Waiting in line at our local food co-op we found this latest special issue of Make Magazine, the School’s Out!: Best Summer Ever edition. It seemed perfectly geeky and fun, so we picked up a copy. We’ve been looking through the print edition and the online content, and are ready to review it for y’all.
The issue is larger format (think 8.5″x11″) than the typical Make Magazine, but at $9.99 for 112 pages, it has the high price we’ve come to expect from Make and O’Reilly. That said, we trust Make to deliver high quality, thoughtful content, and we certainly aren’t disappointed with the School’s Out! issue. In many ways, this is one of the most kid-friendly publications we’ve seen from Make (Volume 2o was themed “Kids of All Ages” but the content was still written for an adult audience). One of the publication’s more childish gimmicks is the anaglyph 3D images that appear throughout the magazine. There’s a pair of red/cyan glasses included in the magazine, and a good number of the pictures are printed in stereoscopic 3D.
Emily in 3D!
Content wise, School’s Out! consists primarily of ten sections of projects (Combat, Outdoors, Rainy Day, Craft, Music, Pranks, Flight, Electronics, Weird Science, and What a Summer!). In each section, one project is fully featured, with a breakdown of materials and photo-accompanied step by step instructions. The sections are wrapped up with a half-dozen or so featurettes, pictures and descriptions of on topic projects that can be found in detail online. Nearly all of the content was familiar to us from past issues of Make, Craft and online content from Makezine or Instructables, but it’s presented in a accessible and appealing way.
Parents, take note: like much of Make’s content for adults, we felt like some of the projects are really ambitious. Most would require significant adult supervision and involvement, especially for children younger than high school. Many of the featured projects require special equipment or kits that even our well equipped home maker space doesn’t have. Projects like Precious Metal Clay requires a torch or kiln, and to make the TV-B-Gone, you really need to purchase a kit. Soda Bottle Submarine and Chocolate Banana Pops are a few of the more approachable projects that could more easily be completed with stuff you might have on hand.
Reading with our educator hats on, we really liked the “Tips for Building with Kids” and “Young Maker Profiles” at the end of the issue. The profiles could prove really inspiring for students, and the tips are insightful advice from people who have a lot of experience making things with kids.
Ultimately, we’re happy we bought Make’s School’s Out!: Best Summer Ever issue. We wouldn’t recommend it to everyone (especially since it’s $10 and much of the content is available online), but we think it would be a really great gift for an older kid looking for some summer projects. Toss it in a swim bag with all the materials to build a zip-line and call it a graduation present.
