First Graders Build Bridges

Teaching first graders about engineering can be challenging. My hat's off to all those lower elementary teachers. Teaching them is just so foreign to me, but I'm learning! One thing I'm learning, is that the first graders do much better when doing things rather than just listening.

So, our next task was to learn about and build bridges. We, quickly, reviewed types of bridges and discussed why we have bridges. This idea was inspired by the Engineering is Elementary unit. We thought is was a bit advanced for the first graders, so we just pulled pieces out that we thought would work.

Their challenge was to build a bridge using only the materials given. The bridge had to have a six inch span, be at least one inch above the desk top, and hold a plastic cup with weight in it. We didn't have time finish it in one period so we extended it to the next time and we added some more materials for them to use.

We had done another activity about building houses to withstand the huff and puff of the Big Bad Wolf and we found that the students were really excited to see if each other's house would stand the wind from a blow dryer. So we did the same thing with the bridges adding more and more weight to see how strong their bridge was. They were all very excited when the bridges held up to the stress!

Some times engineering can be sooooo frustrating!

One of the more innovative ideas!