al-mofhariz

I am so excited about our next engineering project in our STEM related curriculum.  We made Rube Goldberg machines! First, there are some excellent interactive computer programs that your students can do either at home or at school. I found it interesting to watch my students complete these tasks...at first, they were impatient because it takes thinking to solve the tasks.  But with patience and testing again and again, they were able to solve the puzzle. The first one is from FOSS (of course)....You get to manipulate the different parts of the machine to catch a burglar. The other one is from Zoom with PBS.  This one has more parts in the contraption, but it is really fun.  When you finish it, the skateboard delivers lunch to the crew! Next I presented them with a design brief - You can purchase this design brief at Teachers Pay Teachers if you would like your own copy!  The students spent a day in their science groups planning what materials they would use t...

Do you remember playing Mousetrap as a child? I loved the idea of setting up the trap and watching it fall into place.... Can you even find them anymore?  Little did I know that I was building my own "Rube Goldberg" Machine. With the onset of YouTube in the classroom, I have fallen in love with sharing these machines with my students. My classroom full of future engineers and kinesthetic learners have fallen in love with them too.  Here's a great Mythbusters video for the holidays (wish I had seen it last month!)   Stay tuned for how my kids made their own versions in science class!     Comment: