Suggestions for One Day Work Shop Ages 5 - 13

[Scott Ritchie]

Originally Posted by Mark McLeod

We've done Saturday paper airplane contests with Elementary through Middle school aged children at local school districts. We have them work through and try different designs and settle on ones that work for them. Different designs work better for different aspects of the contest - fly farthest, stay aloft the longest, best landing accuracy, etc.
Even balled up paper qualifies.

I have done the paper airplanes and then had a contest on who's went the farthest and who's stayed in the air the longest. You can get software programs that show the kids how to make different types of airplanes. If I remimber the software was cheap.

Spaghetti bridges are also fun for kids. Give them some spaghetti, paper, glue and tape and let them build a bridge and test it at the end.

I also saw a thing this year where the kids had to build a little car out of different types of materials that had to respond to a regular house fan that was sitting in the hallway. I was shoocked at how far some went. They loved it.

I had our kids for an ice breaker one time make turtles out of bubble gum. They had to chew enough bubble gum and spit it out and use it to make a turtle. We had the engineers guess award the winner at the end.