Engineering for Kids!

Hello everyone! My name is Mary Pollard, and today I am going to be writing about all things engineering! When you hear the word engineering, I am sure your mind does not automatically jump to children — mine definitely did not! However, engineering is actually very straightforward when it comes to children and there are many activities that you can do with children to help them learn about engineering! Engineering for children has a multi-step process that can be done with every activity you try!

First, what is the problem you need to solve? Or what is the activity that you want to try? Second, come up with ideas to try this activity — use a fun brainstorming activity to help plan! Third, it is time to design your concept. Fourth, now that you have designed your concept you need to build it! Fifth, now comes the fun part — testing it! It is important to test your structure/activity, to make sure it works for what you want it to do! If it doesn’t, there is a sixth step! Modify or re-design the activity, mistakes are meant to be made and are encouraged so you can build on them! When the activity is completed, then you should take pictures to share what you created with others!

There is a lot of learning that happens when children do engineering. They are learning to problem solve through trial and error, which is why making mistakes is encouraged to give them the opportunity to learn from them and figure out what to do differently! They are also building on their creativity and are encouraged to use their imagination for this! Engineering involves a lot of science and math, which means they are learning different math and science concepts through hands-on activities.

One activity they can try is building a tower! I created a tower using paper cups and popsicle sticks! I had to try a couple different options before I was successful, but I made it work! The goal was to reach 30 centimetres, and have it strong enough to hold a heavy object. Both goals were reached, and I was able to stack a variety of heavy books on top before it came close to collapsing!

I hope this post has been useful and interesting for you! Now get to engineering and have lots of fun trying out different activities!!

The materials needed for this activity — paper cups, a ruler, and popsicle sticks! This was the base I started with (second photo) and as you can see in the third photo, it remained sturdy throughout building. I first started with four popsicles on each layer instead of eight, but it was unsuccessful so I had to try again!

I achieved my goal of 30 centimetres, as shown with the ruler next to my structure! The heavy objects I chose to test the strength of my structure were big books (i.e. textbooks and cookbooks), which worked well for the most part!