My Experience in Design Lab at NMS

Jack, an NMS 3rd grader, wrote this piece as part his journalism internship. Read more about the NMS internship program here.

Jack with his internship supervisor, Mason Sand, Director of Enrollment Marketing at NMS.

Newton Montessori School is a very good school and has a very interesting class called Design Lab. Design Lab is a class where the children do activities such as woodworking, sewing, cardboard building, and Lego robotics. The lessons are divided into units. The unit this article is about is the Lego robotics unit.

The creation we first made was a robot named Mylo. The second build was a dragster. The third build was a cargo bot, and the last one was a helicopter. My personal favorite robot was the cargo robot. It was able to pull a lot of stuff. There was one thing it could not pull, a full water bottle. So we used three robots and it worked! Design Lab is a very interesting class and also is really awesome! That’s all for now, Jack signing off!

Above: Lego Robot Helicopter and "Mylo" Robot (Photo Credit: LEGO Education)

Q & A with Design Lab Teachers Merav Rosen and Paul Zmuda

Jack: What is your favorite part of teaching Design Lab?

MR: I enjoy many things about teaching this class. I love making new units and I love that everything is different every year.

Jack: How do you make the Design Lab units?

MR: We usually ask the kids what they like and keep everything up-to-date.

PZ: I also think sometimes we choose the Design Lab units based on the things we have. Ms. Black bought 3D printers so we came up with a unit for those.

Jack: Why did you decide to teach Design Lab?

PZ: I’ll answer this one. I joined [the Design Lab teaching team] because I love to work with my hands and love all the different units. I also love seeing kids work together to overcome challenges.

MR: I also love to see how kids work together to design and create new things. That’s very exciting to watch.