and Laser Cutting with 4th grade

My school library was able to purchase a Glowforge laser cutter! I am so excited to use this with my students. I have been following other makerspaces and libraries doing such amazing projects with a laser cutter and I am excited to try it out! The first project opportunity came not too long after we had the laser cutter up and running. A design project with fourth graders that connected to books they were reading with animals as the main character.

I have a fourth grade teacher who has her students do a lot of reading around genres and then really likes them to do a hands on project that connects to the work at the end. In the past the students have read books with animals as main characters and then had the students make the characters out of clay, here was a perfect chance to use the laser cutter and make some connections with technology and design work.

Students picked their books and then documented different aspects of the story including setting, characters, problem and solution. They also wrote up a profile of the main character of their story. Students documented the different characteristics of the main character and wrote a detail of the characters appearance.

Then, we moved into the design stage. Student were introduced to the laser cutter and how it works. Then we talked about how the they were going to create a laser cut project of the main character. The first step was looking at beginning drawing books, how to draw websites and images. Students would focus on how they could create their animal using different shapes similar to how to draw instructions. Fourth graders drew their plans thinking about shapes and following the ideas from the different resources.

Next, we introduced Google Drawing to the students. We showed them the shapes and lines tools. Students then took the base of their drawings and made shapes to create their animal in Google Drawing. They really had to spend time thinking about scale and size as they laid out their designs, thinking about the size of the different shapes and how they could layer the shapes together to give their character a three dimensional look. After students finished their designs, they separated the shapes on the drawing grid and downloaded the files as .svg. The files were uploaded to the Glowforge Laser cutter and cut out of the wood.

After all the pieces were cut, fourth graders used different materials like felt and googly eyes to add more details to their animals. They completed reviews of the books and displayed their writing with their laser cut animals in the library to share with the school.

This project went really well. The students were really excited about using the new laser cutter in the library. This was also a good opportunity to share Google Drawing and some of the different features of the application. It was also great to have the students think in two dimension and how to take shapes and put them together to make a 3D object. It was a different type of thinking for many of the students and an opportunity for them to mix technology, design and art to make their characters.