By Alberto Suris
Mini-Golf at the Mill is a 9-Hole indoor mini-golf course, an YDO’s Jungle Paradise with motorized obstacles and jungle theme designed and built by Lawrence students, and it’s located on the 3rd floor of the Historic Everett Mill, 15 Union Street, in Lawrence, MA.
The Electric Jungle was designed by students in grades 5 & 6. Students designed and built electromechanical jungle animals like a parrot with flapping wings, a monkey with a spinning tail, or a snake with a flicking tongue. In the process, they learned how to use many new tools, how to wire circuits, and how to design mechanisms to generate different motions.
Students from Grades 7-10 designed the entire 9-hole mini-golf course. To construct the course platforms, students learned to use many different tools, including power tools. Then, they created motorized obstacles like pop-up snakes, moving palm trees, and falling nets as course challenges.
The mini-golf course is opened as a social enterprise to generate revenue for YDO during the summer months. Establishing the STEM Design Lab at YDO was made possible by support from the Gelfand Family Charitable Trust. With seed funding from GFCT, YDO hired Doug Prime as Director of STEM Programs. Doug was the founding Executive Director of UMass Lowell’s Future Engineers Center and brings more a decade of experience teaching “kid engineering” programs.
