Above, Kaden Walker, 5, a pre-school student at St. Wendelin's worked on his monster masher at the Maker Fair last week at Butler Intermediate School. At right, Kamala Shadd, 15, a ninth-grader at the Butler Intermediate School, seated, plays a banana at one of the maker fair stations while her friends, 14-year-old Ava Smith and 15-year-old Emily Leitem, both also in ninth grade.

St. Wendelin Catholic School preschooler Kaden Walker became a monster masher Thursday.

“I hit him in the head,” said Kaden, 5, with a smile.

In the “Monster Mash” activity, Kaden had to aim and make adjustments to a catapult made of rubber bands and Popsicle sticks to hit a target, said Mary Blashford, Butler Intermediate High School seventh-and eighth-grade science teacher, who was running the “masher” station.

“It's important to create with a purpose,” Blashford said about the different activities at the school's Maker Fair.

Community members and students had a chance to experience the maker learning of Butler Intermediate High School, 551 Fairground Hill Road, Thursday through hands-on activities and crafts that classes made in the school's MakerSpace.

The variety of hands-on activities is perfect for learners, said Kaden's mother Lindsey Walker, who is a Butler Intermediate High School eighth-grade teacher.

Maker learning is about developing curiosity to explore new ideas and the confidence to tackle difficult challenges, all while learning to use tools and materials to make and remake the world, according to Remake Learning, a network of interconnected, creative and innovative people and organizations in the greater Pittsburgh region.

Butler Intermediate High School is one of 10 schools in the Remake Learning organization, said Carrie Morgan-Davis, the school's assistant principal.

The goal is for every teacher to have the opportunity to offer maker learning and creativity in the classroom, she said.Failures and retries are OK in maker learning because there can be many ways to complete a hands-on design in the engineering process, she said.“That's what makes stronger learners,” Morgan-Davis said.Other maker activities at Thursday's fair included creating character books, building monuments in the Lego World Village and designing a human size string art display.Freshman Christian DePolo instructed attendees at the Crafty Critter station to make two types of cat toys out of recycled materials. The toys would be donated to local animal shelters.Maker education and science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM, are important because students have to think “out of the box,” said Christian, 15.Science, technology and arts and creativity combined in the activity at the station guided by Lorraine Shaffer, owner of Kid's Innovation Playground in Saxonburg, and her daughter Leanne Jeward.At the station, people used an invention kit called Makey Makey to take any object that has liquid in it and turn it into a key on a keyboard — in this case it was bananas.People had the opportunity to play the bananas as they tapped the physical banana which would trigger a musical instrument with the corresponding key.The maker fair develops a growth mindset in the participants because if they fail at an activity the first time, they can adjust and re-evaluate the setup to make it work, Shaffer said.Water properties, including water's surface tension and capillary action, were demonstrated by Laura Milanovich, seventh-and ninth-grade science teacher, and her students through boat races and setting paper clips on water.“I love the ability to get kids involved with the community to do extracurricular activities,” Milanovich said. “We did these activities in class, so it's being able to show ownership of what they know.”

Kamala Shadd, 15, a ninth-grader at the Butler Intermediate School, seated, plays a banana at one of the maker fair stations while her friends, 14-year-old Ava Smith and 15-year-old Emily Leitem, both also in ninth grade.