This fast-paced engineering problem solving exercise is a favorite with elementary school students. It’s also inexpensive, easy to teach, quantitative, can accommodate a lot of kids, and is easy to adjust the difficulty of.
“Storm the Castle” is an exercise in engineering problem solving that’s loads of fun for children of all ages. Students take on the role of “besieging armies”, designing siege engines capable of launching “boulders” (ping pong balls) into the defending castle, earning points depending on where the balls land. They also design a device to retrieve containers of boulders from the “quarry”.
This two-part activity introduces children to basic bridge types and design considerations. Students then put this knowledge into practice, designing and building strong-but-light bridges and the tallest towers!
Building activities are perennial favorites with students of all ages. Although there’s no one building set that’s best for all activities, here are two options that we’ve found to be particularly good for our modules.
Paper chromatography is a technique for separating out components in a mixture, such as for testing the purity of compounds. In this module, Kidizen scientists will study the composition and separation behaviors of a variety marker types and colors. They will then employ this knowledge and their chromatography skills to identify the various mystery markers from their inks alone!
On the first day of this two-part module, students will determine the physical properties of assorted building materials using a range of hands-on tests. The following day, they will use that information to decide the best materials for constructing a given item or structure, pitching their designs to prospective “customers”.
Kid- and budget-friendly testing jigs for measuring various aspects of a material’s strength & more, as featured in the upcoming Materials Science module. These designs are inexpensive, durable, and require minimal tools and skills to construct.
Many children today have only experienced digital weighing devices, black boxes that with the touch of a button magically display the weight of an item. This low cost, easy to prepare exercise lets children experience how people measured mass for thousands of years.
Your students’ data is imperfect …the activity is ruined? Not at all! It’s actually a fantastic opportunity to teach some critical concepts about data collection and analysis. Those imperfections can actually reveal a lot about the system being studied, the measurement tools involved, and the experimenters themselves!
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) designated 2019 as the International Year of the Periodic Table (IYPT) to mark the 150th anniversary of the Mendeleev periodic table. This iconic resource, a vital tool for all who learn and work in science, provides ample opportunities to engage even the youngest students. You do not have to wait for the next anniversary to include a periodic table session in your science enrichment program.