Maker Challenge: Design & Build a Playground

Hello, division 4 families!

In the week of May 15-18^th, our whole school will engage in a fun “Maker Challenge” where students can work together in partners or small group to design a playground, and build a model of it using cardboard, recyclable materials, paints, tape, glue etc.

This fun creative exploration will tap into grade 4/ 5 curriculum in ADST (design process), Science (Simple Machines), Math (Measurement, Money), Art (3D Sculpture), and Social Studies (Research Skills, Ethical Decision-Making), and Language Arts (Oral Language Skill used during presentations).

The students in our class have already been exploring strategies for building with cardboard in our ADST program through making pieces to contribute to our class “time machine”. As well, they are making “time travel”-themed board games in Social Studies using many of these same techniques.

Our hope with these explorations and our “Maker Challenge” is to empower students with the skills, techniques and inspiration to take on their own creative projects, and get a glimpse of where true creative inquiry can lead.

I created the video above to illustrate for students a vision for how they could continue a playground design inquiry on their own, if they so desired—perhaps as an enrichment project or something fun to focus on during the summer.

Disclaimer: The video is an example of IN DEPTH inquiry (i.e. I don’t expect students to go to this level this school year—yet I still wanted to show them the path forward for how they could take what I’ve taught them to build upon their skills on their own in a “Personal Interest Project” format.).

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HOMEWORK: Please re-watch the above video as a way to provoke discussion on the following questions: What ideas do you have for your own playground design project? The boy in the video, Marcus, did a personal interest project about designing playgrounds—if you could do your own personal interest project, what topic might you like to explore?