Young Engineers: A.K.A. Building with crazy things

So my crazy summer programs continue!  Yesterday, alongside my partner-in-crime/superstar children's assistant, Holly, we led our program, Young Engineers for students entering grades K-5.  Back at my old library I helped with a fort building program that was a huge success.  I took that concept and expanded it to include a variety of engineering stations.

Station One:  Building with cardboard boxes

For the record, this could have been its own program.  This was definitely the main attraction.  The kids had a blast stacking and building towers, castles, forts, and walls only to gleefully knock them down.  I definitely had one of those "I can't believe I am getting paid for this" moments while watching the madness.

The engineers at work!

Station Two:  Engineering Art

So I came across this absolutely awesome book, Out of the Box: Cardboard Engineering Projects for Makers by Jemma Westing.  It has a variety of projects using various cardboard items (paper towel rolls, cardboard boxes, cereal boxes, etc.) in easy, medium, and hard levels.  Of course we went for easy opting for the Tube Owls (p. 16) and Balancing Butterflies (p. 24).  The kids eventually made their way over to this station, but it wasn't as big of a draw.

Station Three:  Building with spaghetti and marshmallows

My very first library manager and I attended an in-service back in 2006 where one of the team building ice breaker activities was to build a structure with dry spaghetti noodles and marshmallows.  The goal was to build a freestanding, stable structure that I'm sure represented something, but I got all caught up in the hardcore competition of it all.  To this day she still remembers this and laughs about it.  I've used this in many programs over the years, and kids seem to enjoy it.  A word of advice, find the oldest, stalest, hardest marshmallows you can find.  They won't eat those as quickly as a new bag, even though you try to pull a fast one and tell them they are three months old!

Station Four:  Building geometric shapes with toothpicks and gumdrops

I bought the nastiest looking dollar store spice drops for this station thinking they wouldn't want to eat them, but kids will truly eat just about anything.  They did manage to build some impressive things before eating the building materials.

Station Five:  Building towers with plastic cups

Much like the cardboard boxes, the kids enjoyed building things and knocking them down.  One boy even built a tower around another boy so he could break out of it.  For this I purchased a boatload of plastic cups from the dollar store, put them in a bin and let them go crazy.  So cheap, so simple, so much fun!  You don't even have to go full Red Solo Cup, although you totally can if you want! 😀

Station Six:  Speed Stackers

I requested a set of Speed Stackers from our library system's toy library, set it out on the table, and watched the beauty of competion unfold.  Things got very competitive.  I even tried, but they said I was too slow...

Our program lasted a little over an hour, and the kids (and parents in attendance) all had a wonderful time.  We had several requests for more programs like this in the future.  It is a STEAM program after all!  Start saving your cardboard boxes, and build yourself a killer fort!