Thursday, October 16, 2014

Cardboard Challenge

What an amazing afternoon!  Today was the culmination of over two weeks of intensive work by the 5th grade students to create with cardboard.  Our inspiration was Caine's Arcade, an arcade built entirely from cardboard boxes by a young boy in East Los Angeles.  His creativity was captured on a YouTube video and broadcast around the world.  Today, students all over the world are inspired by Caine to create whatever they can imagine using cardboard. 

In the CLIC lab, Jen Larussa coached the students in design and engineering.  Students learned first-hand about the engineering process, including the fact that sometimes setbacks lead to alternate designs.  There was certainly more than one team that had to revamp their original concept.  It was also affirming to see how the teams truly worked together to bring their ideas to reality.  There were games ("ski" ball, ping pong), household objects (a refrigerator, a bookshelf), and other creations (cars, boats, a particularly adorable giraffe), too many to list here, all from the heads of your 5th graders. 

Today, the students were able to showcase their work.  Despite the fact that the recent humidity made some of the cardboard wilt a bit, the students ably made 15 minute fix-ups, then let the crowds descend.  The 5th grade enjoyed their arcade first, then the 4th and 6th graders were invited to come in, play games, and check things out.  And all from a pile of "junk".

Ping pong, anyone?

 Anchors away, with games to go inside!

Some new bookshelves for our classroom.

Double decker pinball with scoring on the bottom

The ultimate "hidey-hole"

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