Young Engineers Build Tiny Houses

Third grade students from The Barstow School applied lessons about area, perimeter and geometry — and much more — to the design and construction of tiny houses at IDEA Space on Friday, March 31. 

Their tiny houses were based on actual homes at the Veterans Community Project in Kansas City, so the students were joined by VCP President of National Expansion Jason Kander. They learned how the organization is helping support homeless veterans with an outreach center and and community of tiny homes. 

For the hands-on project, each of the three classes rotated through IDEA Space to build different tiny house iterations. In Makerspace, they laid out the footprint of an actual house and built the exterior walls together. They took measurements and planned for what necessities could fit inside. In tyhe Tinkering Space, students worked on smaller paper models of tiny homes that they've been designing in genius hour. And in Brainstorming, students built virtual tiny homes using Minecraft. 

Classes have completed the tiny house project in rious years at The Bartow School, but IDEA Space gave them more tools, options and technology to apply their lessons in several different ways, making the project even more hands-on and memorable foor the young engineers.