Cardboard Designers

Last week the classroom was transformed into a technology design studio.  After reading our story called The Box that looks at all the possibilities of what we can do with cardboard boxes, the kids got thinking, planning, designing, trialling, strengthening, decorating and fine-tuning. 

Some new exactly what they wanted to make and they worked from an idea they had in their heads of what that thing looked like.  Here we are making a rocket.

There was sticking that happened with cello-tape at first and upon investigation, we realised that we might need something stronger to hold our pieces together.  Through trial we saw that when our rocket ship took off, it fell apart with just cello-tape.

There was measuring going on.  Will these fit in this box?  We were asking ourselves questions: How will this stay? What do I need to change?

Colour and design were being played with.  We realised that we wanted our creations to have certain looks and the process of actually making them was lots of fun.

 

We were exploring shape and capacity.

How can I change the shape?

What can fit in here? Can I fit in here?

We had to figure out what we needed to do with the tools we had to make the shapes we wanted.  Here we are cutting things ourselves and creating holes in the box.

 We were reinforcing our structures and talking about them being big and tall.  We used descriptive and comparative language.  This structure is an office building and the very top was where the boss works because they have the best view.  We looked at pictures of office buildings online to inform our decisions. 

 Through this office window you can see the boss's desk and the boss himself.  These items were cut and made all on our own!

We were so proud of our hard work that we worked on an email to the parents together and sent it out inviting them to our box museum.

We had to think about how you write a letter and an invitation.  We had to tell them where to come, when, and what we had been doing.

Celebrating, Sharing and Presenting

Our parents came and we got to show them around the exhibits.  We explained how we had worked on our projects and what we had done.  We had to think hard and make changes.  We did lots of working together and problem solving.  We shared materials and took turns helping each other. 

Everyone was really impressed with our hard work and we were so proud of ourselves.