The children have had a really fun morning creating their junk modelling spaceships.
For our egg drop challenge, the children were paired up and tasked with creating a ‘spaceship’ which could protect their ‘alien’ egg from cracking in a crash.
In science, we have been learning all about materials and how they have different properties which make them better suited to some roles than others. We discussed which materials would and wouldn’t be suitable for protecting our eggs and looked at real world protective items, i.e. helmets, lunchboxes, goggles etc, to get an idea of which materials would be best. We realised that soft materials would be best for cushioning the egg, with hard materials used for the outside.
The children drew their designs after seeing which materials were available to them. We also looked at and I modelled different attachment techniques, so they would be able to construct their designs and attach their junk modelling pieces together.
When they had finished their spaceships, we went to drop them from high up on the pirate ship and inspected to see if the eggs were still intact. All but 2 of the spacecrafts managed to protect and keep the alien eggs safe, which I was very impressed with. That made picking a winning pair even tougher! In the end, we thought about the team who had worked very cooperatively and independently together. The winners were Laura and Theo!
Each child should be proud of themselves, as we saw some great creative thought, teamwork and resilience…I even spotted a few budding engineers!
