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Encouraging upper elementary and middle school students to collaborate in solving a problem helps cement science learning.

The straw tower challenge, undertaken here by the author's students, is a perennial favorite for good reason.

Design challenges typically present students with a problem to solve using limited materials. A good design challenge has many possible solutions, encourages creative thinking and teamwork, and teaches valuable content in an engaging and hands-on manner. Some challenges require expensive materials and many days or weeks to complete. When you have a limited budget and just a day or two of class time to spare, design challenges like the following ones can get students creating, cooperating, and thinking.

1. Alka-Seltzer Rocket to Mars Challenge

Problem: Your rocket must launch from the ground into a bucket on the roof of the school.

Materials: Alka-Seltzer tablets, film canisters (I purchased 30 canisters on Amazon for $9), containers for water, a large bucket, a roof or high place like the top of a playground.

Alka-Seltzer and water create carbon dioxide bubbles, and when sealed together inside an old film canister, they create a "rocket" that pops high up into the air.

I give students the target of an orange bucket (representing the planet Mars) placed on the roof of our school to encourage maximum height and accuracy with their rockets. Each group gets six Alka-Seltzer tablets, a film canister, and a container of water. They are encouraged to try different amounts of water and Alka-Seltzer until they achieve maximum height.

Students put some water in the canister, drop in some Alka-Seltzer, quickly seal the top, then put it down and step back. After about 10 seconds, the pressure causes the canister to fly into the air, and the students estimate the height using marks on the side of our building for reference. They record data and make changes until they run out of Alka-Seltzer or put their canister in the bucket. They quickly learn that too much water weighs the rocket down and creates less room for pressure to build.

Just half an Alka-Seltzer tablet and a tiny amount of water allows for 7 or 8 meters of height. Students also learn about the challenges of landing a rocket accurately, and about how to adjust hypotheses and gradually improve performance.

2. Kool-Aid Challenge

Problem: Your team must create a new and delicious flavor of Kool-Aid that wows your classmates.

Materials: A variety of Kool-Aid flavor powders, graduated cylinders or liquid measurement containers, paper cups, water.

I get parent permissions and check on student allergies before beginning any activity that involves food or drink. First, I mix five or six different flavors of Kool-Aid in 2-liter containers. I typically choose a variety of flavors, including one or two unusual ones like lemon-lime and strawberry-kiwi. The teams are challenged to make 1 liter of their new creation by combining multiple flavors.

They measure out each flavor using graduated cylinders until their concoction totals 1,000 ml. Students create names for their flavors and signs to advertise them. Each student samples the other new flavors using a paper cup, then ranks them.

We tally the votes and declare a winner of our Kool-Aid new-flavor competition. Students learn about metric volume and use creativity and collaboration to come up with their best solutions to the problem.

3. Solar Oven Challenge

Problem: Your team must create a solar-powered oven that warms a marshmallow.

Materials: Cardboard boxes, aluminum foil, plastic wrap, ziplock bags, black construction paper, marshmallows, thermometers.

We do this activity after studying the properties of light. Sometimes I provide a variety of cardboard boxes, or some years I ask the local pizzeria to donate a batch of pizza boxes.

Students first draw their designs individually, then decide on a group design. Many groups reflect light into their oven using aluminum foil, and they line the bottom with black paper to absorb light and turn it into heat.

The best-performing designs typically use plastic wrap (plastic laminating material also works well) to trap the heat inside their oven using the greenhouse effect. We place the ovens outside in the morning, with a thermometer in each box and one marshmallow per group member. We check temperatures and eat the marshmallows near the end of the school day to maximize heating time. Obviously, a bright and hot day works best.

Students learn how concepts like reflection, refraction, and absorption can work together to create heat.

4. Straw Tower Challenge

Problem: Create the tallest tower using only straws and masking tape in 45 minutes.

Materials: 40 straws per group, 3 feet of masking tape per group.

Just like with the solar ovens, I ask students to create individual designs (we use the Procreate app on iPads) and then agree on a group design. Students may tape straws to the floor but to no other objects in the room. Often, the most successful designs start with a sturdy base, like a triangular or rectangular prism, then build up in gradually smaller shapes as the tower gets higher.

