The Inventor’s Club meets weekly for an hour a week and is run in cooperation with support from the organizers of the Chicago Student Invention Convention. Each week the facilitator presents a topic and activity to encourage problem solving and creative thinking. Additionally, time is given for students to work on and present their own inventions to their peers. Additionally, the club has a mentor – an actual Inventor – who visits each week to share his experience and help to inspire our students. Our mentor spent many years in the pharmaceutical industry until he retired. Our mentor now invents full time, has several patents pending and has shown our students some of his prototypes. Students in grades 6-8 meet to learn about the Inventor’s Cycle, learn about famous inventors and Design Engineering, identify problems that young inventors may create prototypes for and present to adult judges at the annual convention event. Adults who are engineers, scientists and inventors themselves listen to students describe and present their prototypes for evaluation.

We can accept up to 20 students with 6th – 8th being invited. This program is free. All educational materials are on-line and available to teachers, students, and parents. There is no registration fee. Additional support and materials have been provided from the James Dyson Foundation.

All clubs are open to all students. Any interested students can see Mr. Carr or email him at jvcarr@cps.edu.

Clubs are free and open to all Beaubien upper grade students. Interested members must apply to each club, obtain teacher recommendations and adhere to the moderator’s guidelines.