2nd Annual "Maker Movement Kids Week" Begins Today in New Orleans

NEW ORLEANS - April 4, 2016 - PRLog -- Mayor Mitch Landrieu has proclaimed the week of Monday, April 4th through Sunday, April 10th Maker Movement Kids Week. This week, children across Greater New Orleans will have the opportunity to freely participate in the city's 2nd annual Maker Movement Kids Week through STEAM-related (science, technology, engineering, art, math) activities that encourage learning through firsthand experience, and the basic human impulse to create.

For the second year in a row, Thinkerella will host #MakerWeek, a first-of-its-kind educational program in New Orleans with STEAM activities geared toward elementary and middle school girls and boys.

Throughout the week, Thinkerella will feature one STEAM subject each day online on Thinkerella's Facebook page. Each day will include a subject-specific experiment a child can do at home with a parent, facts, and tips about the subject, top local professionals working in each field, a daily journal, and ThinkerKits that contain additional at-home projects.

Parents can download the free Maker Journal under resources on the registration link at www.mythinkerella.com.

The week will wrap up with Thinkerella hosting a free ThinkerKids session at the New Orleans Mini Maker Faire on Saturday at Bricolage Academy and another session on Sunday at Thinkerella's shop in Harahan. Signup for tickets to both sessions can be found on the registration page of mythinkerella.com.

Maker Movement Kids Week Schedule
(Monday, April 4 - Sunday, April 10, 2016)

Monday - Science Day
Tuesday - Technology Day
Wednesday - Engineering Day
Thursday - Art Day
Friday - Math Day
Saturday - New Orleans Mini Maker Faire, 10AM-5PM; ThinkerKids! free session, 10:30AM-11:30AM
Sunday - ThinkerKids! session, 1PM-2PM

The Maker Movement, which Kids Week is based on, is a technological and creative learning revolution underway around the globe that has exciting and vast implications for the world of education with the potential to turn more people into makers instead of just consumers.

Thinkerella's Maker Movement Kids Week is geared toward inspiring children to become the next generation of makers, doers, builders, shapers and inventors, and seeks to make education more child-centered, relevant and more sensitive to each child's capacity for learning. The focus is on providing STEAM-related education opportunities and hands-on learning.

About Thinkerella
The hands-on Thinkerella program, founded in 2014 by local mom Cherie Franz Melancon, has made its way into more than two dozen New Orleans area elementary schools over the last two years and has expanded its workshops, camps, scout sessions, and birthday parties. These sessions tackle complex material by making it fun and exciting for children through interactive learning experiences.

The program's goal is to provide easily understood real-world examples and demonstrations of sometimes difficult topics, such as Newton's Third Law of Motion, through gender neutral sessions. Thinkerella allows children to conduct safe experiments that spark their curiosity. Certified teachers write all curricula and lesson plans. By this May, Thinkerella will have paid more than $44,000 in additional income to local teachers and helped over 2,500 children in the New Orleans area discover a new love of learning.