Many times, a group will start building upward quickly and will pull ahead, only to lose stability and see their tower droop or fall over as the time limit is reached.

Students learn engineering and geometric skills, adapt their designs as conditions change, and think creatively in three dimensions in this challenge.

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Encouraging upper elementary and middle school students to collaborate in solving a problem helps cement science learning. The straw tower challenge, undertaken here by the author's students, is a perennial favorite for good reason. Design challenges typically present students with a problem to solve using limited materials.

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http://www.sweetsoundsofkindergarten.com/2015/06/the-3-little-pigs-stem-challenge.html

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Literacy connection

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Do you know the story of the Brooklyn Bridge? Twenty One Elephants and Still Standing tells the tale of the construction of this famous landmark, and serves as the inspiration for this week's Architecture and Engineering activity with a fun engineering science for kids challenge.

Twenty One Elephants and Still Standing tells the true story of the fourteen year construction of the Brooklyn Bridge, in easy-to-read verse with gorgeous, full page illustrations.

[bctt tweet=" 'Taller and longer, bigger and broader, a bridge of infinite dreams!' Can you build a bridge for 21 elephants? #STEAMedu #engineeringforkids"]

Once the bridge was completed, it linked Brooklyn and New York City. But many were intimidated by its size, worried about its strength and questioned how long it would stand. P.T. Barnum, the creator of 'The Greatest Show on Earth', decided to stage a public spectacle to prove the bridge's integrity. He planned a circus in Brooklyn and marched his elephants, all 21 of them, through Manhattan and across the bridge to Brooklyn!

Engineering Science for Kids Challenge

For our Architecture and Engineering Activity this week, after reading the story, I gave Big M (age 4) a tray full of assorted recyclables and household objects and challenged her to build a bridge for 21 elephants. Our supply set up included the following.

Twenty One Elephants and Still Standing
Popsicle craft sticks
Paper towel rolls
Miniature red cups
Learning Resources Jungle Counters

The elephants for our challenge came from a set of jungle-themed counters from Learning Resources... and you might notice, some of our elephants don't have trunks because they are actually hippos!

[otw_is sidebar=otw-sidebar-32]

I let Big M take the lead on constructing with the materials, and she opted to use the cups and popsicle sticks to build her bridge.

When she could only get 3-4 across, she started building up...

... but found it a little wobbly, and opted for adding lanes instead.

In addition to engineering science, this also made for great counting practice. At age 4, she's working on counting to and beyond 20. She's pretty good up to about 15 before she starts to stumble. So we worked on counting all the elephants/hippos every time she added one more. Until, finally - all 21 were in place!

Want more great construction ideas for kids? Check out my latest collaborative ebook: Up! Featuring 30+ STEM challenge ideas to transform your child's block play into an endless, hands-on learning center. Download your ebook today and get more than 100 pages of printables to go alongside the activities included. Get yours today from the Playground Parkbench store.

I am super excited to be part of the month-long Storybook Science series hosted by Inspiration Laboratories. Check out all the activities this week featuring Engineering, and all the book-inspired science all month long!

If you enjoyed this week's Engineering Science for Kids challenge, be sure to check out all the posts in our Architecture and Engineering for Kids series. We add new ones every Wednesday! You can find them all on our STEM for Kids - Engineering board on Pinterest.

Want to save it? Pin THIS!

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Do you know the story of the Brooklyn Bridge? Twenty One Elephants and Still Standing tells the tale of the construction of this famous landmark, and serves as the inspiration for this week's Architecture and Engineering activity with a fun engineering science for kids challenge.

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Share your engineering ideas and drawings with the community. Join special design challenges. See what other kids are creating and add to their inventions.

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1. 1. We can... Identify which designs can and cannot withstand the self-weight of the newspaper tower as well as a lateral wind load. Explain how their towers worked to withstand the self-weight and lateral wind load

2. 2. The Plan Create as tall a tower as possible with only paper, scissors and tape. You will have a time limit of 15 minutes for preliminary building and 10 minutes for the final build.

3. 3. Real World Application Your task mirrors the challenges that engineers are given in the real world-with objectives, requirements and constraints such as budgets, material limitations and deadlines. When you are brainstorming about your design approach in your teams, think about the real skyscrapers you have seen as inspiration. What are their shapes? What are their foundations like?

