In the fall of the 2024, seventh grade students at C.C.A. Baldi Middle School, in Philadelphia, PA, created a variety of illuminated artworks under the instruction of educator Christopher Sweeney. To learn more, you may check out their work on Instagram @sweeney2400 and @baldi_makerspace.

During the 2023-2024 school year, 4th grade teacher Lee Kessner and her students created and programmed an ambitious mural project, focused upon better understanding the role of pollinators in an “Empathetic Pollinator Garden.”

Lee Kessner, a National Board Certified Teacher, has been teaching 4^th grade at the Haskell STEAM Magnet School, located in Granada Hills, California, for the past six years. “I believe in purposeful implementation of STEAM principles and have seen how hands-on exploration of standards-based phenomena allows students to take agency over their learning and provides them with meaningful learning opportunities.”

To learn more about this project, visit the related story on our blog, Guest Post: STEAM Pollinator Garden.

In May 2024, Catie Nasser (@catnasser) shared a menagerie of interactive artworks (with switches) created by some of her fifth grade students. “Their original ideas show simple circuits, buttons, and parallel circuits.”

Catie Nasser is an elementary art educator in the Middleton Public Schools. She has been working with children in the arts for almost 20 years in a variety of public, private, and therapeutic settings. She teaches a range of fine art mediums as well as incorporates arts integration, Social Emotional Learning, STEAM, and Project Based Learning.  In 2017, she developed a class called Artovation where she shows young artists how they can take their creativity to new levels with elements such as animation, robotics, kinetic sculpture, and coding. Catie is committed to using art as a tool to help youth find their voice and fully express their thoughts and ideas.

To learn more, or to see some of the artwork come to life, you may visit Catie’s original post on Instagram.

In May 2023, Eileen McMahon, the STEAM teacher at CATS Academy Boston, accompanied a group of highly motivated high school students to Vietnam. The students, who formed the group Chuyen Xe Mua He, visited four locations in Vietnam, where they taught a variety of paper circuit workshops to a wide range of students.

To learn more about where this dynamic group went, and to see what they were able to achieve, please visit their guest blog post, “Bringing Chibitronics to Vietnam.“

In February 2023, Jeremy Joven (@JJinCSEd) and Christina Tobajas (@edchristinatobajas) engaged sixth grade students in a highly engaging project combining art, circuits, and programming at the Spence School in New York City!  

According to Christina, students in Coding 6, “ideated individually and then with their groups and designed a collaborative, mixed media project (paper, watercolors, color pencils). We had a handful that were 3-dimensional. We displayed these interactive projects on a bulletin board in our school, and each was to be interacted with in a unique way. They then coded their projects using the Chibi Chip.” 

To see this artwork (and more) come to life in video, please visit the original posts on Instagram or Twitter.

In June 2023, educators Sandra Bertelsen and Mary Persson ran a programming camp called “Code Possible: 2023” for North Dakota teens entering their sophomore or junior years of high school. One of the microcontrollers that they learned to program was the Chibi Chip.

The summer camp, attended by 14 young women, was funded in part by Roughrider Area Career and Tech Academy and North Dakota’s chapter of Women Empowering Women, of which Sandra is a member. To see this amazing group of programmers interviewed in the news, visit Dickinson Camp Encourages Young Women to Learn Coding.

In February 2023, fourth graders in Sherry Michalak’s (@SherryMich) STEAM class at Mason Elementary School, in Mason, Ohio, started learning how to program with MakeCode and the Chibi Chip!

Sherry, who has been teaching elementary students for 31 years (STEAM for eight) reports that she loves learning “new concepts and technologies and [trying] them out with her students” (of which there are 800)! We believe that Sherry is a superhero, and we understand that her students have risen to the challenge!

In January 2023, Class VIII students from @JoshBurker‘s Creative Technology class at the Marymount School in NYC completed elaborately hand-drawn, light up accordion books! This project, one of many STEAM-based activities geared toward increasing students’ skills and creative expression, is part of a broader “scope and sequence in 8th grade of building and using circuits to do interesting things.”

In June 2022, students from 19 schools across Fresno, CA participated in afterschool programs that enlisted college-aged STEAM mentors to teach K-6 students about paper circuits! These photos were submitted by Dr. Paul Reimer on behalf of the Aims Center (@aimscenter).

These delightful pieces of art were created by students at C.C.A. Baldi Middle School in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, under the instruction of educator Christopher Sweeney. To learn more, you may check out their work on Instagram @sweeney2400 and @baldi_makerspace.

Students in Phoenix, Arizona, educator Dawn Olson’s class (Twitter @dawnolsonaz) recently created “Identity Circuitry” projects to help them “build paths & connections.”

In August 2022, educator Trish Ryan, of Wilkins Public School in Marrickville, NSW, Australia, mentored other teachers during Science Week, brainstorming ideas for integrating circuits into a Fractured Fairytale unit to tell illuminated stories!

In September 2022, Boston, Massachusetts, educator Kristin Osiecki created this mesmerizing jelly fish for her classroom’s “Sea Circuit Aquarium,” using a laser cutter and Circuit Sticker LEDs. Student artwork will be coming soon!

In September 2022, fifth grade SPARK students in Hope Loveland’s classroom at Union Park School in Arizona brought their art to life with circuits and coding. The screenshots don’t fully capture the magic of the hidden images that are illuminated when these creations are in action.

4th grader from James McHenry Elementary School designing his own simple circuit after learning from the Chibitronics Circuit Sticker Sketchbook. He designed it, determined how much of each material he needed, measured the copper tape, and built his own circuit.

These first graders from Instituto Alpes San Javier in Mexico presented their wonderful works of story writing, art, and computer science at 2019’s ISTE convention in Philadelphia. They each wrote their own illustrated storybooks with lights connected to a Chibi Chip microcontroller. Their goal: To encourage those who don’t like to read to do so, enticed by the interactivity the girl’s code provided.

Youngster visiting the Explora Kids Museum in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He couldn’t get enough circuitry! He even built and tested a Chibitronics illuminated helicopter.

Gifted students at Robert Goddard Montessori School in Maryland teach Chicago 8th graders to code with Microsoft MakeCode and Google Hangouts!

This 5th grader is putting finishing touches on a giant Chibi Chip replica!

A fifth grader built this paper “smart” city by creating little paper houses and connecting them to a Chibi Chip using copper tape. She used Microsoft MakeCode to develop the code to light the city.