Protect the Egg

Our very first engineering project was about how to protect an egg when it falls off the table. The inspiration of this project was our unit on Fables & Stories. Many of our fables had a theme of animals or objects that learned a lesson or moral of how to live their life. One of the objects that we saw again and again was an egg. 

In this project the main goal was to protect the egg! The teacher goal was to have the kids understand how all scientists or engineers work together to accomplish a task. Each student was assigned a role of director, facilitator, materials manager, technician, and participant. As the project progressed some teams were able to work together nicely and some found out that they may make better directors than any other job. As we do more projects my hope is that each student figures our what personality type they have to best meet the needs of a group. Students used problem solving skills like rock, paper, scissors, or thumbs up to help make decision in their group work. I was very proud that there were no arguments and that decisions were made with little intervention from me. 

Below are pictures of us brainstorming, engineering, and testing our prototypes. This is a five step process where students find the problem, throw out ideas, make ONE blueprint, test, and find any changes that need to be made.