4. 5. Vocab buckling: When a column fails by bending at some point in the height of the column, usually towards the midpoint caused by a vertical force. lateral force: A force that impacts a structure horizontally (that is, wind and earthquakes). deflection : The amount a structure bends or moves from its "at rest" position.

5. 6. Think Pair Share Explain how your towers worked to resist the "wind" load. What designs did and did not work and why that was so? Vocab: Lateral Force Deflection Buckling

Students act as civil engineers as they design and build newspaper towers. They must pay particular attention to designing the tower to withstand the forces of high winds, a problem that students may not have considered in the construction of tall buildings.

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1. We can... Identify which designs can and cannot withstand the self-weight of the newspaper tower as well as a lateral wind load. Explain how their towers worked to withstand the self-weight and lateral wind load 2. The Plan Create as tall a tower as possible with only paper, scissors and tape.

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List of Resources from Sam Houston Elementary School

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List of Resources from Sam Houston Elementary School

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Literacy / Fantasy connection

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Rotation One: Albert's Alphabet Design Challenge

Your challenge is to build a letter of the alphabet that will stand by itself.

Criteria and Constraints:

MUST stand by itself

MUST be made out of at least 2 materials.

CANNOT use more than 3 materials.

Rotation Two: Bee-Bot Design Challenge

Meet Bee-Bot: Bee-Bot is a robot used to teach programming as well as practice academic concepts using creative problem-solving skills.

ELA Design Challenge: Your challenge is to create a program to move Bee-Bot to the correct sight word or CVC word.

MATH Design Challenge: Your challenge is to program Bee-Bot to move to two different pictures that represent your shape. Program Bee-Bot to pause in between shapes.

MATH Design Challenge: Your challenge is to program Bee-Bot to move to the two different numbers you roll on the dice. Program Bee-Bot to pause in between numbers.

Rotation Three: Three Little Pigs

SURPRISE! There is a fourth pig and he/she needs your help in designing a house. Using the materials provided, can you create a house for the fourth pig that can withstand the effects of different wind speeds?

Criteria:

You must use the materials provided in the construction of your house.

The house must be constructed on top of the table.

The pig must fit inside the house.

Your goal is to build a house for your pig that can withstand different wind speeds.

Constraints:

CANNOT use any materials that are not listed on the materials list.

Rotation Four: Computer Science
Kindergarten Grade Challenge: Introduction to Computer Science/Coding
While in STEM Lab, students were introduced to Computer Science/Coding.

Using computer programming the Kindergarteners were given an opportunity to explore computer coding using three different lessons on the website, www.code.org (this site has many coding lessons including basic levels for early readers). **Please see below on how they can access their accounts from home.

During these lessons, the students were successful in ordering movement commands as sequential steps in a program, counting the number of times an action should be executed and represent it as instructions in a program as well as predicting where a program will fail and modifying an existing program to solve errors.
Questions to Ask:

1. What was the most challenging puzzle/maze you were able to complete when coding on code.org.

2. What were some of the strategies you used to help you solve the puzzles?

3. What is debugging?

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Kindergarten Design Challenges - Mrs. Baptist's 5th Grade Math/Science

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2017-2018 STEM Lab Rotations: Rotation One: Albert's Alphabet Design Challenge Your challenge is to build a letter of the alphabet that will stand by itself. Criteria and Constraints: MUST stand by itself MUST be made out of at least 2 materials. CANNOT use more than 3 materials.

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Ties in with the Billy Goats Gruff story

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Imagine yourself as an 8th grade teacher walking into a classroom of five and six year olds with the expectation that you're going to teach them aerospace engineering. You've been asked not only to teach a simplified version of the physics of flight, but also to discuss materials and aerodynamics.

Well, that was me recently. And my first thought was, "Wow! What did I get myself into?"

I had made an offer to all the teachers in my district to team teach a STEM unit in their classrooms. The kindergarten teacher, Jody Lambert, assured me that while her students would have tons of energy, they would really be into my active brand of instruction. Even with the assurances of a longtime colleague, I must admit that I was still skeptical and set the bar very low.

When I walked into the classroom, I had the students' undivided attention. I asked them to come over to the "reading carpet," sit crisscross applesauce, and cracked open the book David and Kayleen Design a Glider. This read aloud provided an overview of the engineering design process using familiar local subjects, such as the Wright Brothers and the National Museum of the United States Air Force, to help set the table.

After reading the book, I started a round of questioning: How do planes fly? Who were the Wright Brothers? What do engineers do?

This last question led to an unexpected conversation about Thomas the Tank Engine, but eventually one student mentioned that "they build things" and saved the day. While many of the answers were out in left field - from my middle school teacher perspective - many others were really impressive, and virtually all of the students wanted to take a stab at answering. I couldn't believe the number of hands that were up in the air! I'm used to quite a bit of class participation, but their level of enthusiasm was incredible, and I could feel my doubts start to slip away.

Now it was time for the engineering design challenge. We briefly spoke about the expectations and the goals of the activity. This was followed by a discussion about the properties of various materials, and how material engineers help select and even create new materials for modern-day aircraft. The students' mission was to select materials and then to test (and even measure) gliders of their own creation.

As the students went back to their work stations, they sat down with their partners and started to choose the materials they would use for their hoop gliders. (Click the link for a simplified version of the activity.)

The discussion between the students was phenomenal! Everyone wanted to share their point of view. In fact, they couldn't wait to share and tended to back up their ideas with fairly sound reasoning.

For example: One student wanted to use aluminum foil for the hoops because it would be lighter, whereas that student's partner pointed out that strips of manila folder would probably work better "because it's less floppy." While a few groups just wanted to start building their gliders, the vast majority had thoughtful conversations. At this point my doubts were gone.

As the students gathered their selected materials, they were all very confident about their choices. Even the students that chose the inferior parts swore that their build would fly the furthest. This made me very, very afraid. I envisioned the majority of the class lining up to throw their gliders and then total disaster: 20+ crying kids! After all, I had seen many middle school students start to cry when their projects failed during the testing process. If teenagers could break down, certainly these little kids would be worse!

Then we conducted the first round of testing. A couple of the gliders flew really well, but the majority sank like lead balloons.

What came next was entirely unexpected: not one student cried or was disheartened at all. In fact, they all ran back to their workstations and started discussing a new plan. They had failed and that was okay. They had learned a lesson and were going to continue to improve their designs until they were successful.

That's when it hit me. These kindergarteners get it. They understand that learning is a collaborative process. Oftentimes you have to discuss the problem in order to find the best solution. Failure is also an option, and as long as you learn from your mistakes, it can be a positive experience. They had lived the engineering design process their entire lives.

If this is the case, why do I have to spend the first few weeks of each year teaching teenagers the engineering design process? The answer came to me: We break them. When students enter the educational system, they usually aren't afraid of collaboration, experimentation, or guessing at a question. Many of us then sit them in neatly organized rows and tell them not to talk to each other. We often put them in silos and have them work by themselves. We then assign grades based on the end result, rather than the process itself. Failure is frowned upon rather than used as a learning experience. This makes many students afraid to take risks.

It's us.

It was an eye-opening experience for sure. I clearly underestimated the natural curiosity that we all once embraced so fully. I forgot that children have an innate ability to learn through the iterative process. That they are natural born engineers and scientists.

As educators, we need to foster and develop these abilities rather than tell students to pack them away when they walk through our classroom doors. Many universities and industries complain that our students often come unprepared to collaborate and think outside the box. In my opinion, the best thing that we can do is create a culture in our schools that allows for our students to retain and build upon these pre-existing characteristics. Then we can just sit back and watch them soar.

I'm looking forward to hearing about your experiences with elementary students undertaking similar engineering and design activities! Please share your thoughts and additional resources with the rest of us below.
Tom Jenkins teaches both middle school science and STEM in Enon, Ohio. He is a NASA SOFIA Airborne Astronomy Ambassador, Manager of Special Projects at the Dayton Regional STEM Center, as well as the Boeing Science Teacher Laureate for Teaching Channel. Connect with Tom via Twitter: @TomJenkinsSTEM.

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Imagine yourself as an 8th grade teacher walking into a classroom of five and six year olds with the expectation that you're going to teach them aerospace engineering. You've been asked not only to teach a simplified version of the physics of flight, but also to discuss materials and aerodynamics.