Mini-Engineers

Lara Kaiserian and I co-taught the ‘Mini-Engineers’ class to 30 students during the summer program. They did a unit on city planning, teaching kids how to look at cities with a new set of eyes, using maps as a guide to reading the city. Then the students planned, designed and built their own city together. 

The younger kids made a “City of the Superheroes” complete with a ‘Jesus is my Superhero' church, and the older kids made “The Blessed City” with skyscrapers and manual moving elevators.

The second unit in the ‘Mini-Engineers’ workshop was on robots. The kids participated in soldering and assembling a little robot that looked like some insect. The classes offered great scientific learning points for the kids, but most importantly, the robotics unit brought many kids a greater sense of value and worth.

One little boy, who is relatively new to Esperanza de Ana, was absolutely intent on trying his best in this class. He came to Esperanza de Ana last year from a children’s program where there was little to no supervision of he or his little sister. His single father is in crisis and and there was substantial neglect.  This little boy could not stop talking about how much he wanted to show his dad the robot he made.