It wasn’t Santa’s workshop but it was close.

Under strings of Christmas lights, fifth graders were guided by high school students in using everyday items such as gum drops, toothpicks, fruits and vegetables in ways defying imagination in a veritable maker paradise called the STEAM Lab.

At one of the stations was a piano-like instrument using fruit and vegetables instead of keys.

“That was fun,” said Dean Corto, who was making sounds with his buddies. “I loved how the fruits and vegetables made different sounds.

“It was cool because you can make some sounds with something you eat.”

“It has the same capability as a touch screen on your phone,” Hallie Bortz explained. “You know how that responds to your touch. The fruit and vegetables are all connected.”

Bortz said she made the instrument in about two or three weeks in the STEAM Lab.

“We usually meet once a week,” Bortz said. “I picked up where another maker left off.”

“The kids enjoyed it,” Amber Bleiler said, who worked with students at the capacitative touch station which showcased the unusual keyboard. “They mostly enjoyed the bongo sound. This is an amazing idea.”

Bleiler said she has “only been in the club since the beginning of this year. I want to be a video game designer and my guidance counselor said this might be a good idea to start the process.”

Nearby, students were building structures with unlikely materials.

“I’m making a house out of gum drops and toothpicks,” Adriana Milchenski said. “You could build anything you want.”

“I liked using the gumdrops in my building and I worked on a tower,” Julie Binder added.

Meanwhile, in the code room, students had their eyes fixed on laptops while senior Katelyn Morrison issued explanations from the front of the room.

“A lot of the time in programming involves error checking,” she explained. “It’s really cool to see how these games work. Programming is a really important everyday skill.”

“The fifth graders are making their own game,” Morrison said. “Some are playing Minecraft, some are making a game based on Moana, the new Disney movie, or from Frozen. Instead of hitting a key pad, they’re coding it.”

“It’s really good for the students to understand what code is and how it works, like what goes on behind the scenes of the games they play,” fifth grade teacher Pam Newhard said, who accompanied her class to the event.

The event was the brain child of math teacher Jeremy Smoyer and his wife Tracy Smoyer, an art teacher at the elementary school.

“We invited Northwestern Elementary’s fifth grade classes to the high school to participate in the Hour of Code with us as well as visit my STEAM Lab and participate in some activities that celebrate STEAM and show off some programming [applications],” he said.

STEAM is an acronym for science, technology, engineering, art and math.

“Everything we do here in the lab starts as art,” Jeremy Smoyer said.

“We have both perspectives, the artistic and the technological, but we’re not competitive,” Tracy Smoyer said. “We both understand how the disciplines are connected.”

“Our students at the stations taught [the fifth graders] how these things tie in and why it’s important to start now if the kids want to go into tech fields,” said Jeremy Smoyer.

Morrison is just such a student.

She is interested in pursuing studies in media and digital communication, environmental science and biology.

“I’ve been going to tech camps [nearly] every single year of high school,” she said. “It was really fun [going to camps] at Carnegie Melon and Villanova. Everyone there is so helpful and they’re like you.”

“Students need to be learning programming in elementary school,” Jeremy Smoyer said. “High school offers a computer programming course but no graphic design [class]. A course at the high school would appeal to more kids.”

“Being able to do this [programming] is what’s going to set our kids apart from other smart people,” he continued. “Everybody is getting the theoretical but with STEAM, they are going to get the applied as well.”

“I’m part of a Facebook group devoted to STEAM,” explained Tracy Smoyer. “Our focus is on the art part. There’s no way you can [make things] without the design and creativity.”

“[The group] posts all kinds of lesson plan ideas that include all the disciplines,” she continued. “Some districts actually have a coordinator for a more of an integrated approach to learning.”

LCTI offers technology courses but Jeremy Smoyer said, “There are kids who take AP classes that would like to take more tech classes at the high school.”

The popularity of the Makers Club is evidence of this.

“I think we’re around 30 this year,” Jeremy Smoyer said. “They picked the events we were doing and they manned each one of the five stations in the STEAM lab.”

“The middle school has a lab now run by Erin Johnson, the librarian who has worked with some soldering and electronics,” he continued. “They have a 3D printer and a smaller version of a laser cutter.”

“We’re a public school [so] we’re able to offer this kind of innovation,” Tracy Smoyer said. “It’s still kind of new but I think it will get bigger and bigger.”

Jeremy Smoyer said he’s most interested in “just bridging the gap.

The middle school is leaning more toward the maker movement, [but students] just can’t wait to discover this lab and [expect to] be future ready, when they get to the high school.”

“Maker fairs are being held all over the world,” Jeremy Smoyer said. “The international one was in Rome. [There are students in] Third World schools who are learning and we’ll be competing with them.”

“Our goal is to actually have a STEAM class, [where the disciplines are] not compartmentalized and students have the ability to design something artistically and actually produce it,” Tracy Smoyer said.